Anxiety & Stress Are They Stealing Your Joy

Anxiety and stress can have debilitating results. For years I suffered through stress, work-related, home, you name it, I could find a way to stress myself out!

Over the past couple of years now, some fantastic results have passed through my life. Yes, I still stress, but boy can control it been enhanced. I will share with you my daily routine and habits that help.

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First, let me say that if you’re struggling to get help from a licensed health care professional. What I am sharing with you is just daily habits that you can try to see if they help. By no means should you feel this is a cure-al?

Simple daily routine changes can help with stress & anxiety:

  1. Learn to quiet the mind. This is just a simple relaxation method that can help you with a clear mind. When the rhetoric in your head can slow down and quiet. Amazing results begin to appear.
  2. This can be a simple walk around your neighborhood. Or you can join a gym. Working out the tension in your body, getting stronger can help you not get so fatigued that your anxiety just increases.
  3. Take a moment often during the day to just breathe. Sixty seconds to breathe in through the nose and out through your mouth. Nice cleansing breaths.
  4. Regulate your soda, coffee, and high caffeine drinks. For most of us, we don’t need more help to get anxious.
  5. Take the time that’s just for you. Watch a sunrise by yourself. Sit by a creek. Do something that is just for you (retail therapy is a no-no. Credit card debt is a stressor). Go shoot baskets at the park, kick a ball, ride a bike.
  6. Stay connected with people that uplift you. Debbie-downer is not your friend. Choose wisely. Don’t hibernate.
  7. Set boundaries for people that bring stress into your experience. If someone can only talk about negative things. Cut them short (YES YOU CAN) politely excuse yourself from that situation “oh I totally forgot ______” hopefully that person gets a clue. You are not anyone’s sounding board for garbage.
  8. Home or office is a mess. Guess what? That is the state of your noodle. Clean up, organize, and enjoy the environment around you. People often tell me the disorganized desk in the office, “that’s just the way I am.” So, you’re a chaotic malfunctioning human, and we should all get over it? I regularly must organize myself, it’s a habit I highly recommend.
  9. Sit down and prioritize your life. I mean down to the last detail. If you tell me you’re a free spirit, you fly by the seat of your pants. Then I say super if you’re a well-adjusted, NORMAL functioning human being I will shut up. Otherwise, organize based on the importance of what you need to do every day. The reason being, if you have a real sense of accomplishment, wow, is that life-changing! Activity vs. Productivity learns the difference now!
  10. Patience and faith. If you can learn to allow life to unfold (yes you must do the work) knowing full well, you’ll be fine. Even when you can’t see a way, you believe with everything that is you, all will be well. Spiritual connectedness will indeed bring about peace in your life.
  11. Learn to be grateful right where you are. If you want more out of life, you must be thankful where you stand. If you want more from the Universe, why would that occur if you’re miserable where you are (NO, I am not suggesting you be grateful in a situation that is emotionally or physically harmful to you). However, if this is not the case and you’re simply aggravated at your lot in life. Be grateful you have a car that gets you to work, you have a job it may suck, but you have one, a roof over your head, food to eat, your health and clothes to wear.

You can find a million reasons to stay in the crap. I just gave you eleven reasons not too. What’s more, you can do each of these with just a little effort.

The real question now; “What are you prepared to do?” Until you make the decision to change your life, expect the same outcome.

No guarantee this will be easy. Nothing worth having is ever easy. I am going to let you in on a secret. For most of our lives, we’ve been taught to run away from pain. Sounds reasonable.

Ponder this:

When you first go to the gym and workout hard, what happens? Soreness from hell hits you. Can’t brush your teeth, can’t raise your arms high enough. You can quit or go back to the gym and work out a bit more until the soreness subsides.

Coaches will push you beyond your mental and physical breaking points. Why? Your head will quit far sooner than your body or mind can handle. Marathon runners are prime examples. “The wall” as marathon runners will tell you hits about the twenty-mile mark, and your brain says your body it’s time to stop. The physical pain that is causing damage to the point if you don’t stop, you could injure yourself or worse die.

Medical studies have proven this is all in your head. Runners are not hurt, injured, or dying. What is happening is our limiting beliefs take over, and it’s; fight-or-flight.

Before you give up, take one more step. If you took the step, then maybe we can go more. It’s all up to you. The ONLY PERSON ON THIS PLANET THAT CAN SAY YOU CAN OR CANNOT. IS YOU!

Don’t let anxiety and stress take your joy. If you need professional help go, get it. I am putting a resource to help you get started. This is not a paid endorsement, nor an endorsement by me. It’s just a great place to get started.

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National Institute for Mental Health

Choice, Decide Already!

