Using Stress to Transform Your Life

We all experience stress daily. Using stress to transform your life can shift the flow of thoughts that run through your mind. With intention and attention, you can use stress to benefit your experience of peace and well-being.

Major evnts related to concerning health diagnosis, losing a job, not getting a promotion, losing a loved one, a relationship breakup, or unexpected news or change that impacts your life can take a great deal of your energy and time to process.

Ongoing stressful thoughts can lead to greater anxiety, anger, worry, rumination, and fear. Cycling into these territories can be overwhelming when you do not feel that there is an end in sight. And this can disconnect you from your ability to see the big picture, problem-solve or to take action for your wellness and well-being.

Is Stress Moving Toward or Away from Life?

Distress tolerance is your ability to manage actual or perceived emotional distress. The aim and intention in these situations are to choose your response or reaction to this distress.

This begins with creating a conscious practice of asking yourself if your negative thought patterns move you away from life-enhancing patterns that allow you to face life or away from life through avoidance? And, do you want to change this pattern?

Examples of contrast might be the following:

• Spending time with people who give you positive energy or those who bring you down
• Forgiveness or feeding resentments within
• Self-love through creating boundaries with your words and actions or avoiding living your values in action
• Spending time in nature and appreciating beauty with gratitude or blaming yourself and others for what is happening
• Admiring your positive qualities and those of others or comparing yourself to others

“When we are no longer able to change a situation~we are challenged to change ourselves.”~Viktor Frankl

Using Stress to Make Coherent Choices

Changing your inner self-talk and dialogue about what is happening starts with intention and attention. When negative thoughts about the past or future become invasive, it is a choice to either stay with the habitual negative thought, body and feeling pattern, or to become aware of their impact on how you are feeling and how this affects you.

“It’s not stress that kills us, it’s our reaction to it.”~ Hans Selye

Once you make it a habit to change the ongoing pattern of cycling negative thoughts, your body, and emotions will have the opportunity to shift. This conscious choice allows for new possibilities in your wellness and well-being, even if this is for a short time.

Using Stress to Build New Pathways

Creating new pathways takes practice. This means that both your intention and attention are needed. What if you could take control of your thoughts by using using these questions to your advantage? Here are two actiities that you can put easily in place.

• Establish a daily routine of checking in with yourself. This can be done at the beginning of the day, and also be used throughout the day. Setting up specific times of the day to check in with yourself either by schedule or using sticky notes in prominent places you can tune into what your body and mind are processing at eny given time. This creates a conscious noticing of what is going on within. You can use this as a barometer during the day, and then get a reading on how your thoughts are influencing how your mood, energy and focus are responding to life.

• When you find yourself cycling into worry, anxiety, fear or depression, take a few moments to get in touch with what is happening. A simple way to start the process is to ask yourself three questions. “What am I thinking right now?”“What am I feeling right now?” and “Do I want to continue with these thoughts?” Becoming the observer of your current state of being you are better able to navigate what comes next in your life with greater options.

• Chinese Medicine speaks to the importance of keeping your energy flow in harmony and balance for your health and well-being. The suggestion is to pay attention to your emotions when they come up.but to also limit the effects of the negative state. By first working with the (3) questions, and then taking action with a mindfulness activity, you are able to use stress to change your life.

The opportunity to create a shift in perception with mindfulness activities such as a short meditation or breathing practic, journaling, yoga, Qigong, gratitude, looking out the window at a tree or flower, walking in nature, experiencing beauty and good nurture, listening to an inspirational talk, reading, or soothing music. These are “supplements for your body and mind”, and they can energize, reset and tonify your body-mind system.

“No mud, no lotus.”~Thich Nhat Hanh

Mindfulness practices allow you to tap into the energetics of awe, beauty, and pleasure that expand your awareness and diminish your stress. When you resonate with choosing what you will focus on you become the author of you own life and in the short term allows you to lower your stress while building new responses in your body-mind sytem over time.

Once you have answered these questions, chosen a mindful activity to change your internal landscape, your enhance your ability to access your conscious mind with a greater access to critical thinking, and decision-making. This allows you to consider a responsive action based on expanded and focused vision so you can then choose to focus your time and energy on the task at hand, brainstorming, problem-solving, setting boundaries, getting support and planning that will benefit your wellness and well-being.

Resonance Repatterning® Sessions are based on working with your ability to repattern your body-mind-spirit system. This means that the distress you experience on any level can be an opportunity for creating new possibilities in your life.

Kimberly Rex, MS is an Advanced Resonance Repatterning® practitioner, Person-Centered Expressive Therapist, and Wellness and Well-being Life Coach. She works with people all over the world via Skype, by phone, and by proxy.

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