HOW STRESSED ARE YOU? : Check Your Unconscious Barometer
What if you had a way to measure your stress levels, with a tool so accurate that you could forecast stormy conditions ahead, and be able to change the course of your life to drift in calmer conditions? That would be empowering, would it not?
Well, this tool exists in all of us. It’s your unconscious mind. The essence of who you are.
It is your barometer, constantly sending out messages to let you know what you will have to weather in your life.
Most people nowadays say they are stressed. How do they know that? It’s all relative really. Stress is the problem presented and how well you are able to deal with it. Therefore the more tools you have at your disposal, the more you are able to tolerate.
Having a flexible body and flexible mind allows you to bend further in strong winds instead of breaking. Knowing how to read your barometer can forecast the weather ahead.
This awareness allows you to be
- Empowered
- Assertive
- Confident
- Calm
- Flexible in mind and body
- More value to yourself and others
- Live in optimal health
HOW TO READ YOUR BAROMETER
The basic signs and symptoms of stress are aches and pains in the body, overweight or underweight, headaches, sciatic pain, digestive, respiratory problems, anxiety.
Just as the weather barometer hanging on your wall gives you accurate readings of what to expect, so you know what to wear, or if you would be wise to take an umbrella with you, the severity of your stress signs allows you to forecast ahead, and control the direction.
We have a range that is acceptable, and outside this range, we need to pay attention. So, let’s use weight as an example. Our health can tolerate say plus or minus a few kilos but any more than this and problems start to show. If you have put on a few kilos, and know it’s time to do something, you can steer yourself back to health easily.
Should you choose to ignore these signs, your unconscious mind increases the symptoms with more weight to alert you. The more you journey into the storm the greater the increase in alarms. Maybe blood pressure, joint pain, diabetes, etc. The point here is, the earlier you can read the signs, the more empowered you are to change course and avoid further complications.
You may think aches and pains in the body are normal due to age, genetics. As we know, they are not normal, they are common, and due more to poor lifestyle choices like sedentary lives and inflexibility. Those aches and pains are messages from your unconscious mind, your barometer telling you that if you do the things to make me more flexible, I’ll go away and stop hurting you.
You also have your emotional barometer. We have emotions that we should be experiencing most of the time, being happiness, joy, love, gratitude etc. The more time we spend with these emotions, is our forecast for smooth sailing. When the opposite feelings like anger, hate, jealousy surface, it’s time to sit up and take notice. Nobody would put themselves into these states by choice, so know your unconscious barometer is alerting you that what you’re doing isn’t working, to change course, to avoid worse things.
The common approach in dealing with signs of stress is to run, hoping they will just go away. That’s because we don’t like them, they make us feel uncomfortable, scared even. When you run toward them and be thankful that you are being given early warning, then they soon become you best friends.
Check in with your barometer regularly, empower yourself, and see if you don’t notice smoother sailing. I already know what you’ll find.
Copyright Ray Goslin