Choice

If I asked you to make a choice right now to be happy, but you’re suffering through a terrible divorce. Could you be satisfied just by making that choice? The short answer is yes! Before you hit the refund, button hears me out.

What stops you from choosing to be happy in a moment is you. I should say years of conditioning yourself that you can’t just simply change. Why can’t you? Should be the real question.

Let’s take our divorce scenario to a little higher level. If divorce is imminent even though you don’t want a divorce.

Two options:

Option A:

  • Stay bitter, sad, emotionally done, not having any thought as to a new future.

Option B:

  • “Choose” to be happy. Yes, the person whom your life revolved around is gone. The Universe, in its infinite wisdom, is taking you down a new path. Presuppose for a moment that this new life if given a chance, has more love, joy, happiness, and fulfillment than you ever thought possible.

If you choose to be happy, “Option B” certainly has more promise. The simple act of choosing one from another is incredibly powerful.

Over a year ago someone that I am proud to call a friend explained away my own pain from divorce like this: “If you could have your wife back today and go right back to the way things were, OR, you could have the relationship you never thought possible. Which would you choose?”

That’s when I knew that I had to make a choice for myself. If something in your life is meant to be, then it shall.

The real rub is that for years-and-years, we conditioned our minds towards limiting beliefs. We end up saying:

  • If I just change, she will come back.
  • If I learn to keep my mouth shut.
  • If I lose twenty pounds.

The problem is NOT you, it’s the paradigm that is so entrenched in your head you can’t shake it off. Using the divorce analogy just scrapes the surface of this problem. This book is not a “how to get over divorce” book. NO, far from it.

How to change limiting beliefs, the unknowing lies we tell ourselves every day. What our journey well reveals to us, we can make a choice and move on, NOW!

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Choice do you really want me to pick?

Yes, friends easier said than done. However, very doable. With some guided practice, you can learn to decide, stick with it, no regrets, and blaze a trail for others to follow. Pardon the cliché!

How do you we make these changes you ask? Training our minds to a new healthy reality. Who says you can’t do something; you need only look in the mirror? That’s who!

Part 1:

How many years have you heard phrases like?

  • You/I don’t have that kind of luck.
  • No education, you can’t do that.
  • You’re too fat.
  • You’re too skinny.
  • You’re not part of that social group.
  • Oh, honey, why don’t you lower your sights to something more realistic.

From as many years ago as you’re able to remember we’ve all heard the limiting phrases getting stuffed into our mind.

What is being communicated to you is, “If I can’t do you surely cannot.” By well-meaning parents, family, friends, and other well-wishers. So, if these lovely people are telling me this, it must be true. NO, not only NO; HELL NO!

The only person on this planet that knows whether YOU can do anything is YOU! It does not matter what your Mom, Dad, Grandmother, Friend, Boss, has to say about what you can do. The ONLY person that knows is your period!

People close to you will naturally want you to play it safe. None of us want to see a friend hurt. Who the heck says you must hurt? I’m not shouting at the top of my lungs “oh God, don’t write the first Novel you failed English literature.”

Again, I go back to the systematic brainwashing society shoves down our brain. How many folks have completed Marathons in wheelchairs or with lost limbs? Hundreds if not thousands. Why Choice! The choice NOT to allow something horrific to bring them down.

Mediocrity is a disease of the mind. It’s a cure; “Choice!”

Part 2:

How to break free, so Choice comes at will.

  1. Meditation / Prayer: see yourself through this practice as free of limitation. That my life, my choice to see it through as a vessel of the Universe. Not some, “I don’t have this or that mentality.”
  2. Put the affirmation “Choice” Refrigerator, bathroom mirror, reminders on your phone daily.
  3. Learn to believe in yourself. Take the training wheels off your life. When you feel you can’t do something learn to ask yourself; who said! With enough training and knowledge, you can bloody well do anything you want!
  4. Practice, Practice, Practice! Do not give up or in at the first sign of difficulty. This is something you must want as much as air. We’ve all heard the businessman who asked a guru “how do I become successful,” the Guru replied, “meet me at the beach at 6:00 AM and don’t be late.” The next morning the businessman is on time, and the Guru takes him out into the water up to there chest. The Guru grabs the man and holds his head down in the water until the man was in great distress. Lifting the man out of the water, the businessman screams, “Why did you do that?” The Guru calmly replies, “When you want success as-bad-as, you wanted to breathe, then you will find success!”
  5. Gain knowledge. The reason people quit is insufficient knowledge. If people aren’t saying to you, “Wow, I have no idea you could do that.” If the wow factor is not WOW, then gain more knowledge. Become a voracious reader.

