My big 3 insights around work stress that has reduced stress significantly in myself and my clients are:

 

1. Inside-out:

 

It can look like we catch stress in the office or around certain people, we take it home and then need a remedy to de-stress from the day.

 

Stress seems to follow us around.

 

I once spent three months in Argentina to run away from all my stress, and annoyingly, I was still stressed and anxious. Different “stressors” but still stressed because I didn't really understand the inside-out nature of our experience.

 

I've had financial stress disappear from one day to the next, while the number in my bank account was unchanged. I've been unhappy with my life, only to wake up the next day full of joy.

 

Stress doesn't come from outside of us, but inside. We create and carry stress in our mind. The saying “wherever you go, you take yourself with you” is something I really understood in Argentina.

 

I love listening to polymaths and scientists question reality. Is it an illusion? Do we really see reality as it is? Or, as Donald Hoffman PhD believes, is it our mind that constructs reality for us.

 

2. Thought-feeling connection

 

Our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings create our experience. We don't often catch our thoughts, but our feelings tell us what's on our mind.

 

This was really important for me to see.

 

I can be in a good or bad mood in any environment, in any circumstance and with anyone. My mood is not changed by what's outside of me.

 

When we're feeling peace, compassion, contentment and joy, our mind is in its perfect and natural state.

 

When we feel down, low, insecure, worried, angry or stressed, then our thinking is off track. In this way, our emotions inform us of our thinking, not our progress in life.

 

All emotions are normal.

 

3. Don’t dwell

 

When I get stuck replaying conversations or events, over-analysing “what-if”s, and getting lost in negative thoughts and worry – it creates stress, lowers my mood and I’m further away from my mind's perfect and natural state of peace.

 

Some of the best advice I've ever received: the best you can, leave your thinking alone. Let it go, or let it settle.  

 

Stop trying to fix your life in your noisy mind. Or prevent something you made up from happening.

 

Have you noticed how work challenges create stress on some days but not others?