While we’d all like to take a month off and travel to some fabulous, stress-relieving destination, this is not always practical, as you well know! Instead, we can make great strides towards peace and balance in our lives by performing small, easy exercises on a daily or weekly basis.

For instance, if you find you are always struggling to keep up with a never-ending list of ‘to-do’s,’ you may find it helpful to invest a little time on Sunday evenings to think about the week to come. Sometimes when we live our lives in nose to the grindstone mode, we forget to think about the big picture. Just going through your priorities every week in your mind – or on paper – will give you a little perspective. You’ll be able to see what’s important and what isn’t, and perhaps even drop a few things from your list. By looking at things from a weekly perspective you can better see what’s causing your stress and perhaps rearrange things a little so your days are more balanced.

Another idea many people find helpful is to perform some act of personal centering each day – morning or night. You may choose to meditate or write in a journal, to listen to some motivational tapes or read an inspirational book. Whatever brings you back to your sense of balance and ‘self’ will prove invaluable. By taking a little time for yourself in this way daily, you will better be able to cope with your daily grind. You’ll feel calmer throughout the day and also able to focus more on whatever priorities are important to you, allowing other ‘noise’ to bounce off you instead of affect you negatively.

 

One final stress-relief tip is to exercise regularly. You know this because we’ve all hear it, but do you DO it? We all have the best of intentions but often our everyday busy lives prevent us from following through. With exercise, the ironic thing is that doing it would help alleviate so many of the symptoms you are challenged with. It is relaxing, it improves your circulation and physical well-being as well as your mental clarity and level of happiness. Try walking, yoga or pilates, or any activity that makes oyu feel great. Get in the habit of doing a little something every day or two, and watch your life transform into a calmer, healthier one in no time.

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When you first begin on the path of conscious personal development, you may find yourself bombarded on all sides with advice and well-meaning criticism. Because you have been searching for answers, you are finding many, many new thoughts and techniques to learn and from which to choose.

 While it is good to have an arsenal of techniques on your side to deal with challenges and questions as they come up, this can sometimes become overwhelming. Not only is it difficult to remember to try and implement everything you’ve been reading as you go about your daily life, but you may also find what seems to be conflicting advice, causing more confusion, when what you really wanted was clarity!

Creating Monsters

One mistake people make when trying to improve their lives is to focus too much on their fears. We will address that here and provide a quick little visualization technique to help you. Of course this adds to your arsenal, but rather than being confusing it should be fun, easy, and most importantly effective.

When we learn that our fears and hidden ‘negative’ beliefs are hindering our progress toward whatever goals we may have, it can be scary rather than inspiring. We start to notice every time a ‘negative’ belief or fear comes up, and often we beat ourselves up for having them at all. Thus, we make our fears even worse than they are, creating a big monster where before there was only a small monster, metaphorically. The thing is, it’s not necessary to analyze everything – sometimes it’s only necessary to get rid of them and return to focusing on positive and constructive thoughts.

The first step is to remember that we all have a kaleidoscope of beliefs and fears which took our entire lifetimes to develop. it isn’t possible to get rid of them in an instant and live happily ever after, no matter what anyone tells you. Although you may experience some shifts in paradigm as you find new insights impacting the way you think, you will simply move to a new level, where newly unearthed beliefs will surface. This process is all a gift to you, and isn’t negative at all. It is a deeply personal, profoundly rewarding journey and is a privilege to take consciously.

Now, for the ‘trick’ to banish the monster.

Instead of assigning your fears and ‘negative’ beliefs the weight and signifiance you have been, try instead to visualize them in silly ways, to lighten up your mind and allow you to rid yourself of them more easily. Make a decision ahead of time that from now on, when a fear or negative belief pops into your mind, you will think of it like a snake, or a hot potato…anything that would make you jump away and get as far away from it as you can. Drop it, leap away from it, laugh and scream in your mind, but whatever it is, get rid of it instantly!

In this way, you can turn your focus very quickly back to attracting what you DO want in your life, and never wallow in the guilt or ‘why did I create this negative’ that you may have been experiencing in the past. Your mind is very powerful, and with a little practice this will become a very easy exercise for you. You will enjoy a multitude of benefits from this little trick, as lightening up your mind brings with it the ability to attract to you things which are in harmony with your new, higher and happier vibration.

Enjoy!

*Editor’s note: The monster picture – which I love! – reminded me of another post about overcoming fear that I wrote some time ago at the IncreasingVelocity blog Follow Your Path. To gain even more perspective on handling fears, you may enjoy the article. To read it, go to Laughing at Your Fears.

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