Nothing on God’s good earth prevents you from achieving anything. If you set your mind to something, trust that God will give you the knowledge, and move the Universe into alignment for you. Believe that as much as you want to breathe (like our Guru analogy).

All it takes is a choice. Your choice to stay status quo or your choice to live a life most would only dream about.

“Infuse your life with action. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen… yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.”–Bradley Whitford

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Train Until You are Stress Proof

When ill-prepared to do anything, this creates undue stress that does not matter the task. It’s natural to have tension when you feel nervous about a task at hand. Having knowledge gives you power. Hence, train until your stress-proof.

So many just give up long before they should. A top reason is folks get uncomfortable because they don’t want to appear for lack of a better word stupid. None of us want to look silly in front of our peers.

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Most of us have experienced this in our lifetime. When beginning a new change, task, or any change for that matter. Put training, educations towards that task before perhaps announcing “hey, I’m doing such-n-such!”

Here are a few tips on training:

  1. Set time each day for training one of the three; Mind, Body, and Soul.
  2. Train until what you desire comes to you flowing like a river. 
  3. Become a voracious reader. Knowledge is true power! 

These easy tasks will help you strengthen your stress tolerance.

Don’t only give up. Evaluate your plan:

  1. Do I have sufficient knowledge?
  2. Am I truly prepared? 
  3. What is scaring me?

When you can identify what’s wrong, fixing that becomes easy. Don’t sell yourself short! Sometimes, the slightest of change in your trajectory will move you right back on task. Making a big deal that potentially is nothing is a snap judgment. Get that type of reaction out of your head.

The way to change, happiness, success, love, joy, you must be prepared. You must understand your desire completely. Then and only then, when you’re absolutely clear, the flood gates of life open!

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Snooze Button or Life

Is your ass out of that bad at 4:00 AM every day. Ready to meet the day, be there when the break of a lifetime dumps right in your lap. Oh, wait you’re still in bed.

If you can’t get your ass out of bed. Why would I hire you? You need to tell people you get more done before 7:00 AM than most get done in a day!

“A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.”–Benjamin Franklin

Questions you seriously need to ask yourself:

  • Is sleeping in more important than my family?
  • Is sleeping in more important than my Success?
  • Is sleeping in more important than my Body temple?
  • Is sleeping in more important than my Workout?

We could list hundreds more. Go ahead, reach over, and hit the snooze button. Hell NO!

24-hour day – 6 hours sleep – 8-hour work day = 10-hours left to have a life! What are you prepared to do?

Stop convincing yourself morning-after-morning that you’re not a morning person. BS! The most exceptional salesperson in the world is you. You sell yourself everyday mediocrity, and you keep buying. Stop NOW selling yourself short in your life.

By the time you see this sunrise, you will have achieved more in your day than most will in an 8 hour day! 

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Mind over HELL YES IT MATTERS! How bad do you want to succeed? This is NOT a sacrifice but an investment in your success. We’ve talked about this before, if you feel anything you’re doing involves sacrifice. Rethink your position. Every step you take is one step closer to success in every aspect of your life, that is NO sacrifice!

Begin your day at 4:00 AM. 

Or hit the snooze button and watch life pass you by. Who knows the person you can become if you get out of bed and blaze a trail for others to follow. For some of you by the time you get up the world has zipped by with opportunity, oh you were sleeping, huge break, oh you were sleeping, the love of your life was going to cross your path at the gym today, oh you were sleeping.

If your life right now does not wake you up. This is your wake up call it’s 4:00 AM and this day filled with your success! Or hit the snooze button, it’s a choice.

So just getting up is not enough. Here are some great investments you can make towards a great life:

  1. Roll out of bed onto your knees and pray! 
  2. Set time aside to meditate.
  3. Walk, take a brisk walk.
  4. Study something that fills your mind with more knowledge. 
  5. Finish a project you’ve put off. 
  6. Read.
  7. Feed your body healthy food, protein shakes, fresh juice. Take care of the body temple. 
  8. Yoga.

Eight simple things you can do all before 6:00 AM.

Here is food-for-thought:

1 hour of study per day = 365 Hours of research in one year! If knowledge is power, imagine 365 hours of it packed into your brain. Or you can hit the snooze button.

Change is not easy, but damn what are you waiting for. This is something I fight with myself every day. The voice in your head will convince you just five more minutes. Don’t get sold a sack of dog poo.

You will be in good company tomorrow morning if you wake up with me. At 4:00 AM I will look to the sky and say good morning, Dewayne “The Rock” Johnson will be hard at cardio, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet will be up. Not to mention the other winners just like YOU that say, “Enough is Enough its MY Time!”

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