Beat Stress 

How to overcome stress
I decided to write this article because I have recently made the huge decision to move from Botswana to England. As far as life stresses go moving is right up there as one of the most stressful life changes. What I have found interesting, is that by using these techniques below I am able to keep my stress levels right down, even though the plans keep changing for reasons totally out of my control. I know many people struggle with stresses of one kind or another and I hope that my insights might be able to help you.
 Stress is one of the biggest most damaging emotions in society. Anyone who doesn’t believe that our thoughts and emotions create illness in our bodies should just look at stress. It is common knowledge that stress causes ulcers, high blood pressure and heart attacks. But what is stress and how do you overcome it?
Stress is the result of your belief that your environment is threatening and your body’s conditioned response to threat which is fight, flight or freeze. To prepare your body for the perceived attack or threat adrenalin and cortisol are released into the blood stream, which causes the heart to beat faster, blood to be directed away from digestion and into the muscles amongst other reactions. The sensations you might experience are breathlessness, increased body temperature, sweating, and single minded focus, (or obsessive thoughts), on the issue.
It is the oldest part of your brain that reacts to stress, the reptilian part, and it does not discern between real or imagined threats. What this means for us in our modern world is that the threats are more often than not imagined ones and not ones that will literally kill you. For instance being late for a meeting, being stuck in traffic, moving house, relationship challenges, your team winning at sport, or getting your kids into a good school and so on. If you look even more closely at this it is not the event that actually cause’s you stress it is your thoughts about the event that cause you stress. So thoughts about how disastrous something might be = stress!! No thoughts about something = no stress. There are many ways to destress some of which I have found helpful and some of which I have not. For instance have you ever tried to meditate when you are seriously stressed? I have and to be honest it makes me even more stressed, because as I try to calm down and let go of things, more stressful thoughts reappear. And then not only am I stressing about whatever scary thing is going on in my life, I am also stressing about not being able to destress! That is not to say mediation is not helpful I love mediating just that it might not be the first step in destressing.
I have faced a number of stressful situations in my life and this is what I have found works

1. Get out of your head and your thoughts
2. Look at what needs to be done and what might go wrong
3. Taking action
4. Let go
5. Do a clearing statement

1. Getting out of your head, I have noticed that when you think about something a lot, and stress about it your energy and focus is in your head. If you bring your energy and focus into your heart or lower down in your body or to your breathing you tend to calm down. At the beginning of my coaching sessions I take my clients through a check in. As part of this each client shuts their eyes and focuses on how their body feels. I have seen nearly every one of them take a deep breath and relax as they do this. It is involuntary and just happens. As soon as you take your focus out of your head and your thoughts and bring in down into your body you will find you relax. So if you find you are stressed make time to get out of your head. Other ways to get out of your head are focusing on breathing, fishing, golf, walking, running, being in nature or whatever does it for you.   
2. What needs to be done and what could go wrong, when you find you are stressing about something look at the reality of it. Not how you feel about the situation but what is the situation and what can you do about it? I know many people wake up in the middle of the night worrying about all sorts of things. When things are in your head there is a fear you might forget them. The best thing to do is write them down. Make a list and put timelines on what you need to do by when. Once you have this list you will feel so much more peaceful. I know it seems simple but it works! Also ask yourself is there anything that could potentially go wrong and what can you do about it? In relation to my decision having this list has brought me peace of mind. Even though it is a very long list I feel comfort that I know what I am doing and am getting it done. I also listen to my inspiration. If a thought pops into my head such as a personas name I phone them then and there. I know if a follow these inspirations I find solutions that I would never have come to on my own. It is a bit like a delicious treasure hunt.
3. Taking action, it is not enough to have your list. Once you have this list you then need to take action. Action is very important. If you do not take action you will not be moving and you will be stagnating or resisting. I like to think of life a bit like a river. I can swim with the current by taking actions that will keep me moving with it and take me past the obstacles. I can stop swimming and let the river take me where ever it wants which might be into some rocks or onto the sore. Or I can swim against the river which is hard work and doesn’t get me anywhere very fast. I find that when I am in action of the things I know I need to be in action of life can move very quickly.
4. Let go, once you have decided on your actions there is no point stressing over and over about what might or might not happen. You need to let go and let God (or whatever you believe in). Trying to control every eventuality only causes serious stress. And I haven’t yet found anyone who has ever been able to control every eventuality. Sometimes you just need a little faith that if you do whatever you know you need to do that whatever is meant to be will be. With this move I have found my plans have changed many times. If I had been fixed on making what I believed to be the right result happen I would have been very unhappy. However I choose to believe that a greater force is guiding me and that if I flow with it rather than tell it, it got it all wrong I will end up exactly where I am meant to be. So far I am excited about the new possibilities and know that I will be far happier than had I insisted the first idea was the right one.
5. Clearing statements, this is something that not everyone will know about. Your stress is normally due in part to programs and beliefs in your unconscious mind. And as the name suggests they are unconscious and you are unaware of them. There are ways to find out what they are but these are very involved and take time. What I have found works too are clearing statements. There are two that I know of and you might find there are more. One is from Dr Ihaleakala Hew Len and is called - ho'oponopono. He is a Hawaiian healer and there is a wonderful story about how he cured a mentally ill asylum using this clearing statement you can read more about this in Zero Limits by Joe Vitale. What he teaches is that we are all 100% responsible for our experience of reality. This does not mean we are to blame. But by taking responsibility and using the clearing statement to clean yourself of negative beliefs you can change our perception and experiences. The statement is; I love you, I am sorry, please forgive me, and thank you. You say this to whatever you believe in be it God, Allah, and so on. I say this to life force as I feel most connected when I do it. I also find that when I really feel each step of the statement it has the greatest effect. What I mean by this is; feeling love when I say I love you, feeling the emotion of whatever area I am stuck in when I say I am sorry, feeling as if this is being lifted off of me or some greater force is taking care of it when I say please forgive me and feeling joy and gratitude when I say thank you. I know I am complete when I feel like something has shifted and I feel lighter. Sometimes I have to stay in one section for longer and I just focus on it and breath. I try not to question the process but rather feel my way through it and trust my intuition for when it is right to move on. As I do not know all of the programs that are causing me resistance on a certain issue I sometimes have to do the statement a number of times. Do it until you no longer feel anxiety, fear or stress in relation to what you are doing.

Another clearing statement that I have used is from Access Consciousness the link to the clearing statement is - http://www.theclearingstatement.com/ I am not going to go into too much more detail as they explain it perfectly on the website.
I have used both of these and find I favor one or other depending on how I feel. Use both and see which feel right for you. At present I am using the ho'oponoponoone but it shifts and changes.

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Wishing you all of the very best
 
With love
 
Britt 

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