From Stress to Success: 10 Steps to a Relaxed and Happy Life: a unique mind and body plan

There is a definite pleasure, for many people, in being badly done by, in having something to complain about and in getting sympathy for their hard lot in life. You may prefer getting sympathy to relying on people liking you for yourself. You may feel that other people will be more tolerant, more kindly, more generous if you yourself have something to complain about and are deserving of sympathy. You may feel ashamed or guilty if everything in your own life is going smoothly.

Does this apply to you? If the answer is yes then congratulations for recognizing a behaviour pattern that you can now change to your advantage. If you think this does not apply to you then ask yourself when did you last tell someone about something bad that happened to you. What was your motive in telling them? Were you seeking attention, sympathy, a ready ear? What was your goal? Why did you want to be seen as a victim?

Harold enjoyed being a victim. He, in some perverse way, enjoyed having things to complain about. Later on I spoke with his wife who worked with him and she said he seemed to thrive in the mornings. If things were going wrong he could complain of the terrible time he was having. If things were going smoothly and all the work was getting done he complained at the lack of orders and what that would do to their income. She also told me that Harold’s father had been the same and that he had, ultimately, been a successful man.

‘I really think that Harold feels he can only be successful if he is worked off his feet. Also,’ she said with rare insight, ‘I think he feels guilty at how well we are doing and how much money he is making and only feels he has deserved it if he has suffered to get it.’

Until Harold is willing to make changes in his attitude and give up the need for victim status he will continue to feel stressed and continue to have and get ulcers, whatever medication, drug-based or natural, he takes to help him in the short term.

Christina’s response was different. Initially she complained that it was not her fault that she felt stressed. It was the fault of her boss and the way he did his work, the fault of the children who would not help to prepare dinner and the fault of her husband who did not earn enough so that she could work less. She was a victim and relished the complaining this allowed her, the sympathy it earned her and the limelight that fell on her.

When she decided to accept that she was responsible she also learnt that she did have the ability to change things and to control the situation. After some sessions during which we explored her options and her fears, she was ready to change. She talked with her boss and explained the situation to him and told him that from the following Monday she would leave on time, no matter what work he gave her to do late in the afternoon. She told the children that they would have to take care of their own rooms and their own clothes and her husband that, if he wanted her to work full time, he would have to help with dinner or they wouldn’t eat.

The results surprised her. Her boss did not sack her. After two days of letters not sent on time he reprogrammed his work so she could have them typed and completed by the time she was supposed to leave. After a week of having no clean or ironed clothes to wear, the children got the hang of putting their dirty clothes in the washing machine and after only one evening with bread and cheese for dinner her husband started to prepare the vegetables and have things ready for when she got home. Since she was now able to catch the express bus, they finished up cooking dinner together and having that time to share their news of the day.

She admitted to feeling a little uncomfortable at having nothing to complain of but soon got used to the new regime and, as she said, it was amazing the way everybody was benefiting from the changes.

6 Get clear on your outcome – what are you really trying to achieve? Are you trying to prove someone else wrong, to force someone else to change to the way you want them to be, to have something to complain about – or do you really want to reduce your stress?

Let’s continue with Christina’s story. After these changes had come about she was able to acknowledge that they had been relatively easy. When asked why she hadn’t made them before she came to understand that what she had really wanted was to prove everyone else was wrong. She had wanted to prove what a thoughtless boss she had, how unhelpful her children were and what an inconsiderate man her husband was, expecting her to work full time and be a housewife as well. She was looking for sympathy for her hard lot in life. When she got clear on her goal of having a relaxed and stress-free time both at home and in the office, it was much easier for her to let go of her grudges, change the situation and reduce her stress.

7 Know you can cope. Avoid the stress caused by fear of the unknown. Imagine the worst possible scenario. Find out how you would deal with it. Then get on with handling the present.

A lot of stress comes from your fear of the future. You worry that this will happen, you’re afraid that that won’t happen. This in itself is stressful. It also reduces your ability to deal with the present and your ability to prevent this unwanted future. Further, since this bad future may never happen, you may be experiencing the stress needlessly.

The solution is to allow yourself to imagine the unimaginable. Create the worst possible scenario that could occur, the worst possible outcome that would result if all your fears were realized. Then plan what you would do. You would cope. Somehow or other, with the exception of the few people who opt for suicide, we all do cope. Recognize in detail just exactly what you would do and how you would cope. Then look for the benefits, even small ones, in this scenario, for there certainly will be some once you learn how to look for them.

Once you know that you can cope, no matter what happens, then you can free yourself from the crippling effects of your fear. If the outcome is bad but only half bad or two thirds bad then you are better off than you might have been.

You can either view a glass of water as half full or half empty. It won’t change the amount you have to drink; it will change your level of stress. If you have recognized what you will do if it becomes empty then you can enjoy the half you have rather than fret over the half you haven’t got.

This will give you an enormous increase in peace of mind and free your energies so you can focus on achieving the best possible outcome and deriving maximum enjoyment of the present.

