Too Blessed to be Stressed?

Did you know that if you spell stressed backwards the word is dessert?

Do you remember when you were a child all that mattered was the fun parts and all the chores and grown-up stuff could be saved to last? As a matter of fact, we had such a look of dread written all over our faces when we were asked to come in from playing with our friends or we had to wait before we could play. So how did we get to be so important that we do not create the time to still play in our lives. Is the issue that we are more important?

We have forgotten that we are here to enjoy our journey and savor each and every day.

What if I told you I believe the issue is we have become non-important. We are so unimportant to ourselves that we have made everything and everyone more significant than we are and we have forgotten the value and necessity of desserts. Often in our society today, too many people are doing things and staying busy without fulfillment and joy. Too many people are on automatic pilot without consciously choosing to participate with decisions which are necessary in order to have a life in which in college we would have written home about. We have forgotten that we are here to enjoy our journey and savor each and every day.

We all know the mantra there is good stress and bad stress and what a brilliant way of making another reason as to why we have forgotten to enjoy our lives. Regardless of whether it is good stress or bad stress…it’s still stress and it accelerates the head chatter, the bad eating habits, the lack of sleep, and all the other elements which go with stress. We can intellectualize stress and explain what type it is yet our body still feels it and doesn’t understand why we are so out of balance with it.

How to identify a person who is overly stressed:

• They tell you in the first three sentences of connecting how busy they are.

Have you ever met a person who is enjoying her life that isn’t busy? Did you ever hear Oprah say on her daily show how busy she was and she just couldn’t believe how busy she was becoming? Absolutely not!!! Oprah and many others understand that people who are wanting to make the world a better place simply because she lived in it will always be busy. Busy is not a mantra, I am so busy, I am a martyr, how do I do it all. If you are an incredible person you are an attraction magnet and you will always have more than enough to be and do. There is a saying, “if you want to get something done, ask a busy person.”

• When you are talking to them you can tell the lights are on yet no one is at home

A warning sign that you are overstressed is when you ask someone to keep repeating what they are sharing in a conversation. There is a glazed look in your eyes and it is clear that you have left your body. The person who is in front of you is always the most important person in your life. You never know when the connection you are making will turn out to be a business adventure, a new insight, or perhaps a new friend which you will cherish forever. It is in the being present with another human being that the present is given.

• When someone over 50 does not have the energy of a youthful person

An individual who does not have vibrant energy in her life is not managing her stress and her schedule is out of balance. The desserts are not being allowed each day. As a motivational speaker, I use to tell my audience that children laugh on an average of 400 times a day while adults laugh around 15 times a day. I don’t know about you but I am not getting my laugh moments in.

So how can you effectively make a decision today to change some of your daily habits and create a greater sense of joy in your life?

Find a child and observe her and her choices.

A child is willing to talk about the chores if she knows there is plenty of playtime indoors and outdoors.

A child will eat right and “be” right if she knows there is dessert waiting at the other end.  Dessert is an important part of each and every day.

A child is in awe of each experience. The experiences are not connected. Each experience whether it is going to school, homework, playing with friends is a period of time separate from all of the other requirements of the day. Often the child will not remember the earlier parts of a day. She certainly doesn’t carry them from one experience to the other.

A child has an immense amount of energy. Each day there is more than enough energy to do all the joyful things throughout the day. A child does not ever think that what she did the day before subtracts from the energy of the next day. A child will never decide on Monday how tired she is going to be on Friday. TO her Friday is like two weeks away and she will have more energy than you can imagine when Friday finally arrives.

In my book, How to Speak Unity I discuss the gift of life.

True living means giving all that we are and have to everything we do. Life mirrors the enthusiasm and commitment we bring to it.

Life is a gift. It is given without instructions, directions, or an owner’s manual. Life is a performance with no dress rehearsal and a great symphony with very few encores.

Some people have near-death experiences, yet what if we focus more on the “near-life” experiences. True living means giving all that we are and have to everything we do. Life mirrors the enthusiasm and commitment we bring to it. Loving people live in a loving world, lonely people live in a lonely world and stressed people live in a stressful world. When we are asking life to give us something, we will receive it when we start to bring it our awareness. In other words, we get what we bring. The quality of life is not measured by the number of years but by the understanding that life happens to us by happening through us.

Make a decision to not only give yourself some “daily desserts” in your life but decide to be the dessert that your co-workers or family members need. Show them by example that life can be lived without the typical acceptance that too much stress in any direction is natural.