The Connection of Stress and Control

How much control you have over a certain situation determines your ability to combat and survive stress. There was an interesting study that demanded tasks of concentration between two groups of workers. Both groups were exposed to very distracting background noises consisting of horns honking, machinery, and people talking loudly in unknown languages. One group had a button placed on a desk while the other group did not. The button was placed so that the group who was given that button could shut off the background noises at any time they wanted to.

Not surprisingly, the productivity of the group with the control button was consistent and extremely higher than the group without the control button.

What is more interesting about this experiment is that no one actually pushed the button. Just in the knowing that it was there was enough.

What the experiment had taught us was that it is very important to have some “control buttons” in our lives. The “control buttons” are a crucial factor in order to help us deal with the stresses around us. If we have very little sense of control over any certain situation, then we are truly vulnerable to stress. One good way to combat stress is by using a program called the Abundance Course, which teaches you to “release” stress, tension and resistance in any situation.

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What not to do when being corrected at work or at home

How do you react when you are under pressure? What is the first thing you do when you are being criticized intensely for something that you have done a poor job on? Do you get all shaken up and distraught or do you handle yourself with ease? Do you get offended when people correct you, even though they may be right?

Class is often defined as the old saying goes: grace under pressure. Regardless of who you are and what social and business circles you hang around in, there comes a time in everyone’s life when we suffer some type of humiliation that is brought on by another person who is offering constructive criticism. And depending on the business or the personal circumstances, it may happen more than once.

Are you prepared to handle such nervous situations? Do you know what to do and how to react? There are hundreds of books that cover thousands of tips and tricks of how you should react, but in today’s article we are going to cover how you should not react if you are dealing with criticism.

1. Do not make excuses. If someone is criticizing how poor of a job you did at home or at work then do not make excuses for yourself by blaming someone else. Take responsibility. For example, if your manager did not find your work satisfactory and has made you aware of it, never say “Well I have not been feeling very good at all lately because you have been making me work so much, and it’s not my fault that I was too tired to do a good job on the project”.

2. Never loose your cool and cry. Do not break down and cry and say such things as “You have never liked me, no matter what I do for you as a friend you have never taken me seriously. You love to embarrass me in front of other people everywhere we go”. Be strong and know that you could of done better. And then next time, do better!

3. Refrain from attacking back. Most men and women’s first response is to counter-attack criticism by saying something nasty about the person who is hurting you. Perhaps they may even bring up something embarrassing about that other person and throw it back in their face. If this is you, then it will be very hard to continue congregating within a circle of friends or hold down a job where you are working for someone else.

The very best advice that we can give you when it comes to defending yourself is often a completely straightforward and sincere apology. Trust me, it will go a very long way in both rectifying the situation and making you appear as a strong, confident, and professional man or woman.

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Stressed Out? Try Being A Kid Again!

The next time you’re feeling anxious or stressed, take a break and go back to your childhood. Do something goofy: Find crayons and draw a picture, rent a favorite childhood movie, revisit the toy store to buy a bubble blower kit (then use it), borrow some fun children’s books or find a few old favorites.

A day of revisiting times when life was simpler is a good, inexpensive stress buster. Having fun, just like laughing, prompts a release of endorphins, the feel good hormones.

Workplaces have picked up on the “goofy theme” too. The June 16, 1994, Wall Street Journal, reported on a California ad agency that places punching bags, decorated with the faces of its executives, in its club room. The same agency encourages staff members to paint their offices in wild colors. Another held an indoor golf tournament on two nine-hole courses the employees had constructed.

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Research Shows That Stress Can Be Relieved By Way Of Massage

The key antidote to stress is relaxation and there is nothing better and more efficient at relieving stress than having a warm, relaxing massage. Yet, at least in our society, the common practice of massage has remained an esoteric experience for decades being only popular to athletes and prizefighters, but rarely experienced by the rest of us outside of a little shoulder and neck rub. And for too many years, massage has been out of favor with mainstream society and thought of as more of a taboo type of activity other than improving mental, spiritual, and physical health. Fortunately today, the health benefits are being widely recognized.

With the rise of holistic and alternative modes of healing and health maintenance, along with the growing acceptance of the Chinese idea of energy flow throughout the body, massage has achieved widespread respect. It now shares a common choice among many people who measure it up against various healthcare options. According to the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA), research studies are amassing solid evidence that massage does more than merely relieve tension in sore muscles. It actually promotes physical and emotional health and well-being in more ways than one.

