Much of the stress in our everyday lives can come from our thought processes.  How we perceive a situation can be off and so we can feel that we are off.  We can jump to wrong conclusions about people’s motives and so be seen as unreasonable. All of this can send us spinning downward into a spiral of negative thinking and so stress is born.

Here are some effective and simple tools that help to change this negative thinking.

Any given situation in your life is not stressful in itself.  Your perception of the situation is what will or will not make it stressful.  Stress will arise quickly if:

** You feel threatened in any way
** You feel your resources will not be sufficient to meet with a demand
** How much damage you feel this situation can do to you
** Whether or not your resources will be enough to meet with the demand.

A person with a calm and well-balanced life will not perceive threat easily, while a person who is frazzled and feeling low certainly will.

When we are feeling low and without reserves to deal with stress, we become easily stressed: Physically, socially, emotionally and in our careers. Feeling this type of stress serves as an early warning signal to alert us to take immediate and positive action! To ignore these important signals means we will definitely suffer.

Using Thought Awareness to Deal with Stress

Be on guard to watch for negative thinking when stress arises.  If you are thinking negatively about your future, putting yourself down, criticizing your efforts, doubting your abilities, or planning for failure, you then become paralyzed to deal with stress. 

Your negativity will only serve to damage your much needed self-confidence, harm your performance and deplete your mental recourse.

>>>> One way to effectively counter-balance stress is to be forever aware of your stream of consciousness as you think about a stressful situation. Do not deny your negative thoughts, instead, just let them happen, acknowledge them, and then write them down as they occur<<<<<

As you become more and more familiar with your thought patterns, which are negative and which are not, look back at your Stress Diary.  You will easily see patterns that emerge detailing the same or similar negative thoughts. 

Once you have identified which negative thoughts cause you the most problems, you can then take action to deal with them more effectively.

Step One to Managing Negative Thoughts is to acknowledge them.

Step Two to Managing Negative Thoughts is to write them down.

Step Three to Managing Negative Thoughts is to deal with them.

Thought awareness can be your first effective step in the process of managing negative thoughts.  Remember, you cannot manage thoughts that you do not acknowledge first.

Use Rational Thought to Deal with Stress

The practice of rational thought allows you to separate the positive thought from the negative.  Study each of the negative thoughts that you have identified using the Thought Awareness. Look at each thought and ask yourself if this thought is, in fact, reasonable. Many people find this step very difficult, because you must be somewhat objective to get it right.  You must separate the emotion from the rational.

Let’s take a look now at your Stress Diary.  We will identify where you have had frequent negative thoughts:

I feel inadequate (written 5 times in 6 days)
I feel taken advantage of (written 3 times in 5 days)
I feel I am not appreciated by my kids (written 6 times in 6 days)

Are the above comments only thoughts and feelings on your part or can you back your feelings up with actions?

For Example:  I feel inadequate because when I was asked to bake for the bake sale, I felt poorly that day and remained in bed, unable to bake.

Ask yourself if this is an occurrence that is frequent (your staying in bed and not baking) or if this was a one time thing. 
If the answer is that you do, in fact, stay in bed a good deal rather than participate in some school function, you might want to look further into avoidance issues. 

On the other hand, if this was just a one time thing for you, you could easily tell yourself that your feelings are unwarranted and your kids would understand that you wanted to bake but simply could not at that time.  There will be plenty of other school functions that you will be able to help out with.

The key to rational thought is to clarify and identify truth and underlying thoughts and feelings.  When you can do this, you are better able to deal with any stress that results.

Left with the actual negative feelings and thoughts, you are now warned to take appropriate, and if need be, immediate action to ward off any subsequent stress.

Lastly, positively affirm those thoughts and feelings that turned out to be less than negative.

For example:

I felt inadequate, however, I no longer do.  I now realize that I do participate when called upon by my kid’s school to contribute, unless I am unable to help at that time.  I will continue to help out to the best of my ability and where time permits.

So long as you mean what you write (and say it out verbally) you will feel the stress leave your body and mind as you state the positive and negate the negative.

Go through your entire Stress Diary in this way and you will feel much more relaxed and be less apt to make similar entries into your Stress Diary next time around.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...