Stress Management in a Troubled World
Stress is a Choice — A Choice How We See the World & How We Choose to Live Our Lives
By Jack Allis
“People are freaking out! It’s worse now than ever. What the hell’s going on?”
I seem to be hearing this more and more often these days, and it seems to be true. Even the most sane and stable among us are feeling things they’ve never felt before, like time itself is speeding up, and strange forces are at work, causing many to flip their lids. And the health care community, both traditional and alternative, is fanning these flames. It seems like a day doesn’t go by when I don’t hear about some new snake oil, gimmick or technique that will help people get rid of their stress forever.
My purpose here will be to cut through this hysteria, and get back to the basics of stress management, which never change. In spite of what our apparently crazy world would like us to think, the principles of stress management are the same today as they were six thousand years ago.
The most important thing to know about stress is we create it ourselves. Stress is a function of how we think, how we see ourselves and our world, and the choices we make regarding how we live our lives. These are all things over which we have control. If it seems like we’ve lost this control, we have the capability to learn how to get it back. This is one of the primary things I teach in my work. For example, if we see the world as a terrible place, and see ourselves as powerless in our lives, we will be stressed-out, anxious and depressed. If we see the world as a glorious place, and see ourselves as empowered to create our own destiny, we will be relaxed, healthy and happy. It’s just that simple. Stress management 101. End of class.
According to the Law of Attraction, one of the sacred laws of the universe, the lives we create, or attract, are a reflection of how we see ourselves and our world, and our attitude or vibration, which means how we feel about our lives. One of the primary mistakes stressed-out people make is they blame the world. They see the world as an inherently stressful place, and they see themselves as helplessly caught in this web. What they don’t understand is that the problem is not in the world. It is within them. In this context, as silly as it might sound, stress is a choice.
The stressed-out profile goes something like this: “I’m so swamped, I don’t have time for myself. With the mortgage and car payments, credit card payments, taxes, and the children, it takes two incomes just to keep our heads above water. My work demands more and more of my time, and then we have to find quality time for the kids, and shuttle them back and forth. And then there’s the housework, meals, errands, etc., etc.” In summary: running around like a chicken with your head cut off, chasing the American materialist dream.
Stress is an automatic feature of this picture. The reason is very simple, and it brings us back to another of our sacred laws of the universe, probably the most important of all. It is this: the most important things in life, our peace of mind, our health, and our happiness, all spring primarily from our spirituality, not from material things. Spirituality also can be defined very simply, which quantum science confirms. Everything in the universe, including us, consists of two basic things: energy and intelligence or spirit. This energy field is in a state of lightening fast movement or vibration, and every aspect of it is connected with every other aspect. There is also an unseen intelligence or divine spirit at work here, which governs the behavior of this energy and the various forms it takes. We derive our power to create our lives from our connection with this energy and with the divine spirit. We make this connection with our vibration. Our vibration is the most powerful, like a magnet attracting positive things, when we experience life with feelings of peacefulness, joy, love and acceptance. Everything we have in life, and this includes all the material things, springs from this vibration. This vibration, this attitude, this mindset, is the key to stress management. If you don’t have it, you can learn how to get it. But first you must make the choice to do so. If you want to learn more about the specifics of how to do this, I suggest you read my article The 9-Steps of Self-Transformation, which you can find on my website.
Stress is an inherent feature of the stressed-out profile above because of its emphasis on materiality, to the exclusion of spirituality. Tragically, this has become the hallmark of our culture, and this is the primary reason why things are so messed up. There’s nothing wrong with the world. The problem is us.
There is also a practical aspect to our choices. Choosing the spiritual path also means changing our lifestyle. It means slowing down, and smelling the flowers. It means replacing the materialist emphasis on outcomes, control and accumulating stuff, with living fully in the moment. In this context, health care providers do their clients a grave disservice with their drugs, gimmicks and techniques without teaching them the essential importance of changing how they live. You get a massage; feel great, return to your frenzied lifestyle, and pretty soon you’re all stressed out again. It was all just a Band-Aid, a quick fix.
When one learns to live with the proper vibration, the stress just melts away. This doesn’t mean that life isn’t filled with challenges. It is, but these challenges no longer break our spirit. Challenges become welcome and blessed opportunities for further learning and growth.
And as far as material things are concerned, when one has one’s spiritual house in order, they take care of themselves with more of a natural rhythm and flow. We no longer worry about them because we trust the spiritual path we have chosen. Often, the lesson is learning how to live happily with less. Having lots of money, just for the sake of having it, or to keep up with the Jones’s, is simply a defense against our fears and insecurities.
When I say there’s nothing wrong with the world, this does not mean I am in denial of how totally screwed up our world is today. However, when one follows the spiritual path, a few other things invariably come into focus. One is an understanding of our purpose – in other words, why we are here. A natural by-product of the spiritual path is service. Service basically means sharing what we’ve learned with others, and playing our part to make the world a better place. This can take a wide variety of forms, but in general, service always boils down to two things: teaching and creativity, which invariably go hand in hand. In other words, we are here to play our part in creating wisdom, harmony and beauty in the world.
Another common mistake people make is they see how screwed up the world is, and then, like the person in our stressed-out profile, they proceed to get sucked into it. As individuals, the best thing any of us can do to make the world a better place is to simply live a life of peacefulness, joy, love and acceptance, and put that vibration out there. That’s where it all starts, and it’s very powerful.
No discussion of stress management would be complete without discussing one critical aspect of our world. This is The Great Shift of the Ages. This is not something you will hear about in the mainstream media, or anywhere in the mainstream system. It is also a primary reason why even the most stable among us are feeling things they have never felt before, and having a more difficult time holding it together, and why the less stable are losing their marbles completely. The planet Earth is currently in the midst of an exceedingly rare geophysical and astrophysical time, the completion of a 26,000-year cycle, prophesized by the Mayans, the Hopis and numerous other ancient cultures spanning the globe, which involves forces of colossal magnitude, such as the changing of the Earth’s electromagnetic field, its resonant frequency, and much more. This is an exceedingly rich subject, the details of which are way beyond the scope of this article. You may go to my website to learn more. Suffice it to say that the energy fields of the Earth are in a state of profound transformation. One manifestation of this is the dramatic increase in extreme weather, earthquake, volcano and tsunami activity. Since our bodies are connected to these energy fields, we can also feel these things. These feelings are stressful because of their lack of familiarity, and because we don’t know what’s happening. It’s also a pretty good guess that this is going to get quite a bit more intense. We could be in for a very bumpy ride in the years ahead.
There are those who believe these are the end-times predicted in the Bible. For those of us on the spiritual path, who see challenges as blessings, we see this as an extraordinary opportunity to discard the old, and create a new paradigm of higher consciousness and spirituality. It could go either way. Once again, the choice is ours.