Blocking Behaviors Keeping Your Stress Alive
There are three obsessive behaviors that you are likely to be engaging in that impeded your healing process and stop you from enjoying a stress-free life. Recognizing these barriers can be a great first step toward getting rid of the problems that go with being too stressed.
The first is obsessive negativity
When you are obsessively negative, it means that you have a tendency toward being “negative” about people, places, situations, and things in your life.
Perhaps you find yourself saying things like “I can’t do this!” or “No one understands!” or “Nothing ever works!”, for example. You may be doing this unconsciously, but essentially you have what’s known as a “sour grapes” attitude, and it holds you back from knowing what it’s like to view life from a positive lens and enjoy the beauty in yourself and people around you! There’s a whole world out there for you…with happiness and positive thinking.
Then you have obsessive perfectionism
When you engage in obsessive perfectionism, you are centered on trying to do everything “just so” to the point of driving yourself into an anxious state of being. You may find yourself making statements such as, “I have to do this right, or I’ll be a failure!” or “If I am not precise, people will be mad at me!” Again, this behavior may be totally under the threshold of your awareness, but it interferes greatly with your ability to enjoy things without feeling “uptight” and “stressed.”
Finally there is obsessive analysis
When you are obsessed about analyzing things, you find yourself wanting to re-hash a task or an issue over and over again. For instance, you might find yourself making statements such as, “I need to look this over, study it, and know it inside and out…or else I can’t relax!” or “If I relax and let things go without looking them over repeatedly, things go wrong!”
While analytical thinking is an excellent trait, if it’s done in excess you never get to stop and smell the roses because you’re too busy trying to analyze everything and everyone around you. Gaining insight into this type of behavior is one of the most important keys to letting go of stress, and getting complete power over your anxiety.
If you find yourself engaging in any of the above “Blocking Behaviors”, there are two things you can do to help yourself. First, ask the people you know, love, and trust, “Am I negative about things?”, “Do I complain a lot?”, and “Am I difficult to be around?”
This may be hard for you to listen to, as the truth sometimes hurts a great deal. But the insight you will get from others’ assessment of you is invaluable, and you’ll know precisely how others see you. Accept their comments as helpful info, and know that you will gain amazing insights from what you hear.
Second, keep a journal to write down and establish patterns of when you are using “blocking behaviors.” Even if you are not thrilled with the idea of writing, you can make little entries into a note book or journal each day. The great part is that you’ll begin to see patterns in your behavior that reveal exactly what you’re doing to prevent yourself from curing your anxiety.
You need to recognize these blockages first so you can move into the “healing” stage and conquer your stress and anxiety.
Many people think that stress and anxiety are the same thing. This couldn’t be further from the truth!
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Why Are We So Stressed Out?
We’re living in very trying and difficult times and things don’t seem to be getting any easier. Sometimes life can seem terribly painful and unfair, yet somehow we manage to struggle on, day after day, hoping and praying that things will soon get better.
But day by day the world is becoming a crazier and more uncertain place to live in, not to mention stressful. Nothing seems safe anymore. Millions of people are in record levels of debt. Many are losing their jobs, their homes, their health and sometimes even their sanity. Worry, depression and anxiety seem to have become a way of life for way too many people.
We seem to have entered the Age of Anxiety. In fact, in 2002, the cover of Time magazine proclaimed this loud and clear on one of their covers as the featured story in that issue. The constant stress and uncertainties of living in the 21st century have certainly taken their toll, and as a result many of us seem to live a life of constant fear and worry.
When the terrorist attacks happened on September 11, this constant stress and worry seemed to just be magnified. In fact, many people even now four years later report they are still scared that something of that magnitude could happen again – perhaps closer to them.
Turn on the news or open up a newspaper and we are bombarded with disturbing images and stories. We begin to wonder if we are safe anywhere. In this, the information age, never before have we had so much access to so much data.
The economy is another stressor. Our country is in debt and so are many Americans. Soaring gas prices, outrageous housing costs, even the cost of food has sent many Americans to work in jobs that are unsatisfying and tedious. They work these jobs because they need a paycheck. Today, it’s more important to bring home the bacon rather than work in a dream career.
