5 Steps To Beating Stress
This “Beat Stress” Process Works Whether You’re Healthy or Chronically Ill with a longterm illness like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Arthritis or some other Autoimmune illness.
If you live with high levels of stress, it may be time for a personal change of course. Unanswered stress does nothing good in anyone’s life. This report offers you an effective tool to get rid of negative stress. (For the purpose of this report, the term stress will be considered negative. There is such a thing as positive stress, but that is not the emphasis here.)
Let’s take a good look at stress. It can severely impact all aspects of your life including your health. Complaints of stress and fatigue are the prime reasons that most people go to the doctor. Over a long period of time, excessive stress can incapacitate you.
Not taking care of daily stress can lead to ruined personal relationships and job failure. Plus individuals living with excessively high levels of stress are prone to make bad decisions sometimes even irrational decisions, prompting them to engage in dangerous activities, such as stealing, speeding, drinking while driving, etc.
Let’s begin this process of getting rid of your stress right now:
Step 1: Find a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted for at least 30 minutes.
Whether you’re sick or well, if you want to change your life, your actions, your way of thinking or general approach to any problem, you must step back from it. To be really effective in this initial approach, turn off your mind, relax your breathing, and meditate or pray. You can even listen to relaxing music; I personally like native American flute music such as Canyon Trilogy: Native American Flute Music by R. Carlos Nakai. Use whatever method lowers your sensory awareness and helps you feel the most relaxed. This is key. (Whatever you choose to do, be sure no drugs or alcohol are involved. They only provide artificial sensations and will not help your brain and emotions function well together for this exercise.)
As you begin Step 1, make sure that neither your mind nor body resist your attempt to relax. Purposely, consciously decompress. Allow fresh ideas and motivation to bubble to the surface. Access the place where your emotions reside. If you’re already stressed (which you probably are or you wouldn’t be reading this), make a really concerted effort. Tone down your normally chatty brain and full-steam-ahead body. Take a few moments and allow this process to happen as naturally as possible. You will begin to de-stress simply knowing that you’re facing your problems and intend to do something positive about them. Starting a process is sometimes the most difficult step. Start this one and you’ll begin to feel better right away!
Step 2: Identify your major sources of stress; write them down on paper.
Write 2 or 3 sentences about each one. You can write more, but it is not necessary. Just be sure to write down the major points about the toughest problems in your life. You will refer back to this list more than once and the more efficiently you compile your thoughts, the easier it will be to work with them in the following steps.
Step 3: Take your list and rank each item from most stressful (10) to least stressful (1).
This requires a judgment call and your information may change over time, but that is not important. Make your initial determination about what seems most stressful today, medium-range and so on. You may encounter certain details that influence your ranking system, i.e. panic attacks, migraine headaches, sleepless nights, job performance issues, overdue bills, people you want to avoid, etc. Set up your own criteria of what is stressful to you; these are your personal issues not mine or anyone else’s. It is critical to address your issues at the level of how you perceive them.
Step 4: Now that you have your list and you’ve ranked them in importance, meditate, study or pray about what you will do to confront each issue.
Yes, this is a difficult step, but it is quite necessary. Think of it this way– if you already knew what to do about your life stressors, you wouldn’t need information on helping you to de-stress. Hang in there. You’ve done steps one through three; now you’re at the action stage. Don’t be tempted to wimp out or make excuses.
Decide the best things to do to alleviate each stress point on your list. You can start at the least stressful and work up to the most stressful if that seems like the place to begin. Some people want to tackle the most stressful one first. It’s up to you. The thing to do is begin. This process will get easier the more you work on it. Running away and/or not addressing the problems will only give them more power to affect your life negatively. The longer you go before facing them, the more your problems compound. Call these items in #4, Mediators. They will help you decide what to do.
Step 5: Find the Mechanisms (or plan) to make de-stressing your life finally happen.
After you’ve identified your stressors, ranked them and found a way to confront each one, put the mechanisms, activities, philosophies or life changes into place that will help you finish this process.
Example: Let’s use a family member and a comedy skit as the framework for an example. You have this “family member” who is sick, financially broke and/or getting really old and feeble physically or mentally. His life has become unmanageable and your spouse thinks this person should come to live in your home. Maybe he should, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be incredibly difficult for you, the other spouse living there, too. In watching television shows like I Love Lucy and Family Matters, you know how silly and crazy daily life can be in a family. And sure enough, yours is turning in that direction. Plus, if you don’t feel well yourself, the last thing you need is another source of stress. If this situation becomes too much, work with your spouse and/or reliable family members to find an alternate solution rather than this person continuing to live in your home. Even though this process may take some time and patience to implement, it will be worth it to your long term health, your family’s overall stability and for the ailing family member who may be feeling the stress, too. Let’s call this fifth and final step The Plan. It is the most important step to help you de-stress and find a more peaceful existence.
*BONUS: Construct an easy chart and use it to keep on track
(This tool will help you make sure that you don’t get de-railed trying to de-stress.)
First, get out a notebook-sized sheet of paper (or larger). Draw a big rectangular box inside the margins that will allow you plenty of room to write notes. Leave a little space at the top to name your chart. At the biggest, widest portion of the box on the top line, write the words, “Getting Rid of Stress,” or something like that. Feel free to personalize the title. Write whatever will motivate you to take action every day. The more authentic, doable and important this project becomes, the more effort you will give to constructing and completing the chart and making these action points happen. You not only want to identify your stressors and know what to do about them, you want to eliminate the source of your stress! (Either right now or as soon as possible.)
Second, after you’ve written your title, make three vertical columns across the sheet of paper (still looking at it as a wide box). The three column titles should be listed as 1) Stressor, 2) Mediator and 3 Plan. By now what goes inside of these columns may be self evident, but if not, refer to Steps 2 and 3 above for how to determine what is stressing you, Step 4 for figuring out your Mediator and in Step 5, where you decided on what mechanisms to use to make this de-stressing process happen.
Realize that all of this can be extremely effective. Do it in order, step by step. Give this a real effort because you want to come out of this process with 100% positive results if possible. Try not to impose unrealistic time constraints, as everything may not come to a satisfactory conclusion overnight. Allow the process time to work and revise it if necessary. The important goal is systematically, item by item, get it done.
Know that self-introspection is tough stuff for a healthy person; it can be ten times more challenging when you don’t feel well. If you suffer from long term, chronic illness, this becomes an important part of the equation to regaining your health. Don’t put this off. Get help from your loved ones or friends if necessary. They want to see you healthy as much as you want to be totally healthy and stress-free.
To find out more complete information about how to get well from stress and other health problems, check out Cinda Crawford’s free report, “The Fatigue Factor: 5 Ways to Begin Your Own Healing From Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Allergies and Autoimmune Illness” at
Cinda is an ELT Health Practitioner and counsels people on how to heal and how to get their life back. Once she was really sick, then she healed by means of the ELT (Essential Life Therapy) protocol. She now helps others get well. She wishes you happy health! Cinda Crawford is an ELT Practitioner, facilitating personal energy healing on a mind/body/spirit basis with clients all over the world.
Tags: chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic illness, de-stress, fibromyalgia, Stress, stressful, stressor