When life becomes unbearable due to an overload of work or stress; when we find ourselves losing our tempers too fast and too often, that’s when we need to learn stress-reduction techniques. That’s when it’s imperative to break away from routine activities and go swimming, walking, to concerts, plays or movies, or to any place that enables us to escape from the cause of our stress.
When my son was ill, the beach was most definitely my favorite get-away-spot as the waves breaking on the shore, calmed me, for a while anyway. If I did not have sufficient time to do this, I searched for a quiet place where I could do some writing and instead of envisioning a new story to write about, I found myself listing all the things that were upsetting me. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that those lists filled pages and pages. Slowly but surely, I worked on myself to reduce some of the self-induced stress and managed not to get upset if my cake flopped when I was expecting friends for coffee. I no longer got upset if someone did not enjoy my food. I cared less about the dust that had accumulated on the furniture too.
I learned to search for the positive things in my life and made up two lists; one had the heading positive while the second heading was negative. Imagine my surprise when the list on the positive side actually outnumbered the other. So? That meant that I had become a bit more optimistic and from then on, made it my business to search for the half-full glass rather than the half-empty one. And the result was? I felt a whole lot better since I was no longer allowing my anger to wear me down. This change of attitude did not occur overnight but is well-worth working on.
