Managing stress is just a mind game!!

A simple way to beat stress and bring peace and order to your daily Life: at all times, irrespective of what the circumstance may be, do what is important and do it very well.

There are always tens of things to be done on a daily basis. Some of these things are routine stuff like driving yourself to work or checking your mail. Or doing the dishes or dropping the kids off to school. In between these kind of tasks we often get rude shocks, unexpected events that need to be attended to urgently__a flat tyre, a sudden visitor at work or at home, a distress call from a friend or an urgent customer situation. And then there are the important stuff to be handled: presentation on new market strategy at work, college admission forms to be filled in for your older one, a gym routine that you have to keep up and the re-tiling of your entire kitchen floor. Mondays ~ Sundays, this story of frenzied living plays itself out, week after week. The routines, the emergencies, the important, unavoidable, non-negotiable stuff may keep changing the way it may surface in our lives, but their nature is the same. Their nature is to bring stress. To put us in a permanent pressure cooker state. Leaving us cooked completely!

So, where’s the room to live intelligently, you may wonder? There sure is: Listen to stress therapist and thinker Danzae Pace: “Stress is the trash of modern Life - we all generate it but if you don't dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your Life.” The way to dispose of stress is to continuously be mindful of what you do. Each day, do only one or two important tasks. Don’t crowd your days. And know, be aware, that each day will have to have its share of routine tasks, however mundane they may be, and again, each day will throw up its share unexpected events, meetings and twists. When you are aware and mindful of each moment, focusing on one activity at a time, your stress levels are easily managed. Stress may still rear its ugly head, every time an unplanned event surfaces, but your mindfulness helps you respond to it intelligently than react to it violently! Know that your Life’s Inbox will never be empty. There will be newer tasks and newer shocks always coming your way. The best way to live your daily Life is to not constantly think too far ahead. Within a day’s schedules, look at what’s most important and do it well, in that day’s circumstance or situation. If you had an important business meeting planned for the afternoon, but at lunch time if you got a call saying your father’s been taken to hospital, focus on being at the hospital, fully mindful to your prayerful presence there. Don’t focus on losing that important business deal or not meeting your targets for the month. Focus instead on the routine tasks of having a friend pick up your kids’ from school or even catching up on some sleep.

There are no techniques to manage stress. It is just a mind game. Close or minimize one window of your mind and open another to work on the given circumstance. But whatever you choose to do, do it well. Do it in peace. The intelligent living perspective is to live well, and live really well, till the end, whenever it arrives!