Studies indicate that massage (among other benefits) actually lowers blood pressure and heart rate, promotes improved circulation, relaxes muscles, and helps improve joint mobility. Data from the University of Miami, which hosts the Touch Research Institute, shows that touch can directly reduce stress hormones circulating in the blood, while it reduces pain and improves immune function. The institute reports a correlation between touch deprivation and an increased tendency to respond to problems with anger or violence. Children suffer both physically and emotionally when they are separated from their parents and receive little touching and cuddling.

The elements of touch and properly applied pressure points have been shown to benefit the nervous system, and some forms of massage are said to improve the function of internal organ systems by improving energy flow throughout the body. After years of resistance, most physicians and healthcare practitioners now accept massage as a valid treatment of injuries and some illnesses, as well as a useful tool for preventative medicine and stress reduction.

A massage before you exercise improves blood flow. It stretches and warms tight muscles, thus reducing the risk of injury. A massage after heavy or stressful physical activity can loosen strained or knotted muscles, release tension, and bring you back to a relaxed state.

Sometimes, muscle soreness is the result of an exercise workout or some vigorous physical activity. At other times, the stress of your work or the ergonomics of your workstation may result in muscle pain or fatigue. These types of physical stresses also responds well to properly executed massage.

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How To Reduce Stress By Taking Power-Naps

Learning to relax under pressure and stress is not easy. In fact, it’s downright tough to deal with high stress levels at work or at home and be able to effectively handle it without getting rest. But here lies the catch-22, and that is that unless we rest appropriately, then we cannot handle stress in a positive manner. So how can we relax under pressure? Why not learn to take quick “power naps”?

If your job involves a lot of reading, it would make sense to learn to speed-read. If your life contains a lot of stress, it would be a tremendous help to be able to take a quick “power-nap” for even a few moments when under fire. Most people can definitely relax on a two week vacation, many can totally relax on the weekend, and some people can relax every evening after work ends. But how many, during even the most stressful days, can count to ten, suddenly be at complete rest for a few moments, and then wake up refreshed? This is the power nap, and we are going to show you how to do it.

This does not mean that you will necessarily put yourself sound asleep in the middle of the day, but simply that you can learn to slow your pulse and breathing rate, and reverse many of the natural stress responses in your body. Depending on the images or triggers that are designed for you, you could, for example, count to ten and place yourself on a nice beach with your hand in the warm sand for a few seconds. Then you could count back down to zero and be fully refreshed. Other people find success by closing their eyes for a few seconds and imagining a dial, set on high, when they are very tense. In their minds, they simply imagine the dial being turned down. In this way, they can gain control of themselves, and “command” their pulse and blood pressure rates to decrease.

Some of you already have the skills to help you relax on command, gained from such diverse (and excellent) activities as prayer, yoga, martial arts, meditation, exercise, listening to music, and doing favorite odd jobs around the house. But if you find that your current levels of stress are too high for even these methods, then you should have an ace up your sleeve: the power nap.

Best learned with a few lessons from your own hypnotist, the power nap can be taken at the drop of a hat. It can break up your most stressful days with a few moments of total relaxation for your body (to the extent that you will be unable to prevent your jaw from slackening). It also relaxes your mind so that you are aware of none of your surrounding stresses. With practice and coaching, you may be able to gain an excellent recharging of your batteries in a few minutes per day, and spare yourself the burnout of the constant use of the same brain and body circuits. The same skills are also helpful in getting to sleep at night.

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The Connection Of Modern Heart Attacks To Stress

While it is well-established that stress can bring on ulcers, only recently have we have begun to see a relationship between stress and the heart. Heart attacks are largely a modern problem. Although they have been reported in the medical literature for centuries, as recently as the late 1920’s this disease was rare in North America. Then things began to change, until now in the United States over a million people have heart attacks every year. Most of the victims are men over the age of 65, but women have heart attacks too, and so do younger people (and the incidence of heart disease in these two groups is rising sharply).

What causes heart attacks? The fact is that nobody knows for sure. It is generally agreed that things like high blood pressure, a large amount of cholesterol in the blood, lack of exercise, obesity, and cigarette smoking all contribute to heart disease, but more and more it is beginning to appear that the single greatest cause of heart attack is the stress of life.

