stressed out? stop and smell the roses 

stress management quote:

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
-William James

A Bird’s Eye View

Our day-to-day life is full of factors that make us stress out: money, children, spouses, parents, loneliness, illness and more. 

stress management tip - stop and smell the roses
did you know some flowers have stress relief powers?
Bach Flowers, for example, can help you reduce stress
When we are stressed out or in pain is when we find it hardest to raise our heads and look beyond our troubles – but these are exactly the times when it is most important to look at our problems from a different, higher perspective.

This may sound very complicated to you right now, so why don’t we take an example to clear this idea up (if you’re reading this and you’re a man, please use your imagination and imagine you’re a woman for the next couple of minutes):

You’ve married a man. Why did you do it? You did it so that you could spend your life together.

Over the years, you’ve found out that you barely see him. That he’s more like a guest in your house, or that he works far into the night to support the family, or that he studies for long hours, or travels a lot.

Somehow, he’s never home.

Can you do something about it on the every-day level? Absolutely. We’ll get there in a second.

But first, it is important that stop and take a look at this situation from a different, higher plane. In such a case, this pause could mean the difference between a life together or apart.

What’s the view like from this higher plane?

In our case, we might see that our spouse is forcing us to confront issues that we ought to learn to deal with. He might be forcing us to deal with being alone.

If we look at it this way, the problem is still there, but it is transformed: suddenly, we can see that it isn’t a punishment, but a challenge. So, instead of saying: “what did I do to deserve this?” we could say: “I can understand that I got him because I can learn about myself through him.”

Of course, it’s always easier when things go the way we want them to, but there’s always some part of our life that is painful. If we can learn how to look at that part from a higher place, it will be easier for us to understand and accept things.

When our pain has meaning, a reason, it is easier to deal with it.

Now that we know that we “get” a spouse that forces us (or allows us) to deal with our issues - our aloneness issues in this example - suddenly this problem has meaning. Suddenly, you can understand that this is YOUR problem, and that you need to work it out now, with this husband. If you leave him and go into another relationship without being aware of this, without looking at your problems from a higher place, you’ll encounter similar problems in the next relationship.

Now that you’ve realized all this, you can come back down, and try and deal with the problem:

Perhaps you’ll want to talk to him, and tell him that you feel alone, and that you want him to spend more time with you. Of course, you would do this without blaming him or making demands, verbally or otherwise. You would appreciate him, and just stick to the issue at hand. Because you understand WHY this is happening, it’s easier to deal.

Now, it’s all about communication.

I could have given any other example – one about parent-child relationships, one about financial struggles, or perhaps an example of illness. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that we go to this higher plane, and see what the view’s like from there.

When the going gets rough and we have problems, we must learn to look at them differently – that’s a very important part of solving them.


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stress management tip - stop and smell the roses did you know some flowers have stress relief powers? Bach Flowers, for example, can help you reduce stress stressed out? stop and smell the roses