8 Believe in a positive future, that whatever happens will be for the best, but do this without ceasing to care and without developing a laissez-faire attitude.

A lot of stress comes about from the belief that something bad will or could happen. The stress of public speaking is based on a fear that you will make a fool of yourself or that people will think badly of you. If you were totally convinced you would be a roaring success, you could look forward to the event with equanimity. The stress of an argument with your spouse may be due to an underlying fear that they are being unfaithful or are considering a divorce. If you knew that you were going to remain happily together then the argument could be an interesting difference of opinion. The stress at work could stem, not from the work itself but from a fear of losing your job. If you knew you were about to be promoted, the work could be an enjoyable challenge.

Thus a further aspect of minimizing the experience of stress is to believe in a positive future. Choosing to believe that the future will be good can take a lot of stress out of the present. Choosing to believe that any apparent setback is merely a move to allow something better to occur can reduce your experience of stress. These beliefs can also put you in a positive frame of mind such that you deal with current situations more productively and more peacefully than you would when afraid of negative outcomes.

Perhaps you are looking for a house and see the one of your dreams, one that is ideal and covers all your requirements. If you decide that you absolutely must have it and that no other house will do, you put yourself under enormous pressure. You will put in an offer and start biting your nails with the fear that someone else will offer more or that something will happen to jeopardize your purchase. If on the other hand, you work hard to get it but choose to believe that if you do you will be thrilled and if you don’t it is because you are about to find an even better one, you can save yourself a lot of stress.

There are two aspects to this. Firstly the belief helps you to proceed with a minimum of stress. Secondly it leaves you in a frame of mind in which you can negotiate the price from a position of strength. If fearing you won’t get the house and believing it is the only possible one, you get anxious, you are likely to offer a higher price than necessary and the owner will recognize your desperation and hold out for an even better price. If on the other hand, you choose to believe that if this purchase doesn’t come off you will find an even better house, you are more likely to base your offer on what you truly believe the house is worth rather than on how much you want it.

A word of warning here. If you translate this to mean that you don’t care if you get it or not, on a ‘laissez-faire’, ‘she’ll be right’ basis, this is a cop-out and you are missing the point. Stay positive and do go for your target but don’t live as if your life depended on it or as if another even better option isn’t possible.

9 Much stress is caused by your fear of other people’s opinions of you and your deeds. Decide who you are and who you want to be. Get a clear statement of purpose, develop your own Life Plan. Keep this clearly in your mind, live by it and many of your stresses will dissipate.

Much stress occurs simply because you don’t know who you want to be or what you want to achieve. Thus you are tossed around in a sea of other people’s opinions with no firm anchor.

If you are too timid the go-getters and positive people will call you a wimp. If you are too strong the nervous and the under-achievers will call you aggressive. If you are too noisy and outgoing the timid will call you brash. If you are too quiet and retiring the extroverts will call you dull. If you do too much for other people the selfish will call you a doormat. If you do too little for others the generous will call you unhelpful.

Too timid, too strong, too noisy, too quiet, too helpful or selfish for whom? For them? For you? By what standards are you judged? By what standards are you willing to be judged?

Create your own standards. Decide who you are and what you want to be. Once you have decided this and are happy with your description of your ideal self then live by it. If someone criticizes you, check it out against your own standards. If you have done the right thing according to them then relax. If you have not then use this as a learning experience and plan how you can change in future.

When you are behaving according to your own standards it is not possible for you to feel stressed by the opinions and criticisms of others. If you find repeatedly that you still feel stressed, even when you are doing what you think is right, it may be time for you to reassess your own standards. If they need to be changed, change them. If they don’t then find out what the underlying problem is, why you are still feeling stressed. There are many ways described throughout the book for doing this.

In the same way set out the plan for your life. Be very clear on your goals. Once you have done this, work towards them. Recognize the things you will have to avoid and omit if you are to reach them. Recognize the things you will have to do if you are to reach them. Once you are happy with this then get on with your life, head in this direction, clear in the knowledge of where you want to go.

Many stresses will then fall away. The stress or anxiety of not having a fixed income will be lessened when you recognize you are doing the appropriate study to reach your goal. The anxiety or discomfort of being pregnant will be reduced when you keep in mind the large family you want. The stress of not being invited to a party is reduced when you know your career is of prime importance to you.

Having a clear idea as to exactly who you are, who you want to be and the type of life you want to have leaves you much less vulnerable to other people’s opinions and criticisms than when your goal is to please everybody else at all times, an impossible task, and when their opinion is of paramount importance to you.

10 You are terrific. Most stress comes from your feelings of inadequacy. Develop full confidence in yourself, be willing to like, love and approve of yourself. If you don’t, who will?

You grew up in a world where, under the disguise of modesty, you were taught to put yourself down. You were taught, under the guise of generosity and caring for others, to put other people first, to put others ahead of you, to give them the biggest slice of the cake, to let them go first, to praise them before praising yourself.

