Stressors are stimuli that can cause physiological or behavioral changes in people. When people can’t handle stressors efficiently, whether on the job or at home, in-ternal stress results. Often we can’t change our environment, at least not in the moment. We can, how-ever, change ourselves so that we can handle our environment without creating stress in ourselves.
Ironically, many people who want to change the world become so frustrated, angry and resentful, they dilute their power to change the conditions that cause
their frustration. You can see this in certain people in the environmental, abortion rights, equal opportunity and peace movements. This is not to say that we shouldn’t work for social change. But by learning to manage our stress, we can increase our power to implement the posi-tive changes we want to see.
Many people have told me they prefer to have some stress in their lives. It provides stimulation and motiva-tion. They call it positive stress. At the Institute, we call this “creative resistance energy.” It’s different from stress.
When you creatively respond to stressors or resistances, you don’t experience stress in yourself. Instead, the stres-sor becomes a fun challenge, an opportunity for growth, like weight lifting. You build a positive strength as you creatively respond rather than react. Then the stressor doesn’t drain you. You feel good inside. Stress, on the other hand, never feels good, nor does it make for a ful-filling lifestyle. Stress ages you. It’s the culprit, the ignition key to hundreds of diseases.
The power to think yourself into misery is within you, but the power to stop it is within you also. Lack of self-management is what can cause a massive stress buildup within a person’s system. The mind bounces back and forth with thoughts—about the day, about the future, about the past, about “Where should I be?” “What should I do next?” “Which direction should I go?” and on and on. When the head gets going, it can seize on a thought and make a headstrong decision that is not
eas-Stress: The Social Disease
ily restrained. If that decision doesn’t work out as you hoped, you can feel miserable, defeated.
Global stress is accumulating at a faster rate in the
’90s because of constant unmanaged head processors, nervous systems on overload and the pressure to make fast decisions in a time of rapid change. As C. W. Metcalf, author of the book Lighten Up, says, “The ascending rate of change in society has made things tough every day.
We’re having to adapt more often, with less prepara-tion, on more issues, than at any other time in history.”*
The struggle to make decision after decision has become so confusing and overwhelming that people are frus-trated with life.
Turn on the evening news for an hour. You can count on getting a stress report on the economy, the en-vironment, politics and more. Over the last twenty years, mental labor has replaced physical labor throughout much of the world. As a result, mental stress has be-come epidemic. Businesses are reeling from the latest stress statistics. A survey by Northwestern National Life Insurance released in 1992 reported that: 34% of U.S.
workers said they considered quitting their jobs because of excess stress; 46% described their jobs as highly stress-ful (twice as many as in 1985); and 33% said they believe job stress will lead them to “burn out” soon.
* C.W. Metcalf, Lighten Up: Let C.W. Metcalf Show you How to be More Productive, Resilient & Stress-free by Taking Laughter Seriously, (Addison-Wesley, 1992)
Worker’s compensation claims are climbing dra-matically as a result of job stress claims. A typical stress case is likely to be twice as costly as the average indus-trial injury claim—more than $15,000 each in medical treatment and lost work time. In his book Self Empower-ment: The Heart Approach to Stress Management; Common Sense Strategies, stress researcher Doc Childre, founder and president of the Institute of HeartMath says,
“It would startle most businesses to have a computer readout weekly, showing the amount of work-time their employees spent thinking and emoting over their problems. Then, if you had another computer readout showing the amount of negative hormones released into the body as a result of those thinking habits, and the health consequences, in the name of smart business you would want to make some men-tal and emotional adjustments. Computers can’t generate all that data yet, so we don’t have to face the facts. Yet, the facts of stress will find us—any-how. The stress deficit accrues, whether or not we are conscious of it.”
When we first introduced our HeartMath trainings to businesses, industry consultants confirmed that men-tal/emotional self-management is the missing link in their seminars, trainings and wellness programs. Accord-ing to Industry Week magazine, for the sake of survival, as well as for bottom-line profit, “Employers ought to be begging to help people find the most enjoyable, fulfill-ing and creative way to do their job.”
When you are exhausted, overwhelmed and stressed, your days aren’t fun, adventurous or fulfilling
Stress: The Social Disease
at all. As stress sets in and isn’t released, it wears and tears on your entire system. It wears and tears on the family, schools, businesses, government—the entire so-cial system. There is great injury happening to individuals in our society today as a result of stress. Much of it oc-curs silently inside. It ococ-curs inside the mind before it inflicts itself on others or on one’s own body. There is a way out. You can start by learning to balance yourself, day-to-day, by using your heart computer—your higher intelligence. As you practice, you will discover that there is a place beyond suffering. You begin to see clearly that you can choose how you react to any situation in life.
Nine years ago, my higher intelligence began to in-still in me a sense of purpose. I was exploring the pristine energies of the universe (the heavenly worlds) and deeply wished that I could convey the feeling of love I felt there to this world. There is no density, no stress or strain; there is a freedom that you can hardly imagine. There is a peace
—that became my mission. “Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards Men.” Through the hidden power of the heart, it really is possible to bring the peace of heaven to earth.
As you learn to manage your day-to-day stress, you will find your next level of peace. Peace is the opposite of stress. Those two frequencies—peace and stress—cannot live in the same place as they cancel each other out. It is each individual’s choice. The game of life is a game with you and you. You can heart empower yourself, once you know how. You can stress your life. It starts with de-stressing the simple, ordinary day-to-day hassles.
Spend a little time quieting your mind and asking yourself, “During the course of a day, week or month, do I accumulate more stress or more peace?” To recap:
Start to recognize your mental and emotional response patterns. Observe and identify whether your response to stressors is from the heart or from head reactions. See where head reactions take you. Evaluate whether they are efficient or inefficient expenditures of your energy, and then self-correct. Access your heart intelligence and apply what your own heart tells you to do—in your atti-tudes, your understandings, your communications with others and your actions. With self-management you can achieve real peace and inner security in a stressful world.
Higher and Lower Heart Frequencies