Choose A Balanced StressLess Lifestyle

 by Susan Smith Jones

Stress is a major problem in modern life. Technological advances have increased the pressure to keep busy, even during leisure hours. We talk on the phone while we drive, watch TV while we read, conduct business while we listen to the radio.

We are continually over stimulated, receiving more information from TV, computers, radio and satellites than our ancestors of several generations ago ever could have imagined! This year alone you will probably make more appointments, meet more people and go more places than your grandparents did in their entire lives. All this manic rushing around creates a life filled with stress.

Given our current pace, we have little time to relax and cultivate relationships with our spouses, children, friends and nature. Is it any wonder that stress-related diseases are now on the rise? Some studies even suggest that 80-90 percent of all doctor visits are for stress-related complaints. Stress-related illness is implicated in our rapidly escalating health care costs and health problems attributed to job stress are estimated to cost U.S. businesses $150 billion every year.

I see unrelenting stress as a sickness of epidemic proportions – a “busyness” or “hurry” sickness. But you don’t have to let it overwhelm you. You can choose to slow down, relax and create a life of balance and joy. Let’s see if you can find any of these signs of “hurry” sickness in your daily life.

1. Do you eat in a rush, eat while standing or walking or eat while driving?

2. Does your busy life prevent you from spending much time at home? And when you finally get home, are you too tired to do much beyond collapse and “veg out” in front of the TV?

3. Do you routinely drive too fast, run yellow lights, constantly change lanes and jockey for position? Are you impatient with other drivers?

4. Do you talk fast, have problems communicating how you feel and lack the time to give emotional support to your family and friends?

5. Is your life so full of undone chores and responsibilities that relaxing has become almost impossible?

6. When you’re not doing something productive, do you experience anxiety and guilt?

What causes our need to rush and discount our own physical health needs? We can blame it on economics and the need to make enough money to pay for our chosen lifestyles. We can blame it on the fact that everything’s moving so fast and we have to, too. But I believe the real cause is something deeper. By crowding our schedule with “more” – more socializing, more eating, more work, more activity, more appointments – we may be trying to fill the emptiness we feel inside ourselves.

When you constantly direct your attention outward, it’s easy to lose the sense of inner wonder, calmness, balance and beauty where true happiness, joy and peace originate. By slowing down and redirecting your energies inward, not only will you train your brain to relax, you will begin to reestablish the wholesome sense of self-worth necessary to positively change your life.

Is Stress Gettingthe Best of You?

How do you know when stress is getting the best of you? According to the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide (Simon & Schuster, 1999), physical symptoms of stress include headache, heart disease (two symptoms are atherosclerosis and high blood pressure), insomnia, absence of periods in women, impotence or premature ejaculation in men, digestive tract disturbances (such as ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, gastritis, peptic and duodenal ulcers), back pain, frequent colds, shallow breathing, racing heart, herpes virus breakouts, slow wound healing and tight neck and shoulders.

Behavioral symptoms include an increase in smoking, an increase in alcohol consumption, grinding teeth, compulsive eating, an inability to get things done and bossiness. Emotional symptoms of stress include edginess, loneliness, nervousness, crying and a sense of powerlessness. Cognitive symptoms include forgetfulness, inability to make decisions, trouble thinking clearly, thoughts of escape, incessant worrying and lack of creativity.

You may not be able to change your boss’s tendency to favor weekend workdays or control the bumper-to-bumper traffic to and from work, but you do have access to some powerful stress-busting tools. The simple fact that you are perusing this magazine tells me that you may be feeling out of balance and stressed out in one or several areas of your life. As a holistic lifestyle coach and counselor for more than 30 years, I’ve worked with thousands of people around the world. I offer my clients simple, yet essential, choices to bring purpose, balance and health back into their lives. Stress may be a fact of modern life, but you don’t have to let it become your way of life. You can become the master of your life, create a lifestyle of vitality and joy and keep noisome stress to a minimum. The path to contentment is in choosing to have your life in balance.

You Can Do It Too!

Not long ago, I gave a talk in Los Angeles on StressLess Living: The Power to Be Your Best, during which I shared the essential stress-buster choices you’ll read about in my new book Be Healthy~Stay Balanced: 21 Simple Choices to Create More Joy & Less Stress. After my presentation, I went into the ladies’ room and found a woman crying. I recognized her. She had been sitting in the front row of the audience and had cried through much of my talk. Since I had no plans for the evening, I asked if she would like to join me for dinner. She was surprised by my unexpected invitation, but she smiled, wiped away a tear and nodded yes.