This is a view that has been held with special enthusiasm by two San Francisco cardiologists named Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman. These men divide the population into two broad categories, Type A and Type B. The Type A person is ambitious, aggressive, self demanding, competitive, and pushing to be successful. He or she “goes all the time” and is driven by the clock. In contrast, Type B people are more casual. They are less competitive, less worried about the time, and not so preoccupied with achievement. The two types even differ in their approach to relaxation. Type B can enjoy casual conversation and forget his work during a game of golf. Type A competes as intensively in sports as elsewhere and is even inclined to take up jogging. That, states Dr. Friedman, is the best way for such people to achieve sudden death at age 35.

While it probably is true that nobody fits these categories exactly, most of us tend to fall into one or the other of the two classifications. After studying this problem for over twenty years, Drs. Friedman and Rosenman believe that when people live a Type A lifestyle there is seven times more risk of heart attack than with a Type B mode of living. Even if they don’t smoke, get little exercise, show normal blood pressure, and have no family history of coronary disease.

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Sources Of Stress: Outer Pressure & Inner Pressure

In order for our mind and bodies to function efficiently, our nervous system requires a constant flow of stimulation coming in from the environment around us. For example, when people are put in total darkness where they cannot see, hear, or talk to anyone else, they soon develop pathological symptoms. Eventually their minds will be begin to crack due to the insane monotony of the darkness and the silence.

Luckily this is not a problem for most of us living today. Our current world is one of fast-paced experiences and we have somehow developed the idea that we ought to be going full speed, all of the time. And as a result of this way of living, we dash from one project to another, from meeting to meeting, and as we face the clock at the end of the day and look around, we realize that we did not get much done at all.

Several years ago, Sebastian de Grazia suggested that “perhaps you can judge the inner health of a land by the capacity of its people to do nothing: to lie around, to amble aimlessly, to sit having coffee, because whoever can do nothing, letting his thoughts go where they may, must be at peace with himself.” If there is any truth to this notion at all, then most people around us are not in a very good state of inner health. And this is due to pressure and stress that stems from two sources; outer pressures and inner pressures.

Outer Pressure

Outer pressure is stress that comes from the world around us. The demands of children, our bosses, salesmen, neighbors, or teachers can all be stressful. This kind of pressure starts early life. Remember the pressures of little league, or school grades, or from our parents? Even as children the pressures can be tremendous and students just can’t cope. In fact, North America’s leading cause of death among college students is suicide.

Inner Pressure

Just as demanding and stressful as outer pressure are inner pressures. These are the ingrained beliefs that we have of ourselves that tell us how well to perform, meet other people’s expectations, accomplish some great lofty goals in life that we believe is the right way to be happy, raise model children, keep our house clean, finish all books that we start, etc. This list could go on forever. From our parents, our teachers, our religion leaders, and our own deliberations we have set up an array of demands which we put on ourselves, and then we spend the rest of our lives under constant pressure of trying to meet our own expectations.

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The Importance Of Leisure Activities For Stress Reduction

When author Hans Selye first published his now-classic book on the stress of life, he made the proposal that “no one part of the body must be disproportionately overworked for a long time.” It’s like carrying a heavy suitcase for an extended period of time with one arm, when you feel the pain (stress) of that arm, then you shift the bag to the other arm, so that the stress is equalized and no one set of muscles is overworked.

The same holds true in life as well. If we spend most of our time working, or relaxing, or doing too much church work, then we are overtaxing one part of our personality, and this is tension-producing.

As we have discussed in previous articles, many people today have become raging workaholics. They spend long hours at work and although they are enjoying what they are doing immensely, these people are not leading a balanced lifestyle. Eventually, through sickness, heart attacks, or other physical problems, nature catches up with them and they are forced to slow down.

A better way to start slowing down is to change our attitudes. We must recognize that leisure is not wrong or unnecessary and is not a misuse of talent or even a waste of time. Just like work is crucial to life, leisure is just as important. If we fail to take time for recreation, we may be successful at our career, but lose our family, friends, and even our health in the long run. Even just short breaks that are taken frequently can rejuvenate our mind and body and make our work more effective.

Once you have decided that leisure is important to you, next decide just how you plan on unwinding. That is difficult for most people, but a good place to start is by searching your past. What were some of the things that you enjoyed doing when you were younger? What were the hobbies that got you interested? What were the things that you always wanted to get into but never felt you had the time for? Work on relaxing in a way that is different than your work. If your job is sitting at a computer all day crunching numbers and writing text, when look towards outdoor activities like playing volleyball or hiking through nature. If your job is one that is very physical then look towards leisure activities that allows you to relax your body, like reading a good book, or going for a boat ride.

