A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
A friend of mine sent me the following little item on stress management and I thought I would share it with you.
A young lady confidently walked around the room
while leading and explaining stress management to
an audience. She raised a glass of water, and
everyone thought she was going to ask the cliche
question, ‘half empty or half full?’
She fooled them, however, “How heavy is this glass of water?” she inquired with a smile.
Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
She replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter.
The important thing is how long I hold it. If I hold it
for a minute, that’s not a problem. If I hold it
for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm.
If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an
ambulance. In each case it’s the same weight, but
the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.”
She continued, “and that’s the way it is with
stress. If we carry our burdens all the time,
sooner or later, the burden becomes
too heavy and we won’t be able to carry on.”
“As with the glass of water, you have to put it
down for a while and rest before holding it again.
When we’re refreshed, we can carry on with the
burden – holding stress longer and better each
time practiced.
“So, as early in the evening as you
can, put all your burdens down. Don’t carry them
through the evening and into the night… pick
them up tomorrow.”
I like the fact that she makes it clear that we have control over how we handle stress. And, she makes a great point about how damaging chronic stress can be.
We have learned that in earlier items carried in the blog. It seems to me if we can clear our minds of our stress in the evening, perhaps it will be gone tomorrow and we won’t have to pick it up at all.
To read further on stress click on the stress tag at the right.
Tony
Thanks, Kitty
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