By Inna Segal
Long term stress and worry can activate your fight or flight response. Whilst this reaction can be useful when you need to deal with immediate danger, if ignored or pushed away it can damage your health by invoking stress hormones like cortisol to flood your body. If you’re looking for ways to free yourself from stress, here are three suggestions:
Change your perspective
If worry is taking over your life, then you need to change your point of view. Become aware of how you are dramatising the situation, buying into fear and letting it control you and look for a different option.
You can ask yourself, ‘What is a more empowered way to relate to this situation?’. Fear can be a wonderful servant that keeps you alive or a cunning master that sabotages your growth. For instance, when you cross the road perhaps fear of an accident makes you stop and look at where you are going. However, to live your life from a perspective of fear is dangerous, limiting and stressful.
Clarify your intention
It is important to recognise that you have a choice to worry about something or not. To make a choice not to worry, you need to learn how to clarify your intention, communicate it to Divine Intelligence and the people around you and then be willing to let go and trust.
For example, you may say, ‘Divine Intelligence, please give me practical ways to increase my income,’ or ‘Please bring people into my life who will assist me with my workload so that I can spend more time with my children.’ Your requests can be simple or elaborate.
The important thing is to be willing to ask for help, let go of worry and trust that help is on its way.
This does not mean that help will arrive the second you ask. This is one of the steps that allow you to recognise that you need to ask for support. The next step is to look for or talk to the appropriate people who might be able to offer you assistance or advice. Then apply this advice and take appropriate action.
Focus on a solution – move from stress to strength
The only way out of worry is to shift your focus from a problem to a possible solution. Once you shift your focus from a limited point of view to an expanded point of view, your own wisdom, Divine Intelligence and other people can give you new insights on how you can do things differently.
Sometimes the only thing you need to change is how you perceive a challenge and your reaction to it. Discovering a balanced perspective can make a tremendous difference to your thinking, emotional and energetic state and can help you to relax. Other times you may need to move, talk to appropriate people, ask for help, learn something new, make a decision, take action, rest, meditate etc.
Worry makes people feel helpless, hopeless and victimised. When you change your perspective from stress to strength you begin to feel stronger, more confident and capable of creating real change in your life. You also become more courageous, daring and creative, willing to use your skills to contribute to others and thus become more fulfilled and happy.
Inna Segal is a bestselling, award winning author of several books and cards on wellness and healing. Her new book, Understanding Modern Spirituality (Rockpool Publishing $29.99), is now available where all books are sold and online at www.rockpoolpublishing.com.au