Do you ever find yourself rushing around until life’s no fun? Is your to-do-list longer than the distance from here to the moon? Will you turn into a purple pumpkin if you do not get it all
done? How is your blood pressure? Having any physical side effects to stress yet? Is your speech coming out faster than a sonic jet? Texting, eating, drinking, on the cell phone while driving, see the problem? Are you addicted to activity? Where’s the balance?
Breathe.
You are in control of you, not your schedule.
You are in control of you, not other people.
You are in control of you, not the situation.
If the merry-go-round of life is going too fast for you, stop and simplify. Find your balance point. It is literally a matter of life and death. The fastest way to age is to live a life of prolonged, severe stress. Stress brings on major, serious illness and death.
Everyone can push extra hard in life, for a short while, to help someone out, to rise to the occasion, or if the job demands a short but strenuous burst of energy from you. Your employer does not own the rights to your life. You do.
No one can sustain prolonged stress. The body breaks down. Your emotional self breaks down. It is not what nature intended for you on the day you were born. At first you may not associate various ailments and symptoms as stress related. Stress is not a natural state for us. Stress is not good for us, no matter how used to it we are.
How do we break out of this extremely addictive, self-destructive habit of racing through life like a chicken with its head cut off? Like changing any other habit, it is going to take 21 days to try on new habits of relaxation techniques, slow breathing exercises, body stretching, aerobic activity, walking, jogging, bike riding or swimming. You know what works for you. Give yourself breaks, that is life saving.
Take a moment to watch how nature works. Roses do not rush to bloom. They take their time. They open and unfold slowly, all in good time. Savor each moment in this life. You are here for a reason. If you fly through your life too fast, you will miss so much. We all have 24 hours in a day. How you spend it really is up to you.
It is a mistake to give everything on your agenda the same emergency intensity, as if completing each task is equivalent to putting out a fire. You are a human being, not a machine. We all know this. It is good to be reminded from time to time, not to take ourself so seriously. When you’re stressed, the first thing to go is your sense of humor. That’s a clue.
Lao Tzu once said, “Nature Does Not Hurry, Yet Everything Is Accomplished.”