"Did anybody die?" A positively healthy question.

I read a great book years ago called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff….and it’s all small stuff by Richard Carlson. One of the great things I learned from the book was that most of the time we cause our own stress. Now that doesn’t mean that someone else didn’t start the stress initially it’s more that we keep feeding it and making it grow. The important thing to remember is most stress is really a matter of how you look situtations and the things happening around us not really what happened.

Most stress starts as just a moment in time but it is how we react to that moment where the stress comes in. Remember you are in charge of how you react, you and you alone.  You can choose to make the situation something big or something small. How long you react to the situation is also under your control. The big question to ask is whether there is another way to look at the situation that would make it less stressful.

I have already told you that I am a pile person and while I really love it when my house is clean with everything neat and tidy I also hate defeatist jobs. Housekeeping has got to be one of the most defeatist jobs in the world and my house shows it. Just as soon as you finish the mess begins again. If your children are like mine their rooms always look as though a bomb has gone off. I drove myself crazy trying to motivate and make them clean their rooms. Then one day I realized that I was the only one getting stressed about it, none of my children were. Was I creating my own stress? I gave that a lot of thought and I realized I was. From that day forward I  decided to look at their rooms differently. Then one day I realized that God had created doors. I walked over to one of the bedroom doors and closed it. It was a miricle, in an instant the room was clean. Then I walked to the next door and the same thing happened. Doors closed, problem solved, stress gone.

I have a saying I use all the time when looking at situations when stress starts to creep in. I ask myself, “Did anybody die?” If the answer is no then I know that it could not have been too important. This helps ground me and remember what is really important in my life. No one dies because the grass didn’t get mowed or the bathroom cleaned. Sometimes that cannot be said of a friend you have put off visiting or spending time with. Are you putting things off because of how you view the world around you? How much of your stress could you eliminate by looking at things differently? Stop reacting to your stress and start controlling it by making positively healthy choices everyday!