Stress: Is It a Choice?
Don’t you love hearing something that catches you when you are open to a different perspective and can take the information in on a fresh new level? Well, I just had that experience.
Not to long ago I took a class and found out I was creating stress in my life when my thoughts and my actions didn’t match. What a shift in my thinking. It was as if I found a long lost secret, the answer to how we create that constant chatter we all seem to carry around with us. Living in our own integrity can remove much of the stress we create in and for ourselves. The concept is direct and straightforward.
The class started out by talking about what we considered to be integrity, our own personal definition. Some said it was being honest, truthful, or doing your best. My Webster’s dictionary defines integrity as: the state of being complete or undivided; the state of being sound or undamaged. Hmmmmmm, fancy that, when I’m not acting in my own integrity I am divided and damaged even if its only in my own mind or in my thinking. That, did not sit well with me.
What happens when your thoughts are not in alignment with your true self? Well in a nut shell, stress. Imagine, you are driving home from work, and you look down and notice you're almost out of fuel. You think to yourself I should stop and get some gas before I go home. Then, as you’re coming up to the gas station thoughts of being tired, needing to get home, cooking dinner, the cost of gas, phone calls that need to be made crop up in your minds eye and you decide not to stop for gas and go directly home. When you make the decision to drive by the gas station you notice a funny feeling inside but you are so used to that feeling you dismiss it. The next morning you wake up a bit late, find that you have misplaced your keys, and on top of that its pouring rain. Then, you remember: No Gas!! And ask yourself why didn’t I take the few extra minutes last night to fill up the car, Arghhhhhh! Stress and double stress.
The key is listening to the little intelligent source inside. Your intuition, your conscience, call it what you will, it’s the knowing the part of yourself that just wants you to be happy, healthy and full of joy every day of your life.
Now suppose you want to lose a few pounds, or maybe more than a few. We‘ve all read the diet books. We all know how to lose weight, we think it’s a no brainer. Eat less and burn more calories through exercise. Sounds simple, but easy it is not. When we make a commitment to ourselves to drop a clothing size and then we go against our own little intelligent source by eating more than we know we need or not exercising that day, we are acting against our self and our thinking. We are stepping out of our integrity… our natural balance.
What if we went on the integrity diet? We make the commitment to lose 8-10 pounds in 30 days. That’s pretty reasonable, approximately 2 lbs a week. The awareness of being in or out of integrity becomes the first priority of the diet, then trusting and acting on the thoughts that follow. Choosing our actions to line up with our thoughts or beliefs will keep us in integrity, keeping us balanced with what we want for our self. When we choose to take in extra calories or choose not to burn more calories than we take in, we know we will be stepping out of our integrity.
Granted there is stress coming at us from external sources as well as internal, but if we could be aware of when our own actions don’t align with our beliefs how far ahead of the game would we be?
Try this out. Make a decision about your health. Maybe its eating less, drinking more water, taking your pills faithfully as prescribed, exercising with consistency, or going to bed earlier. Next, write this new commitment about your health down on the calendar. Writing it down affirms exactly what the thought is and the date the decision was made. Then each day revisit the calendar and note if you did or didn’t stay with your decision. Chances are your little knowing will remind you. Experiment and see what you find.
When our action and our belief don’t match up we are out of integrity. We are arguing with self, in conflict, in stress. Our mind and body are out of sync.
When our action and belief are in agreement with self we are in our own integrity. No stress, no conflict, our mind and body are in sync. Our reward is peace, our own inner peace. Living in peace or stress is our choice. When we live in peace we make better choices for ourselves and others. This new awareness has certainly made a difference in my life, my choices and my health. It’s a win win. As Shakespeare so eloquently put it, "To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the days …"