Is Your Glass Too full?
Are you too busy? Have you ever had a bad brain day? Are you stuck in a fog and can't seem to get your brain to function? Are you depressed, sad or anxious?
You might ask, "What's wrong with me? I just don't feel like myself.”
Maybe your glass is too full?
Are you trying to find ways to simplify your life? I know I always am. For me, if I have too many commitments, I become overwhelmed and stressed. Our health and happiness are affected greatly by stress and it is everywhere and affects us all. Symptoms of stress may become apparent during busy times at work, when paying bills, or when coping with a challenging relationship. While a little stress is OK—some stress is actually beneficial (I know I thrive on a little stress to get things done.) Too much stress can wear us down and make us sick, both mentally and physically. Our glass has become too full. Our brain begins to see the world, “Dismal colored glasses.”
In the middle of one of these "My glass is too full days," I ran across the following which helped me tremendously to see both the problem and the solution..
Ask yourself "Is my glass too full?" If it is, you feel worried, stressed, overwhelmed, and generally in bad health. I find when I am overworked or over-scheduled, the outside world starts to affect my brain negatively which controls my body, and so, the body does not run very well. This includes our digestion which scientists have found doesn't work well under stressful conditions. Our glass has become too full.
Author and youth mentor, Alexander Crawford wrote in his blog about a Harvard Professor of Psychology who was teaching his students about stress management. The professor held a glass full of water above his head hand asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?"
The students were baffled, thinking he was going to talk about the glass being half full or half empty. "The actual weight doesn't matter," he said. "What really matters is how long I've been holding it. If I hold it for just a minute it feels very light. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a whole day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. Any longer than that and I will be very tempted to give up and drop it. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn't change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."
The students were blown away by the simplicity yet truth of this lesson.
The professor continued, "The stresses and worries in life are like this glass of water. Carry them for only a short while and they are manageable. Worry about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. If we think about them all day long, or longer, we can begin to feel paralyzed and hopeless - incapable of concentrating or focusing on anything else."
The professor reminded his students that it is important to remember to let go of your worries whenever possible. Put all of your burdens down and don't carry them throughout the day. This can be easier said than done in most cases, he emphasized, but in many cases it's actually quite easy if we're mindful of ourselves.
Charles Schmidt, an award winning scientific journalist, wrote in an article on mental health, that our brain is connected to our digestion. Bad digestion may be linked to depression, anxiety and psychosis. Scientists are increasingly convinced that the accumulation of "poisonous" substances in our intestines may have a negative impact on our state of mind and our health. Most of us are so used to being overworked, we often don't know when we are suffering until we are at the breaking point and our health has begun to decline. At this point the glass has become too heavy.
If you think your glass has become "too full", and you feel overwhelmed and might want to lighten your heavy load, here are a few suggestions you might want to try:
Simplify your life - Learn to say "no" when people ask you to do things that you instinctively know will put you on overload. Like going to a party, babysitting a friends child, or cooking dinner for a group of people.
Take a nap - preferably in a nice hammock with an even nicer breeze somewhere near the water.
Meditate - There are always good times to find your center and work on your breathing. It helps.
Take a walk in nature - For me, there is nothing more calming that walking in the woods with my dog Dickens playing ahead of me.
Listen to calming music - It could be environmental music like waves hitting the beach or simply your favorite tunes. Play music that you know has a beneficial effect for you.
So keep that image of holding a glass up in the air for long periods of time and then think about what is causing you stress at the moment. You need to stop holding that glass up, and the only way to do that is to reduce the stress in your life. Be ruthless with your intention to reduce this stress. Let it go. Most of stress is manufactured by our own minds and as we all know our minds can work overtime. When this happens we can develop serious health issues. Let it go. Seriously, let it go and take a deep breath. No matter what it is, or how important you thought it was, getting rid of stress is a giant step towards recovery.
