"There is nothing we cannot live down, rise above or overcome." - Ella Wheeler-Wilcox
Wayne Dyer, interviewed in the July 1, 2005 issue of BottomLine Personal, offered these tips on how to avoid stress and anxiety and live a more tranquil life . .(The comments in parentheses, are all mine!)
Understand that you are the source of your stress. Stress and anxiety are choices that we make to process unpleasant events rather than entities that are waiting to invade our lives. If you blame outside forces for making your life stressful, you’ll only make stress more difficult to beat. When you admit that your own mind is the source, stress becomes manageable. You always have a choice – do I stay with the thoughts that produce stress within me or do I work to activate thoughts that make stress impossible?
(I highly recommend the second course of action, you might recommend it to your students as well. After all, you cannot possibly be the cause of their stress since you are busy creating your own.)
Expel stressful thoughts. Stress feeds upon itself when left unchecked. Break the cycle of anxiety by banishing a stressful thought from your mind. Take a deep breath, visualize your self stamping “next” or “cancel” across the thought and pushing it out of your way.
(I see myself in a silly clown costume complete with rainbow curls and a big red nose.I am wandering through a large crowd of students, past, present, and future. My stamps are the size of a piece of paper. After my thoughts are stamped, I put them in a large brown envelope. I think I will mail mine to the teacher who taught me to build my stressful cycle of anxiety! If I stamped them by doing something silly, but meaningful - of course, at the end of each class period....)
Return to your happiest moment. Visualize a scene from your past that brings you joy. When you feel overwhelmed by stress, picture this happy image for several moments. Your mind naturally will return to the joyous mental state that you experienced originally.
(Watch out for mimes and clowns, dancers and puppeteers, and especially watch for actors, singers, and storytellers. They will all start creeping around behind you. You might even put a red rubber nose in your desk in case you need to create one of those moments for your students. Hmmm, shared moments of happiness, now there's a thought, how could you, or they, create one of those moments each day?)
Realize that you will never get it all done. There will always be something else to do or accomplish. Your desires, goals, hopes, and dreams will never be finished – ever. As soon as you realize one dream, another will most assuredly pop up. The secret is to live more fully in the moment.
(Cut up and throw up all your to do lists - lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my, that brings strange visions - well, at least the list you made the first day of school this year that never was completed.)
Meditate. Nothing relieves stress, anxiety, and depression like silence and meditation. The stillness of meditation relaxes the mind and gives us strength. Take time every day for moments of relaxation and quiet contemplation.
(I call this PRAYER! - not a bad place to begin and end each day, now is it? Not even a bad idea to bathe the day in it - I call that PRAYER in a bubble bath, maybe even with a naturally carbonated drink)
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