Having more women in the workplace adds to the stress. So many women feel the need to be everything to everyone and that includes a paycheck earner, house keeper, mom, wife, daughter, and sibling. The only problem with that is some women just don’t make any time for themselves thus contributing to their stress levels being at an all-time high.
Even children can feel the pressure of stress and anxiety. Teenagers who want to go to college find themselves pushing themselves during their studies to try and obtain scholarships so they can attend schools that have ever increasing tuition costs.
They find themselves having to hold down part-time jobs on top of all that to earn money for extras that their parents can no longer afford. Add peer pressure into the mix and you have a veritable pressure cooker!
Cell phones, internet, palm pilots, blackberries, i-pods – we are always on the go and always reachable. We don’t make time to relax and enjoy life any more. Why not? We certainly should!
We feel pressure to do these things because we think we HAVE to, not because we WANT to. All too often, it’s difficult for people to just say “No”. Not saying that one little word piles up un-needed expectations and obligations that make us feel anxious.
All of us will experience situations that may cause us to become stressed or feel anxious. The reasons are too many to note but can include, buying a property, having guests stay over (in-laws!), being bullied, exams, looking after children, managing finances, relationship issues, traveling etc.
Stress is a ‘normal’ function of everyday life. Only when it appears to take over our lives does it then become a problem.
Everyone will have different reasons why a situation causes them pressure. As a rule it’s usually when we don’t feel in control of a situation, then we feel its grip tightening around us causing us to feel worried or ‘stressed’.
If stress is caused by us not feeling in control of a situation, the answer is to try and reverse this, and regain that control. The good news is: YOU CAN!
You have everything inside you that you need to overcome your stress and the accompanying anxiety. The problem is, often we don’t realize that we are in control because we feel so out of control at time. But the tools are there, you just have to use them.
Let’s first look at the barriers we put up that are preventing us from becoming healthy and getting rid of our anxiety and stress.
The Power of Thought And How To Influence Reality
Thoughts are things and thoughts, being things, do in fact have power. This is so because every thought is contributing to the life’s experience. You can create your own reality with the thoughts you choose to think.
The power of thought influences reality. Powerful thoughts create powerful states or situations which are both mental and physical. This power of thought can be used either for good or evil.
The whole world is the manifestation of our inner thoughts. The problems we confront, the situations we come across and the people we meet are all projections of our thoughts. In other words, our thoughts create our reality. Perceptions are our filters, filtering the experiences of our reality.
The perceived reality ultimately becomes manifested reality and we become what we think. Thoughts are extremely powerful. Whenever we perceive or harbor a thought, it is a process of creation that has been set into action. This indeed is reality.
The power of thought influences a person very much. A person can achieve, rise and conquer only by hauling up his thoughts. He can at the same time remain weak, miserable and abject by refusing to lift his thoughts.
There can be no progress or achievements without lifting the thoughts. A person’s success can be measured by the power of their thoughts. The higher you lift your thoughts the greater will be your success.
Your achievements and failures, weaknesses and strengths, purities and impurities are the direct result of your own thoughts. They are brought by yourself and not by any other person. Your happiness and sufferings are evolved from within your thoughts. This condition can be changed or altered through your thoughts alone. Your thoughts are what you are and if you continue to think the same thoughts you will remain as you are.
Intellectual achievements are the outcome of powerful thoughts. Such achievements are sometimes thought to be linked to ambition and vanity but they are not. They are the natural outcome of the arduous effort and the pure and unselfish thoughts.
Achievements of any kind are the crown of effort and the diadem of thoughts. With the help of purity, righteousness, selflessness and well directed thoughts a man ascends. By corruption, impurity and confusion of thoughts a man descends. This is reality.
Our destiny is in our thoughts. We can choose the direction to move by focusing our thoughts in that direction. It is not about being right and perfect from the start, but acquiring perfection over time.
And this process begins with our thoughts, which is the seed of our reality…
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