If you stop and think about it for a moment, my guess is that you’ll recognize a pattern to the stress you commonly experience. Just as we have individual thumbprints, we also have stress-prints that seem to stay with us year after year. After all, most of us learned how to react to life in childhood and we picked up various coping tools along the way — some of these tools remain useful to us (for example, if you gained a habit of taking time for quiet prayer and reflection when feeling stressed and anxious) but many of the tools actually harm us rather than helping! You know what some of those harmful things are: eating to try to relieve the knot in your stomach, smoking, drinking to excess, shopping for that high feeling that seems to chase the blues momentarily.
So let’s take a look at what your Stress Triggers are! When we take time to identify what we’re doing instead of mindlessly reacting in a knee-jerk automatic response to life’s events, we have a much better chance to make conscious decisions and better choices. And that’s the key to getting on the path of happiness, success, prosperity and wellness!
Leave a comment below and let’s see what the most common Stress Triggers are. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Bills need to be paid
- It’s time for in-laws to visit
- Neighbors are complaining again about something they want you to fix/repair/paint
- Boss demands overtime or extra work — again
- A friend seems to get everything you want, and it’s hard not to be envious and grudging about their good luck
- You’ve been invited to a special event but your special occasion clothes don’t fit and/or are hopelessly out-of-date, yet you don’t have money freedom to buy new… and you’re stressing how to turn down the invitation without admitting the truth
- Yet another argument about the same old thing with your spouse/mate/kids
- Health problems that keep popping up as soon — as you feel you deal with one, there’s something new to plague you
- Your doctor said you need to quit smoking, go on a diet, exercise more — and you feel like a scolded child
- Each morning, you wake up feeling more tired and drained than when you went to bed
- You don’t want to label it “depression” but you’ve lost your enthusiasm for life and can’t help wondering if this is as good as it gets
All stress triggers have something in common — it’s a situation we don’t want!
to your health and happiness,
Evelyn