Stress Management

By Benecia Beyer

This wonderful post was borrowed from a Blog - Spiritual Struggle (which no longer exists) - but I thought it was so enlightening I wanted to share with you.

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 3 ounces to 6 ounces. The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you 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 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."

He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all of the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, 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."

"So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow when you've rested. Life is short, enjoy it!"

And then he shared some ways of dealing with the burdens:

• Accept that some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statute.
• Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.
• Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.
• Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
• You may be only one person in the world to some people, but to one person, you may be the world.
• We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp and some are pretty and some are pretty dull. Some have weird names and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
• A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on the detour.

I know you are smiling now. Keep smiling. Don't burden yourself with your own thoughts. These simple truths go a long ways.

Comments

[Yvonne DiVita]

Excellent work! Worth sharing...I love the blogosphere. It gives me so much to think about and lets me share good writing, like this. Thanks for posting it.