What Is Stress

Stress literally means pressure or tension exerted on a physical object. In the case of psychological stress, the physical is you.

Stress is something we have all experienced. Actually, stress is useful in some areas of your life. It is part of how we have evolved to deal with the challenges we face. For example, the stress of a changing environment can help provide motivation and adaptability we need to succeed in unstable conditions. If we did not have stress, we would not have thrived as a human race.

Positive stress helps us complete tasks at work rise to new challenges and achieve great things. When stress becomes a problem the person feels like the pressure is more than they can handle.

What we’re experiencing during times of stress is a mix of physical, biological processes and physiological reactions.

Stress is part of the fight or flight reaction. This is what keeps humans safe from predators, environmental hazards and other life-threatening things to improve chances for survival. It’s very useful when faced with a lion or bear, but so much when sitting in front of a television or computer.

The fight or flight response is the body getting ready either to fight or run for your life. When you have an anxiety attack or a panic attack the fight or flight response appears. It is something that happens s without your control (although the response can be modified consciously over time with practice.) It happens deep within us and comes in a few stages.

Alarm/Resistance

This is when the body gets itself ready and our brain tells our body to release powerful hormones, like adrenalin cortisol. These travel in the blood to organs like muscles and back to the brain. They cause the heart to pump faster and increase blood pressure so you have enough oxygen to increase the workload.

If this stress of fight or flight continues until the hormones are all used up and we become exhausted. This means we need to recover-we are like a car with no fuel. Our body becomes more susceptible to illness like a cold or the flu.

If this process happens for a long time without a break, or happens repeatedly there can long term effects.

Knowing what causes stress can help us to identify it when it happens. If you are going through one of these things, you can be aware that your stress levels might rise, keep an eye out for symptoms. This is an important way of managing future stress.

Setting Boundaries

Building our own personal and emotional space are very important if we want to feel safe and happy. Have you ever heard someone say get out of my space? Of your in my bubble?

Our personal boundaries aren’t as obvious as a fence or a no trespassing sign, unfortunately they’re more invisible bubbles.

Sometimes personal boundaries can be challenging to navigate, setting and communicating them is essential for our health, we’ll-being and safety.

Boundaries give us a sense of control over our bodies and feelings. We all have limits, and boundaries are the limit.

While setting bound for ourselves and honoring the boundaries of others is not a science. But there are ways we can take charge over our lives.

Understanding Boundaries

The word boundary can be misleading. It gives the idea of keeping yourself separate. But, boundaries are connecting points they provide healthy rules for relationships.

Boundican Improve Our Self-Esteem

Boundaries can protect relationships from being unsafe. It actually brings us together rather than keeping us apart.

Having boundaries allows us to make ourselves a priority, either in self-care, career choices, or with relationships.

Boundaries can be flexible

Never draw your boundaries in permanent ink, it’s good to think about them occasionally and re-assess them.

Boundaries can be to rigid or not flexible, problems can occur. You don’t want to isolate yourself or avoid closeness all together. And giving all your time to others. I know from experience giving all your time to others will destroy your health and your happiness. Creating boundaries that are too bendy are more common in women, that men.

Boundaries–Cerserving Our Emotional Energy

Ourself self-esteem and identity can be impacted, and we can build resentment toward others because of an inability to advocate for ourselves.

Don’t think you need the same boundaries as everyone else. Boundaries depends on the situation or person make sure you give yourself enough energy to care for yourself.

Example

Draw an imaginary line separating your emotions and responsibility. My responsibility is loving and caring for my husband it is not when he makes a bad choice and has to reap his circumstances not you. If he steals something from work and he gets caught. You didn’t commit this crime he did, set a boundary that this is his problem not mine. Yes I will give advice and talk to him about it. But I cannot make his choice for him. He has to live with what he did. It is not my problem to fix. Choose to stay out of it. It will be a boundary set that will safe you a lot of stress. Know your feeling and your responsibilities to yourself and others.

It’s hard to set boundaries because

They put others needs and feelings first

They don’t know themselves

They don’t feel they have rights

They believe setting boundaries jeopardizes their relationships

They never learned to have healthy boundaries

Boundaries are learned if you were not valued as a child, you didn’t learn you had them. Any kind of abuse violates personal boundaries, including teasing. For example, my mother would tell me to shut up after a while I felt I could not say anything. This made me feel powerless and that I didn’t have a right to speak to anyone when something happened or I felt sick. Boundary violations affects a child’s ability to mature into a independent adult.

