Stress is such an integral part of life that we have become convinced that living with it is part of what it means to be human. But what if I told you that you could live 100% stress-free and be even more human than you are right now?
Stress does not contribute to our greater humanity. It holds us back from experiencing it. It is important to understand what I mean by stress. Living stress-free does not mean life without adversity and pain. As Captain Kirk frequently insisted, we need our pain.
Stress is more about how we deal with adversity. It is what we do with our pain that determines whether we will live stressful or stress-free lives. There will always be situations beyond our control. Living stress-free does not mean we will never have a nasty surprise, or that nothing will ever frighten us, or that we will never feel sadness and pain.
Living stress free is about managing the chaos, and finding your calm within the storm. As Rudyard Kipling said in the opening lines of If:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
Here are some practical tips for how to accomplish just that:
Live a Financially Responsible Lifestyle
Financial chaos is one of the biggest barriers to a happy marriage and a happy life in general. It has proven nearly impossible to be happy when you do not know if you will have enough money to pay rent, pay necessary bills, and buy groceries. People with illnesses have to routinely decide between food and medicine.
Fortunately, there are ways to save money on medicine. If you can enter the name of your medication along with a few details, you can compare prices in your local area. You can also use a pill identifier by number.
The point is, you shouldn’t have to make the kind of choice that pits one necessity against another. If you can’t make more money to keep you in the lifestyle to which you have grown accustomed, you can make lifestyle changes that are more in keeping with your actual budget.
While this can be a major change. You should realized that billions of people in the world are living life happily at that level. And you can too. You dismiss a major part of what stresses us when your finances and lifestyle are compatible.
Learn to Let Go
Savasana literally translates corpse pose. It is usually the final pose at the end of a yoga session. Its purpose is to help you physically manifest the act of letting go of everything. The challenge is that as humans, we cannot let go of everything. The brain is always generating thoughts. And there are always things of which we must be mindful.
But there is still something to be said for letting go of as much as you can, especially those things over which we have no control. Savasana is an acknowledgement that we are not in control of as much as we think we are. Most of our stress is over things with which we have no control. Learning to let go of those things gets us that much closer to a stress-free life.
Let Go of Toxic Relationships
Much has been written about toxic relationships. And much more needs to be said. The challenge is knowing when a relationship has gone truly toxic, and when exactly to get out. Many recognize they are in a toxic relationship, but stay in it out of a false sense of spirituality. They are convinced it is their duty to suffer and overcome the toxicity.
But staying in a toxic relationship is not more spiritual. In most cases, it is just the opposite. To release the final, persistent layer of stress in your life, you have to detoxify your address book.
This is best summarized by more from Rudyard Kipling:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
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