Melissa’s story was heartbreaking. Her husband recently had left her for a much younger woman. She was almost 100 pounds overweight, had no job, was living temporarily with her sister and needed to find a new home for herself and her children. She was so depressed she was actually considering suicide. One morning, when she was feeling at her lowest, she took a walk and noticed a flyer for my talk in the window of a natural food store. Something inside her told her she had to attend – even though she had never attended a motivational talk before.

Melissa believed in the ideas I discussed but wasn’t sure how to implement them in her life. She knew she was falling downhill, but she didn’t know how to climb back up. She wanted more than anything to turn her life around – to find a job and a decent place for her children, to lose weight and get back into shape and to live a balanced life. After listening to her story, I asked her to consider the possibility that the universe was taking everything away from her so that she could and would, for the first time in her life, put herself first. Like most women, she was so accustomed to putting everyone else’s needs before her own that she took no time for herself. She was learning the hard way that you can’t run on empty forever. She was being forced to learn that she had to take loving care of herself first, before she could nurture, love and take care of others.

I told Melissa that if she were willing to make a real commitment to do whatever it took to live her highest vision, I would be happy to work with her. For the rest of that evening, I asked her to share with me her highest vision and to answer questions like: “If you couldn’t fail and if you were living your best life – right now – what would that look like?” At the end of the evening, I wrote out a walking and meditation/prayer program that she could start the very next morning.

Over the next month, I designed a nutrition program for Melissa that included cleaning out her refrigerator and cupboards and removing all the processed (and junk) foods that didn’t align with her new vision of herself. I taught her how to shop for healthy foods and nutritional supplements, how to make fresh vegetable juices and smoothies and how to create meals that emphasized organic, natural foods. I also customized a cardio-weights-stretching routine for her she could do at home or at a gym. I also taught her how to visualize her goals and practice deep breathing and meditation. Finally, I had her purchase a Health Mate Infrared Sauna so that she could benefit from the healing power of profuse sweating brought about by taking saunas. I explained to Melissa that sweating is not only “in,” it’s been proven to be one of the healthiest things a body can do... and the easiest key to a “good sweat” is a sauna.

As it turned out, Melissa’s favorite stress release, from everything that I recommended, was taking daily infrared saunas. If you didn’t read my article, Sweating Your Way to Radiant Health, in the October 2006 issue of phenomeNEWS, I’ll summarize it here. Taking regular infrared saunas will benefit your body, mind and spirit. If you want to detoxify and rejuvenate every cell of your body, boost your immune system, look and feel years younger than your age, relieve aches and pains, lose weight and enhance metabolism, improve circulation, beautify your skin and experience an overall relaxation and feeling of well-being, then you might want to invest in your own personal Infrared Sauna. The Health Mate Sauna, known as the best in the industry, is the one that I’ve used for almost 20 years. If you would like more information on the Health Mate Sauna, please refer to my website and click on Susan’s Favorite Products, visit www.HealthMateSauna.com or call (800) 946-6001.

Melissa was an inspiration to me, her family and all of her friends. Her dedication and commitment created miraculous results. Three weeks after getting her part-time job, she applied for and was hired for a full-time job at a florist shop. Within four months she had saved enough money to move into a large, new apartment with her very happy children.

Today, Melissa is down to her ideal weight, works out regularly, frequents natural food stores and manages the florist shop. She now lives with a sense of freedom, control and power over her life. She learned, firsthand, that breakthroughs and miracles occur when you are willing to live a balanced life – one that minimizes stress and maximizes joy.

As Melissa learned, choosing to live a balanced, stressless life, one filled with vibrant health, means much more than just feeling fine. It’s about body, mind and spirit working as one – harmoniously. It’s hard to celebrate life when you’re totally stressed out or when you’re burdened with aches and pains, lethargy, obesity, heart disease, cancer, arthritis and the other prevalent diseases and ailments of our society. In my decades in holistic health, I have seen thousands of people markedly improve their well-being and enrich their lives through the simple lifestyle and behavior changes.

But for now, please give this some thought: What changes can you make in your life today, this week and this month that will put you on the path to looking and feeling great in 2008? And what can you do in the next hour that will make a positive difference in how you feel. Choose to take action now!

© Susan Smith Jones, PhD is an internationally renowned motivational speaker, frequent radio/TV talk show guest, culinary instructor, holistic lifestyle coach, anti-aging counselor and author of 17 books, including “The Healing Power of NatureFoods” & “Health Bliss” (2-book Hay House series) and “Be Healthy~Stay Balanced: 21 Simple Choices to Create More Joy & Less Stress.” To order her Hay House book series, call (800) 654-5125 PT (M-F). To learn more about Susan and her work or to order any of her other books and audio programs , please visit: www.PagingSusan.com and www.SusanSmithJones.com.