“Job Stress is far and away the leading source of stress for adults but stress levels have also escalated in children, teenagers, college students and the elderly for other reasons, including:  increased crime, violence and other threats to personal safety; pernicious peer pressures that lead to substance abuse and other unhealthy life style habits; social isolation and loneliness; the erosion of family and religious values and ties; the loss of other strong sources of social support that are powerful stress busters.”  American Institute of Stress

Describe your average level of stress.  Where does it come from?

If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.  (Phil. 4:7; NLT)

Saturday morning, bright and early, I took my wife to the airport and waved goodbye.  She went to Florida to spend the week with a close friend who recently had a baby.  So Sharon is down there to help in any way she can.  If you know her personally, you know she’s in her element — serving others and being around a new baby.

So she’s in her element, but if you know me, you will also recognize that I’m not — in my element, that is.  Home alone is not a time that I ever look forward to.  To me it’s a “week of stress.”  Interestingly enough, this week’s topic in our UNCOMMON Wellness Coaching course is — stress!  So, since I’ve obviously got DG duty this week, I thought it would be a good topic to write about all week long.  Kind of sharing the wealth, so to speak.

Stress!  I don’t know about you, but I never paid much attention to stress until about 8 – 10 years ago.  It was at that time that I began to do some coaching in an area that focused on one’s stress.  What an eye-opener!

Did you know that 26 years ago this month, Time magazine ran a cover story about stress calling it “The Epidemic of the Eighties” (6/6/83)?  Who would have thought that it would continue to escalate through the nineties and would be still getting worse into the present times?  We have technology to address a multitude of issues, but in some ways that very technology might be contributing to the run away condition of stress.  It certainly has proven helpless to contain stress.

How bad is the problem?  Well, there is not universal agreement.  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) tells us that 90% of all illness and disease is related to stress.  (Just allow the significance of that statement to sink in for a moment.)  The equally prestigious and credible, Stanford Medical School says no, it’s not 90%, it’s 95%.  95% of all illness and disease is related to stress.

The Mayo Clinic says that the cause of illness and disease is stress. They even go so far as to say that just 10 minutes of watching the nightly news will make your stress soar. Cleveland Clinic says that if stress persists, the body breaks down.  Vanderbilt, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, and others, they’re all saying the same thing.

Harvard Medical School says that stress is the root of illness and disease, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg because stress also takes the joy away from life. It makes you sick. It makes you tired. It dumbs you down, drains your energy, causes a negative outlook on life. Of course, if it does those five things, it’s obviously going to cause you to fail.

Convinced yet?  Let’s continue this tomorrow.  (Bet you can’t wait)

Prayer Power
Father, we especially thank You for that “peace that surpasses all understanding” that You have made available to us.  We’ve gotten ourselves in quite a fix, and desperately need Your help.  Open our hearts to accept Your all sufficient grace.

Link of the Day
America’s No. 1 Health Problem

Blessings on you as you proactively seek ways to manage your stress levels.

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