You Have Rights

You may not believe you have any rights because of situations you can experienced, but you have a right to say no and to addressed with courtesy and respect, to change your mind or cancel commitments.

If you feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Tell the others, learn to say stop I don’t like this or No this is not happening this way.

Try writing yourself a bill of rights. What you will let happen and what you won’t. And assert yourself. Be kind say please don’t ciritize me or call me during this time. Thank you for thinking of me, but I won’t be joining you, or I won’t be able to help you. I don’t feel comfortable with doing that, I’ll have to pass.

Runaway

This is a story of a runaway with no way home and no way out. I threw the best of me away, I had my chance it’s too late now. Too far gone and too ashamed to think that you’d still know my name. But, love refused to let my story end that way. You didn’t wait for me to find myself to you, you came running after me when anybody else would have turned and left me at my worse. Love moved first.

What kind of grace, relentless grace would chase this rebel down. Crawl into this prisoner’s cage take my hand and pull me out. You knew I couldn’t make the change, so you became the change in me and now I live to tell the story of the God who rescues.

From the throne to the manger. From the manger to the cross. Your cross is proof loved moved first. From a grave meant to keep you to a stone rolled away. I remember where you found me. I’m amazed at where I stand.

Advice For Your Soul

Each morning I take time to meditate and communicate with God. I thank him for another day and another opportunity to help others. I listen for His Advice and share it with others.

Many of us wake up each day and go about our daily activities without much thought. We aren’t necessarily happy, but we aren’t the fulfillment we yearn for. If we want to reach new heights and go places we’ve never gone, and do things we’ve never done, we are going to have to leave the nest. Spread your wings.

When we awaken in the morning, our first thoughts we have are what usually shape our day. If we take this time to get our minds right and set our intentions, we are bound to have a more positive day. Set your intentions.

We have all gone through something in our lives that was difficult or uncomfortable. Perhaps a loss of a loved one, or a breakup, or maybe even an addiction. Getting through that was a process, but we made it through to the other side if we share our experiences with others we can help them through it. Recover out loud.

Many of us struggle to be our true selves. Fearing what people will think of us, we begin weaving our own version of the truth into every story we tell, until even we can’t separate fantasy from reality. Authenticity is what we really need if we want others to see who we really are and understand us. Be authentic.

Once we decide what we want to do with our lives, who we want to be, we have to make a plan, envision it, and be intentional with your actions. No one can sit back and wait for opportunities to comes to us. Life doesn’t work like that. We can’t be afraid to fail. If we want to succeed, we have to dive right in with every intention of achieving the purpose you want. Dive in.

If we want to make our dreams come true. We need to be intentional. Make a plan commit to it and put forth the necessary action to see fruit from it. (to see ourselves making progress.) We must live it, breathe it to become it. When we do this, we will see our efforts rewarded. Make your dreams a reality.

Many of us have had to learn the hard way, that we can’t force our will on others. We can, however, be an example that promotes the change we would like to see. We can set healthy boundaries and let others know our values by living them. Be an example.

We will face many challenges in our lives. It can take several attempts to overcome some of these challenges. It can even take help from others. Don’t be discouraged. We only fail when we stop trying. If it doesn’t go the way you wanted try again.

It seems like we all have time to complete tasks at work or develop ourselves professionally, but many of us don’t take the time to work on ourselves personally. It’s sad many of us feel our worth or value is tied to a position or how many possessions we can collect. We are the biggest projects we should work on.

Sunday is usually the day we focus on God, we talk to him, praying for some type of blessing. We may mediate and listen for His guidance. With our spirits renewed, we rush out to our lives and forget about him until the following Sunday. If we talked to God as often as we did our friends or our love ones. We could have that renewed feeling everyday. Most of us talk to God during our times of struggle or trouble but forget about Him when things are going good. If we want to feel encouraged we need to do it everyday, maybe even a couple times a day.

Steps of Managing You’re Emotional Triggers

One of the many wonders of your brain how it rationalizes your behavior.

Something happens and you react, and then your brain instantly concocts a reason for your reaction that seems to justify your behavior even if the reason makes no sense. Like, when you get angry because you can’t find on object when doing a task. Have you ever been wrapping gifts and you lose the tape you are using and you blame someone else for taking it or sitting them down somewhere else.You ignore the reasons that your frustrated and your patience is wearing thin. You suppress you frustration in wrapping gifts. Then you find the tape on the table having looked right past them.

The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.

The act of rationalizing is so quick, the best you can do is to recognize when it occurs and choose to consider what else can be causing your reaction.

