If Stress Kills, Then What Brings Us Life?

We are not at our best when we are overly-stressed and being chronically over-stressed kills.

If stress is epidemic (pandemic?), then what is the equal and opposite force? What brings us life?

I am starting a personal list - please feel free to join in...

• Unconditional Love and Loving Relationships. My husband and daughter mean the world to me. They inspire me and nurturing our relationship is the most important, satisfying, meaningful and difficult of any work I choose to do.
• Forgiving myself and others. Empathy - understanding the story behind the story - helps me to forgive. It is realizing there is a good reason why we do what we do - acceptance. Imagining or knowing the story helps put behavior and relationships in context (Oh, I get it - that makes sense now). And forgiveness is liberating - it feels lighter than anger that lingers into bitterness.
• Meditation and Prayer. A family retreat at a Buddhist monastery helped me to finally experience the calm that my clinical supervisor always advised in order to be an effective parent. Praying in the car (with my eyes open and out loud) on my commute to work really does make my day and work go better. Writing is also a form of meditation practice and brings me peace.
  
• Supplements. Salmon oil (really good grade, not Target or Trader Joe's brand, unfortunately) and B vitamins (B3, B6, B12, etc.)
• Exercise. Whatever makes me feel happy while doing it, works for me - dancing, tennis, walking around the Rose Bowl with friends (walking and talking has replaced doing lunch to catch up). Working out with weights is also really effective for me - good results without a lot of strenuous effort. And the fact that muscles burn fat while I'm reading feels like cheating (in a good way).
• Going to church. Growing up, I used to go to church two to four times a week (!). Now I go whenever I please. And when I do, I never regret having gone. After a small tour of every church in a 20 mile radius, I found one I can live with and feel proud of - All Saints in Pasadena. The hymns, the sermons by Ed Bacon, communion every Sunday, and so on, rejuvenate me.
• Saying No whenever possible. Also known as setting limits and boundaries. In this way I focus on the things that are most important and essential to me right now without overextending myself and feeling stretched thin.
• Saying Yes to help. There is no shame in accepting help from others. Sooner or later, everybody needs help. That's just how we are built. Helpers are no exception. Accepting help is being resourceful.
• I matter - You matter. At a recent massage in Ojai, a massage therapist shared that in her training she was taught to "practice not injuring yourself in order to help others." This entails setting energetic and physical boundaries with clients (and others).
  
• Self-Reflection. Our own still, small voice will speak to us in whispers but scream if we don't listen. If you have ears to hear, then you had better listen.
  
• Hope. Always there is hope and sometimes all we have is hope. And when all we have is hope, hope is enough. We tend to get what we expect, so hope is a pretty good intention to set in motion. Martin Seligman talks about the research that shows how optimism makes us more likely to be healthy, happy and productive. Seeing the glass as half-empty or half-full is more than an issue of semantics, it has real-life consequences.
• Balance. Freud said that good mental health consists of work, love and play. My clinical supervisor taught me that being whole meant integrating our inner parent, adult and baby parts into equal parts.
• Laughter. Do I really need to explain this? Natural pain killers are released in our bodies when we laugh...but you know that because you can feel it on a visceral level. That's one of the many reasons I gravitate toward funny friends.
• Strengths. Focusing on who I am, what I want and what I do well grounds me. It steers me toward my purpose and motivates me, even in dark times, to be persistent.
  

Okay, okay, nothing on this list is revolutionary or anything that you have never seen or heard before. But the point is when we are stressed we tend to be forgetful and not just about where we left our car keys! Making a list or being reflective is an exercise in gentle reminders when we need them most.