IT IS HOW YOU SEE IT…!!!

After our last newsletter, we trust that you now have an idea of your stress level. Hopefully, you are keen on taking qualitative steps to begin to manage your stressors and prevent them from affecting you negatively. A major step in this direction is changing your emotional habits.

Emotional habits can be described as our individual and unique responses to life events, experiences and relationships. Our emotional habits distinguish us from one another and set us up to respond to life in our own peculiar way. These emotional habits determine how you react to stressful situations.They also explain how two people can respond to similar life experiences in totally opposite and divergent ways.

 Simply put, whether you are stressed or not stressed about a situation is a direct result of your personal emotional habits.

PERCEPTION is an example of an emotional habit that influences your reaction and response to stress. It is how you see the world. Perception is also a direct result of your thought pattern.  These thought patterns produce an emotional response that can potentially trigger the release of stress hormones.

It may be hard to believe, but your perception is at the root of a very high percentage of all the stress your body experiences. In the USA, research has shown that a person is more likely to die from a heart attack or a stroke between 9-11am on Monday morning than any other time of the week because most Americans perceive Monday morning as the most stressful time of the week.

To the body stress is stress, irrespective of the cause or the source. The body cannot tell the difference between physical causes of stress and emotional/mental causes of stress. Therefore, to manage stress effectively, you must come to grips with your perception of your life events, experiences and relationships. No matter the stressor, your perception will influence your interpretation of it and ultimately its effect on you.

Human perception is an individual experience that can be modified and tweaked so that what you “see” is a healthy experience, not a negative, destructive force. Like the saying goes, “one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.” In fact, e-bay exists because what is perceived as useless to one person is often of great value to another.

Though you may not be able to control your stressor, you can determine its effect on you.  You can control your reaction and your response by “seeing” the world around you differently; looking for the silver lining in every life experience and not sweating what you cannot change.

Life is how you choose to see it. It is your perspective that counts for you.

Best Regards,

Chiadi Ndu

& all us @ BTH WELLNESS AND THERAPY

Remember the body keeps the score!!