Hannah Moore- 1881

Accept responsibility for your actions

Accept yourself as powerful instead as a victim to remove the veil of self-deception. When you seek to find what is triggering how you feel in the moment, you give your self the chance to feel differently if you want to. You will also have clarity on what you need to do or what you need to ask for to change your circumstances.

What would your life be like if you were in control of your reactions? Would you feel free if you lived your life by choice?

As I said before I try every Christmas to. Wrap gifts, I use to spend the day wrapping all the gifts. My reaction was to get frustrated and lose my supplies ( tape, scissors, name tags.) I had to recognize I was having an emotional reaction to wrapping to many gifts at once. When I began wrapping a few gifts a everyday. My frustration stopped.

Recognizing that you are having an emotional reaction as soon as it begins to appear in your body. At any moment your rate of breathing, blood flow, the tension in your muscles, or construction in your gut. It represents a pattern you can identify as a feeling. The quicker you recognize that you are breathing fast, or not at all, that certain muscles in your body tighten, or you feel pressure in your gut. Stop and ask yourself what you are feeling and why.

Don’t judge or fear your emotions. No matter what you learned about the evils of emotions. If you don’t recognize your feeling, you cannot change them, and this negatively impacts your relationships, job performance, and your overall happiness.

If the emotion is related to fear, anger, frustration, or sadness, you have triggered an emotion.

What do you think you lost or what did you not get that you expected or desired to have?

The strengths that have help in your life are your greatest emotional triggers when you feel someone is not honoring one of them. When your brain perceived that someone has taken of plans to take one of these important things away from you, your emotions are triggered.

The quicker you notice an emotion is triggered, the quicker you can discover if the threat is real or not.

The Truth About Temptation

Temptation will come to your life sooner or later. I’m sure we have fallen into this trap at some point in our lives. But did you know we play a key role in how effectively you resist it? It is true satan plays a role in tempting you, you must first cooperate with him if your going to give in.

As believers in Christ, we face three enemies every day. The flesh, the world, and the devil. The flesh is the evil we have inside of us, the vulnerability, the prosperity to do wrong is next. Then there is satan with his outwards enticements, then comes the world. Our flesh with it desires is internal, Satan and the world with its enticements in it’s external for.

We should recognize that temptation originates with us bent forwarding doing the wrong things. If we give into temptation only have ourselves to blame. I have a temptation that gets me every time but I’m not giving up, one day I will be able to resist it. It’s playing bingo, it doesn’t matter where it is. I find myself going every time. And every time I find myself having to have alcohol it’s like the two go hand in hand. I never win at bingo, which discourages me from going for a while. But then I have a stressed-out day and I find myself going again.

But in Romans 6:16 it says Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God’s; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.

Temptation generally comes after great times of blessing. When everything is going great and then the temptation sneaks in. A friend calls and wants you to go somewhere where you know you shouldn’t be. ”I’ll just go for a few

Everyone is minutes and then, I’ll just stay a little longer.” that’s how it happens with me. It should be No and No means No.

Everyone is tempted, the enemy focuses his attacks on those who are new in their faith and those who are making a difference in God’s kingdom. Many believers can recall that when they first came to Jesus they were hit with temptations. And any believer who says: Lord, I want you to use me must know that Satan will attack.

Have you ever been shocked after falling into sin and asked yourself how you ended up there? I know satan always tries the same ole temptations on me. You would think I wouldn’t ever fall for those again. He gets us where we are weakest. It was through a series of events that led you to rationalize that sin. Temptation usually comes in through our imagination. ”Maybe I’ll win at bingo this time.” Think of it as an unwelcome knock on your door. You know you will have trouble if you let it in. When the enemy comes knocking don’t open that door, don’t even look through the keyhole. Don’t underestimate the power of temptation and the sin of it.

Our first line of offense is your primary weapon ”The Word of God” if the devil whispers in your ear go ahead and sin, no one will ever know. Our response should be No, it is written in Hebrews 4:13, all things are naked and open to the eyes of Hi. To whom we must give account.

Temptation is the devil’s primary method of attack. We all know a lot about it. But it is something that everyone will experience. However, temptation can be resisted.

James 1:12 says Blessed is the man that endures temptation. In other words, happy is the person who makes it through temptation. If we respond as we should, then you ultimately will hold tighter to the Lord the next time satan comes with some kind of enticement.

Even. If we fall for satan’s enticements. Try again to resist him, we will get stronger next time he tries. Do not Give up or give in.