Beat Stress with Gratitude

Stress is not caused by what happens to you, but by how you interpret what happens to you. The most effective method to combat stress is to be thankful and to improve your emotions. Your life can be summed up by the emotions that you feel. No matter what your circumstances, your perception of events influences how you feel and how you feel determines the relative success and happiness in your life.

Take time each day to be thankful for what you have and what you experience. Live with an “attitude of gratitude.” Even difficult and frustrating experiences can improve your life if you learn how to overcome adversity and look for the positive lesson in each challenge.

Feelings of stress, unhappiness, frustration, and anger inhibit productive action. It is unlikely that you will do your best work when you are experiencing negative emotions. These negative emotions take a tremendous amount of energy. Contrast your energy level when you are angry or sad with the level of energy that you experience when you are happy or excited. Life is easy when you are happy.

The Creator gave us control over only one thing in life -- our thoughts. We cannot control circumstances or other people, but we can control what we think about them and how we respond. Stuff happens, but you decide how to deal with it. You can let events control you or you can decide that you will live the kind of life that you desire. Certainly, tragedy can be difficult to overcome, but fortunately for most people tragedy is rare. It is far more common for us to get derailed by minor setbacks. We take small annoyances and magnify them in our minds. What we focus on grows, and these minor setbacks can grow from molehills to mountains.

Like most everything else in our life, emotions are habits. We tend to experience the same 5 or 10 emotions throughout the week. What emotions do you experience on a regular basis? Stop now and write them down.

What did you notice about your emotions? Are most of your emotions positive or negative? If they are positive, focus on experiencing them more often. If they are predominantly negative, begin eliminating them. Pick one emotion that you want to stop, such as anger, and replace it with its positive equivalent -- love. During the next seven days (21 days is even more effective) notice each time that you experience anger. Instead of being angry, stop and think about what you love about the situation or person. Look for the silver lining. This will probably seem very difficult at first, but exercising your emotions is similar to exercising your body. If you stick with it, those flabby negative emotions will slowly but steadily strengthen into the positive emotions that will make all the difference in the quality of your life. Imagine how productive you will be and how much you will accomplish when you are happy, loving, confident and enthusiastic. Your life will improve and so will the lives of your family, friends and coworkers. Your positive influence and happy, confident outlook will inspire those around you.

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