“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”  Unknown

What are some of the things you do when you’re feeling really stressed out?

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  (Phil. 4:6; NLT)

Stress…well, three days of telling you all the bad news about stress is about all I can take.  Time to turn our attention to some of the many stress management or stress reduction techniques that are available.  As you can surmise from the three days of bad news, these management techniques are something we all need to pay attention to.

There are several ways to cope with stress or to handle stress.  Let’s call them “stress busters”.  I’ve heard that term and kind of like that.  Stress busters are good, so I don’t want to disparage them in any way at all.

–The number one way to handle stress, for the Christian anyway, is clearly prayer and meditation.  And that’s not just religion talking.  It has been proven with study after study — the value of prayer and the value of meditation in healing, or otherwise dealing with stress.

–We need to guard the words that we speak, not just the words we speak about others, but the words that we speak about our self.  Many times — and I used to be very guilty about this — using a self deprecating style of humor.  But those words are very, very significant and very, very important.  We have to be very careful and guard the beliefs that we hold dear, and not just the beliefs about other things, but also the beliefs about ourself.  We have to watch the thoughts that we think.  It’s the beliefs that are generating the thoughts.  What is our self talk?  What is going on in our heads?  What are we thinking about ourselves, about our situation?

–As Sharon has written countless times in previous DGs, we have to monitor the food we eat.  We have to be very careful because many of the foods of our modern culture create stress in the organs of our bodies.

–And, of course, we have to be sure and use our bodies more.  We have to move it.  We have to get out there.  Exercise is a great stress buster.  It’s a great way to reduce stress.

–Clearly, practicing forgiveness is very important.  We need to be strengthening close relationships, friendships … relationships are vitally important.

–We must also practice gratitude.  A great exercise is to take a pencil and paper and purpose to write down  ten things that you’re grateful for.  Just do that day after day after day.  Start your day out with gratitude.

–Laugh more.  Sometimes it’s harder and harder to laugh, particularly as your stress level goes up.  So you have to purpose to put yourself into situations and find situations where you can laugh about things.

–You also must have a sense of purpose and destiny.  You have to recognize that there’s a reason for your being here.  And without understanding what that is, you’re just exacerbating your stress.

–You need to be doing work that you love to do. Don’t go to work every day and hate your job as most people in this country do.  That’s very difficult on your body.  That’s gong to create all the stress that we’ve been looking at.  So, I would just ask why are you doing that?  Why do you keep doing that?  Find something that you love and find a way to get paid for that.  So, do the work that you love to do.

Prayer Power
Father, I ask You to help me discern which of the above (or even other) stress busters would be the best for me to use and then give the grace to develop the discipline to use them.

Link of the Day
Stress Reduction, Stress Relievers

Blessings on you a you try a couple of the above stress busters and see how they work for you.

Previous in Series-/ /-Next in Series