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What Vitamins Should I Take When Under Extreme Stress?

Many stress symptoms can be relieved by proper nutrition and there is no better place to start than to make sure you are getting in enough daily vitamins that can help combat extreme stress levels. Below are some important vitamins and a recommended daily amount that you can take to help ward off stress.

Vitamin A: 15,000 (10,000 for pregnant women) international units daily. This vitamin helps adrenal gland function and promotes healthy growth of epithelial cells, including those lining the blood vessels. Healthy food sources of this vitamin are cod liver oil, liver, beef, oysters, butter, whole milk, and vegetables such as carrots, sweet potatoes, mangoes, spinach, and greens.

Vitamin B-complex: 100 milligrams daily. These vitamins help the nervous system function properly, reduce anxiety and immune system damage, and improve brain function. Also include 50 milligrams daily of pyridoxine (B6), which influences neurotransmitters and helps convert tryptophan to serotonin. You can find this vitamin in food sources such as chicken, fish, pork, eggs, soybeans, brown rice, and oats.

Vitamin C: 3,000 to 10,000 milligrams daily. Vitamin C is an extremely powerful antioxidant that boosts the immune system and is needed to produce connective tissue. This helps maintain the structure of tissues, including blood vessels. Vitamin C reduces some allergic responses and helps offset the depletion of adrenal gland hormones caused by stress. This vitamin is found in citrus fruits and their juices, red bell peppers, black currants, guava, strawberries, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and papaya.

Vitamin E: 400 international units. Vitamin E is the strongest antioxidant and works with Vitamin C and selenium to help strengthen the immune system, fight heart disease, promote healthy nerve function, and minimize the damage to muscles caused by free radicals. This vitamin can be found in food sources such as hazelnut oil, wheat germ oil, almond oil, mayonnaise, sunflower oil, wheat germ, whole-grain cereals, eggs, and fortified cereals.

Calcium: 2,000 milligrams daily. Calcium relaxes muscles, builds bone, reduces intestinal irritation, and lowers blood pressure. Calcium can be found in food sources such as milk and dairy products, kale, turnip greens, canned salmon, sardines with bones, and soybeans.

Magnesium: 1,000 milligrams daily. Magnesium is vital for nerve conditioning, muscle contraction, and transmission of impulses through the nervous system. It works in the production of energy from sugar and reacts with calcium to affect functions such as heartbeat. Low intakes of magnesium are associated with high blood pressure and heart disease. You can find magnesium in such food sources as whole grains, nuts, avocados, beans, and dark green leafy vegetables.

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What Is Stress?

Stress is something that most everybody feels at one point or another in their lives, but yet nobody can quite define it. The first thing you may think of when you hear the word stress is “feeling” overloaded and nervous. But stress also is a force which creates upset stomachs, gnawing fear, migraine headaches, severe grief, excessive drinking, and violent rages. Our memories are dulled by the stress in our lives, our thinking ability diminished, and our efficiency is retarded.

On the other hand, there are some very good positives that stem from the feeling of stress that comes into our life. It motivates us to study, encourages us to keep going when life gets difficult, spurs us to action in the midst of crises, helps us to mature, and at times makes life very exciting.

The word “stress” was actually first used in the world of physics and engineering. It referred to the heavy forces that may be put on a building or a bridge. It is the kind of stress that would contribute to a building or bridge collapsing due to heavy ice formation or the power of extreme winds. In time after, the term “stress” was taken over by medicine, physiology, sociology, economics, and other fields of science, but for most people the world has come to have a distinctly psychological meaning.

Over the years there have been many scholarly attempts to define psychological stress, but the most commonly known and most down-to-earth definition of stress came several years ago from a biologist named Hans Selye who said that “stress is essentially the wear and tear of living. Stress for one person may differ from that experienced by someone else, but every day each of us experiences physical and emotional wear and tear resulting from the pressures of life.

According to Hans Selye, stress is not simply nervous tension, nor is stress a negative feeling that should be avoided, or is something that is always unpleasant. For example, riding a roller coaster is extremely fun in a “stressful” kind of way. All of those exciting feelings you get within your stomach and your mind is due to stress. Playing sports is another fun and healthy way of being involved with an activity and the joy that you feel is the direct result from different forms of stress, which are all pleasant. Have you ever watched an emotional television show or seen a movie that had you on the edge of your seat, in tears, or laughing all of the way to the end? This is all a form of different stresses and they are ones in which we seek out and enjoy.

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