Use Your Mind to Combat Killer Stress!

You hate your boss, you hate your work, your co-workers drive you crazy, and you’re convinced you’re underpaid even if you weren’t horribly overworked. You’re stressed all the time! Small wonder. . .

You’re tired, achy, rarely get a peaceful night’s sleep, and now you’ve come down with a cold! Which you seem to catch more and more frequently, plus there’s your stomach upset and now some sort of stupid rash on your neck. All of which you are convinced is due to your blankety-blank job.

Yes and no. Sure, if money fell out of the sky and you didn’t have to go to work, you might not be stressed and subject to all those pains and ills. But, here’s the thing, your miserable job itself has less to do with your stress and afflictions, than how you think about your job.

I know, not what you wanted to hear. It’s soooo much more gratifying to blame it all on your boss, co-workers, etc., but the truth is, you are in charge of your thoughts, and it is your thoughts that determine, to a surprising degree, how you feel emotionally and physically.

Science tells us that every second, a massive information exchange is occurring in your body, facilitated by neuropeptides and their corresponding receptor sites, linking all of your bodily systems - your heart, your lungs, your digestive tract, etc. - and your mind. Your thoughts and emotions are in fact cellular signals that are involved in the process of translating information into physical reality.

This close interaction between thought, emotion, and bodily systems explains why recent widows are twice as likely to develop breast cancer, and why chronically depressed individuals are four times more likely to get sick.

On the plus side, it also explains why optimists - people who see the glass half full no matter what - are healthier, and why they live longer.

So what’s it to you and your dismal job situation?

It’s all in how you think. Whatever is going on, you can choose more positive thoughts about the situation, or more negative ones.

With your current work issues, you could choose to think “Well, my boss is over-bearing and difficult, but I’m smart enough to find a way to do my job properly anyway. Maybe I can reach out to a mentor to help me out,” and “My co-worker is a pain, but I don’t need to give her more attention. She probably has something dreadful going on in her life. I can just nod, and bury my nose in my work when she comes around.” And “Granted, I’d prefer a different job, so maybe instead of moaning about it, I can improve my skill set and see if I can’t get a position more to my liking.”

You’re not denying your current reality, you are simply looking at it from a different point of view. A positive one.

In other words, choose to think thoughts that are constructive and support you in your desire for happiness and success. Not only are you more likely to actually accomplish these goals, but your stress levels will decline, and with that, your physical and mental well-being greatly improve.

Not a bad deal, wouldn’t you say?!

Ditch The “Have-To’s” and Get To The (Way More Fun) “Want-To’s”!

Ever notice the list of “have-to’s” you’ve got going? As in ‘have-to’ get up and get yourself going, ‘have-to’ get everybody fed-dressed-out-the-door, ‘have-to’ get to work, ‘have-to’ do the work, ‘have-to’ put up with a boss/co-worker/client you can’t stand, ‘have-to’ run the errands, do the chores, pay the bills, and on and on.

When life is reduced to a list of “have-to’s,” it becomes a drudgery, just a long list of dutiful things you must do as a responsible adult.

YUCK!! Growing up was supposed to be fun. Yeah, right. No big surprise that your daydreams are all of lying on a beach somewhere, with absolutely no “have-to’s” whatsoever, other people being responsible for meeting your every desire and whim thank-you-very-much.

But what if you could transform being responsible into being response-able. Not in the form of some clever word-play that really doesn’t change anything, but into a meaningful change with substance.

What if you could transform “I have to” into “I want to”? Such that you would want to get yourself up and going, want to get everybody fed-dressed-out-the-door, want to get to work, want to do the work, want to figure out how to work with a boss/co-worker/client you can’t stand, want to run the errands, do the chores, pay the bills, and on and on. . .

All it takes is thinking for a moment about what you are trying to accomplish with your “have-to.”  For example, you “have-to” get yourself up and going in the morning. Why? What are you trying to accomplish? You want to have a productive and good day. Ah! So you do want the end result. Focus on that.

Or, you ‘have-to’ put up with a boss/co-worker/client you can’t stand. Again, ask yourself: why? What are you trying to accomplish? You want to get ahead in your career, you want to do a good job so you can get a raise, a bonus, or a promotion. There you go - that’s your end result. Focus on that.

Don’t sit there bemoaning how awful it is that you ‘have-to’ put up with these folks, instead, focus on the joy that getting ahead in your career will give you, on the good-feels a raise or promotion will give you.

The principle is the same regardless of what your particular ‘have-to’ (or unending list of ‘have-to’s’) is! Take a step back, and ask yourself: “What am I looking to accomplish here? What good/fun/rewarding result do I want to have happen by doing this ‘have-to’?”

Then take your focus off the seeming drudgery of the ‘have-to’ and put it where it belongs - on the joy of your success with whatever it is.

Now you’ve become genuinely response-able: able to respond to the situation in a way that pleases you, rather than suffer the groan-and-moan of ‘because I have to’ responsibility.

Are You Listening Competitively? Or Listening to Learn?

You know how you can be going along in a conversation with a friend or a loved one, and it all seems to be good, and suddenly, you say something and the conversation stalls or stops entirely. And you’re thinking "What happened?" You didn’t say anything insulting or mean, you just voiced your opinion. Or so you think…

I had lunch the other day with a dear friend I hadn't seen in a long time. I travel a lot for work, and she used to. I was bemoaning the tediousness of air travel - TSA, the delays, crowded conditions and all the rest - and I said how I would love some day to turn left instead of right when I boarded the plane. Namely, to saunter into the first class cabin where surely conditions were far better than in economy, my usual haunt.

My friend said "You know what I used to do? I'd buy my coach ticket, but then, at the last minute, right before boarding started, I’d go up to the counter agent and ask if there were any first class seats still available. And often, they’d say 'yes!' and I'd only pay an extra $200 instead of $2000 and get to fly first."

I immediately retorted with "Oh, that would never happen now. They jam the planes so full, there's never an available seat to be had."

And with that, the conversation ended - at least that part of it.

It was only later that it hit me, I had unwittingly denied my friend's experience of life. I had flat out slammed my reality in her face, as if hers didn't matter.

There are few things worse that we do to our friends and loved ones than make them feel like they don't matter. We rarely mean to, yet we do it all the time. It would have been so easy for me to consider her experience in my response: "I never thought of that. I wonder if it would still work, given the general overcrowding." I would not have thus denied either her experience or mine. And there would have been a continuing basis for conversation, had we wished to do so.

Simply put, instead of listening competitively "My experience is more right than yours" "I know better than you do about this," we need to (I need to!) listen to learn. Listen to those we care about with an ear to "What does this mean to them? How did they experience it? What about their experience might broaden my perspective?"

Relationships are about caring and sharing. What better way to do both than listening to learn!