This is fine as far as it goes, but sadly it is all too easy for it to have negative repercussions. For most people, having been taught, as children, to put other people first has resulted in a diminished respect for themselves and their own achievements. In clinic work, in workshops and in life in general I have found that most people have a poor opinion of themselves. Even the boasts and bombasts, under all the external cover-up, have, deep down, the fear that they are not good enough, not clever enough, not loving enough, not helpful enough, not successful enough, not sufficiently worthwhile.

Learning to love yourself, like yourself, approve of yourself and be comfortable with yourself and the way you are is a major way to reduce the stress in your life. This does not mean you should be aggressively telling everyone else how wonderful you are, boasting, hogging the limelight or telling everyone else you are better than them. It does mean having the inner certainty that you are OK. You are perfect just the way you are, for this moment in time.

This attitude does not mean that you do not recognize things about yourself that you wish to change. We are, hopefully, all on a path of growth, change and development. It does mean becoming content with yourself, being willing to give yourself the unconditional love and acceptance that you give to other people to whom you are close.

It is a sad comment on the way we bring up our children and that you were probably brought up as a child, that for most people this is one of the hardest steps to make in reducing stress. Learning to give yourself full love and approval may be the most difficult step to take; at the same time it is also one of the most powerful.

These and many other similar concepts are discussed in detail with practical examples throughout the first part of this book. These ideas follow on from the ideas developed in two earlier books, Choosing Health Intentionally and Choosing Weight Intentionally. In these, attention was focused on the way that thoughts, emotions and past experiences affect an individual’s health and weight. Here these ideas have been developed further and applied, specifically, to the stresses in your life.

There are other topics covered in the first part. You are given tools that will help you to understand yourself better and to learn more about past problems and past experiences that you are letting, often subconsciously, contribute to your present stresses. You are given tools with which you can unearth some of the subconscious reasons why particular situations stress you. One such technique is Running a Phrase. You are told how to go back into the past in ways that will help you to unearth buried memories, memories that may have been suppressed yet may be the cause of much of your stress. You are shown how to take the remembered trauma out of past stressful situations and to reduce the impact of these situations on your present stress. You are encouraged, and shown how, to have positive beliefs about yourself instead of being self-critical.

In these and other ways you will be able to understand and remove the stresses in your life. Having recognized old triggers and old sensitivities, you can reassess present situations and will, almost certainly, decide to view them in a new light.

You will learn to be proactive and to create your own life, just the way you want it, rather than being reactively jerked around on the strings of other people’s opinions and emotions. You will spend time assessing just exactly who you are and who you want to be, which values are important to you and which aren’t, and therefore which criticisms are relevant and may assist in your growth and which aren’t. You will learn a lot of wonderful things about yourself that, so far, may have gone unrecognized.

You will also be encouraged to use the amazing power of your mind to change both the events and the situations in your life and your attitude to them and to yourself. By the end, if you go through the processes with real conviction and serious intent, you will be able to relegate stress to the position of a negligible problem in your life. Things that once stressed you will become positive challenges and learning experiences to help you develop further.

You will find one or more of the 10 points that we have discussed at the beginning of some of the chapters that follow. This is meant as a guide only. Many aspects of the 10 points itemized above will come up more than once throughout the book, to a greater or lesser degree. Having the major concept of the chapter at its head will help you to incorporate it into your thinking. Repetition, often in a different disguise, will help you to become familiar with these ideas and techniques and to make use of them more readily.

Part II: The physical aspects of stress

While most stress comes about as a result of your mental and emotional states there can also be physical contributing factors or causes. Thus it is wise to make sure that there are no physical health reasons for your feelings of stress. These physical factors may seem to be a direct and prime cause of your stress. Alternatively they may seem to be contributing factors that decrease your ability to handle the other stresses in your life. Either way you will need to deal both with the physical factors and with the emotional ones that result from them and may also have contributed to them.

It is the old chicken and the egg question. Which came first? The emotional stress which caused you to make excessive demands on your body and give it diminished care or the physical problem which led to your emotional stress and worry and which in turn led to the physical problem? The nice thing about chicken and egg situations is that you can begin to change things by working with both the chicken and the egg. So do both.

Clearly any physical health problem can cause you to feel stressed. Anything from a toothache to the knowledge that you have a fatal disease will stress you. However, there are some physical health problems that can, as part of their symptom picture, generate nervous, irritable and stressed emotional states. These include such health problems as allergies, candidiasis, hypoglycaemia, poor nutrition, poor immune function and the effect of toxins. If these problems are part of your experience then you can, by doing what is necessary to your lifestyle to improve your physical health, greatly reduce your stress at all levels, physical, emotional and mental.

Be warned, though, that it is all too easy to blame these possible physical causes exclusively for your stress and thus to avoid making the mental and emotional changes discussed in Part I. This is a mistake and leads you back into victim status, this time a victim to your body.

If you are not willing to make the necessary changes in your diet and lifestyle described in Part II you may at some subconscious level be showing your preference for hanging on to the physical problems as useful excuses for your emotional stress rather than facing up to the emotional and mental changes that are necessary. If this is the case then working through Part I is even more important for you.