The law of attraction states, “Where your attention goes your energy flows.” You attract that which you are and that which you concentrate upon. If you are negative, you draw in and experience negativity. If you are loving you draw in and experience love. You can attract to you only those qualities you possess. So if you want peace and harmony in your life, you must become peaceful and harmonious.
13. Accept that what is, is.
There are things you can change in life and things you can’t change. To accept what is, is to accept unalterable realities as they are without wasting mental or physical energy attempting to change what you can’t. It is your resistance to what is that causes your suffering and your stress.
The Serenity Prayer says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
This doesn’t mean to passively accept life. What you have the potential to change go ahead and change. But recognize that there are also things you can do nothing about.
14. Develop conscious detachment.
There is attached mind and detached mind. Attached mind means your state of mind is always changing from positive to negative as outside conditions change. This is extreme fluctuation from happiness and joy, down through neutral to your emotional basement: stress, depression, anger, and agitation.
The goal is to develop detached mind. This means your state of mind fluctuates only from positive to neutral as outside conditions change. You accept all the warmth and joy and happiness that life has to offer while detaching from negativity by allowing it to flow through you without affecting you.
You detach out of wisdom, not repression. Sure, if you feel angry, hostile or resentful, you’ll have to express it, or the emotions will erupt in another way. But as you begin to see the logic of detachment your negative emotions will be less likely to emerge in response to situations.
Detached mind is based upon two points of logic: 1) If you get upset, you will program your subconscious mind negatively, which will generate more negativity in your future. In other words you simply make matters worse; and 2) If you are resisting
what is, you are wasting your energy, because you want something, or somebody, to be different than they are. It won’t happen, so why become stressed about something you can’t change?
A problem does not have to be eliminated to be resolved. Often a better solution is a change in viewpoint. When you are no longer affected by a problem, you no longer have a problem, although nothing may have outwardly changed.
What other people say or do, other than physical violence, does not affect you. Only what you think about what they say or do affects you. Why allow another person’s problem to create a problem within you? Let’s say the person closest to you is often warm and loving, and you enjoy these times, but this person can also be selfish and self- centered. During those times you consciously detach and let the negativity flow through you without affecting you. It is that person’s right to be grouchy, and it is your right not to be affected. Nothing about the situation has changed except the way you view it.
15. Express unconditional love.
This doesn’t mean romantic love. It means the acceptance of other people as they are without judgment, without expectations, and without blame. It means to be compassionate and caring. Love is letting go of fear, letting go of delusions.
Fear is a big word. All disturbances between human beings, large or small, are rooted in fear. Fear means all the negative emotions such as anger, selfishness, jealousy, prejudice, hate, repression, envy, possessiveness, greed, anxiety, guilt, insecurity, depression, inhibitions, vanity, malice, resentment, blame, et cetera. Imagine being free of fear-based emotions.
Learn to respond to others with compassion and a tranquil mind. The more you can live and let live the less stressed out you will be. Detach from negativity and you become more physically relaxed, emotionally calm, mentally focused and spiritually aware. You will begin to feel centered and serene, at peace with yourself, the world, and everyone in it. Realize that you deserve love and happiness, and to give love is to receive love.
16. Use breathing techniques
to immediately unstress.
Use this technique of diaphragm breathing as a quick-fix technique to immediately unstress. You can do it in your car, your office or walking down the street. Just take a very deep breath and hold it in as long as you comfortably can. Then let the breath out through slightly parted lips, and when you think the breath is all the way out, contract your stomach muscles, and push it even further and further out. Then repeat the process. Within a few minutes you will find that you have greatly reduced your stress level.
17. Use self-hypnosis
Daily use of self-hypnosis mind programming will support your goal of reducing stress. The final chapter tells you how.