Five Powerful Stress Busters - Charles J Givens

The normal state of the human mind and body is not of tension and anxiety, but of total health and relaxation.

Much of the stress we experience is self-created and self-perpetuated, through the misuse of our minds and emotions. The good news is that this type of stress can be controlled.

Over the years, I’ve discovered many stress-busting strategies. They are simple and practical. Used on a continuing basis, they will keep your system in tip-top shape.

Here are five of these powerful stress busters. The first, a physical one, will sound familiar, but it is too often overlooked. The four mental strategies will probably surprise you.

1. Exercise for 20 minutes to one hour every other day. Exercise induces your muscles to go through alternating cycles of tension and relaxation. Both muscle tension and fatigue are stress-related symptoms that can affect the entire body. Forcing your muscles from an abnormal state of tension into a more normal state of relaxation helps alleviate the stress. Your muscles operate as they were designed to operate, not as a repository for stress. Because it stimulates your entire system and reduces built-up stress, exercise creates far more energy than it uses.

2. Continuously affirm to yourself, "It’s just an event." Your life each day can be viewed as a stream of connected events — some positive and some not. The negative events can cause great stress, but they have only the stress-producing power over you that you assign to them.

© "East and West Series" (July, 2002) published by East and West Series, 10, Sadhu Vaswani Path, Pune 411 001. Reprinted with permission.

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