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  • Home
  • About
    • The Happy Fan Club
  • Offerings
    • Redesign Your Life 2.0
    • Get Creative
    • Personal Coaching
  • Creativity Conversations
  • LET'S CONNECT!
  • Blog
    • Live Free Your Way
    • Seeing Things Differently
    • Mistaking Assumptions for Truth
    • How Humor Keeps Us Sane
    • Know Thyself
    • Peach Pie for Breakfast
    • Explore Experience Express
    • Should You Be Downshifting?
    • Stop the Hustle!
    • Do Your Habits Serve or Sabotage
    • Settle Down? Down Where?
    • What Lights You Up?
    • Saying Yes When Your Mind Says No
    • Independence From What?
    • Letting Ourselves Off the Hook
    • Letting Go of Assumptions
    • Is Kindness Allowed?
    • How to Throw a Wrench in the Works
    • Happiness
    • Daring to be Lighthearted
    • What Happens When You See Things Differently
    • Find Delight in Everyday Life
    • Are You Saying What Needs to Be Said
    • Is Your Life in Alignment
    • Are You Trapped by Your Past
    • Can You Love Your Life
    • The Hallmark of Creativity
    • Out Of Ideas?
    • Waking Up to a New World
    • Are You a Possibilitarian?
    • Want to Love Your Life?
    • Is Creativity Necessary
    • What's Stopping You?
    • An Unexpected Discovery
    • Free Your Mind
    • Is Your Creative Genius Hiding
    • Empty Headed or Clear Minded?
    • Is Stress Really Necessary?
    • Will Creativity Improve Your Life?
    • Is Creativity In Your Future?
    • Replace Fear With Love
    • How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    • Just Take A Moment
    • You Don't Have To - You Get To
    • The Good News About Being Stuck
    • Interested in Inner Freedom?
    • Are You a Hoarder?
    • What Remains
    • Co-vid 19 Free Pass to the Roller Coaster
    • Grace Under Pressure
    • Now is the Time To Notice
    • Hanging With the Wrong Crowd
    • Make Your Life Simpler
    • What Could Be Different For You
    • Everything is a Miracle
    • Do You Have A Negativity Bias
    • Are You Really Seeing Or Just Assuming?
    • Happiness and Resilience
    • Wherever You Go, There You Are
    • Is Stress Making You Sick?
    • What I Wish My Humans Knew
    • Looking Backwards
    • Daring to Change Course
    • Lost in Thought or Taking Action?
    • Still Can't Focus?
    • Do Your Thoughts Get Dark and Gloomy?
    • Can't Focus?
    • An Instant Formula for New Ideas
    • Talk Yourself Out of Another Great Idea?
    • Is Your Busyness Keeping You From Getting Things Done?
    • What's that Feeling In the Pit of My Stomach?
    • How Cool is This?
    • How to Make Your New Year Happier
    • Why Be Open To Life?
    • Simple Ways to Transform Your Life
    • Get Clarity and Confidence
    • Are You Driven by Fear or Love?
    • The Number One Way to Keep Your Vision Alive and Well
    • Why Stop Trying to Figure it Out?
    • What Are You Trying to Prove?
    • Do Your Goals Reflect Your Hearts Desire
    • Why My Cat is My Spiritual Teacher
    • Surviving the Holidays
    • 3 Convincing Reasons
    • 3 Secrets to Enjoying the Holidays
    • 5 Quick Steps to Get Your Mojo Back
    • 3 Ways to Keep Your Energy High
    • 5 Reasons to Do Good
    • Pain Relief for the Soul
    • Tired of Living by the Rules? Go Rogue!
    • What? You've Made a Mess? Excellent!
    • Why You Need to Be Inspired Now
    • Change Your Life in Just 48 Hours?
    • The Cure For Mental Overload
    • 5 Infallible Ways to Stay Inspired
  • Newsletter

Is Stress Really Necessary?

2/8/2021

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When all is said and done, beneath pandemic fatigue, beneath the political goings on, beneath juggling parental responsibilities with professional responsibilities, your own state of mind is what gets you through. Or else it plunges you into some dark thinking that takes a while to shift.

I’ve just finished 25 one-on-one interviews for a company-wide training I’ll be co-leading this week.  What’s emerged from these conversations is that overwhelmingly, people are hungry for a fresh perspective on dealing with challenges that arise from shifting deadlines, frequent changes of direction, feeling things have stalled or juggling unexpected delays. 

While these may not be your specific challenges, they speak to a larger issue that all of us have faced over the last eleven months: the stress levels that build up when we say “no” to situations that requires a more nimble, open-minded response.

For many of us, our first response to the unexpected is resistance. We’ve been conditioned to rely on tried-and-true methods and it’s not comfortable putting them aside. We just keep trying to recycle strategies or techniques like a battery-powered toy that keeps bumping into the wall.

This is where our own infinite creative capacity is just waiting for you to tap into. Did you even know that was still (and always) available to you?

Remember the inventiveness, curiosity and willingness to try out new ideas that you had as a child? Those qualities haven't gone anywhere - you still have them! They’ve just been tamped down in order for you to fit into a particular “track” in life.

Trying to stay in that track can cause stress levels to rise. After all, if your “tried and true” strategies no longer work as well as they used to, or not all, it's all to easy to get angry and frustrated.

For instance, I’m still aware that one of the ways I resist circumstances happens when I can’t do something the way I usually do it (and of course already know the answers for). I start trying to find out either who’s at fault so they can fix it (not me, of course!) or I get caught up in imagining a negative outcome and what others will think of me as a result. 

When I catch myself reacting this way, I have the choice to either continue to spin my wheels (and build up a lot of self imposed pressure) or I can take that same energy potential and use it to tap into my inherent creativity and get to work solving the problem I’ve been avoiding.

Stress levels go way down when we stop putting so much time into saying no.

None of us have to stay caught up in our negative projections or our resentment. Why? Because human beings are designed to start fresh in any moment. When we put aside our issues with the way things are, we increase the bandwidth in our heads and new alternatives have room to emerge. 

It's this natural capacity for turning on a dime that we lose touch with when we keep trying to respond to the immediacy of life with inflexibility and stubbornness.

Plus, we miss all the fun and the positive energy we feel when we come up with something new that gets us to our goal faster and more easily.

Next time you find yourself ranting at circumstances and wishing things were different, take a breath, look again, and ask yourself, "what else is possible"?
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