How to Use Positive Affirmations for Stress Relief

All of us have stress in our lives at some point every day. The paradox of being human is that we have both a need for certainty that everything is going to be all right, and a need for variety so that we don’t get bored when everything is going perfectly well at every moment of our lives.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”

Being humans we will make mistakes because perfection is reserved for the Divine. Sometimes those mistakes cause us stress beyond what we think we can bear. But there exists a simple tool that is free and available to everyone that can help alleviate the stress of daily life and help you find a bit of peace. This tool is affirmations.

Affirmations are short, positive statements that your repeat out loud or silently in your head like a mantra. The idea is that you keep repeating these positive statements so that they will eventually sneak past the defenses of your conscious mind and seep into your subconscious mind that takes any kind of direction it is given.

You can find lots of free affirmations in books. The Christian Bible is full of verses that can be used as affirmations such as:

• I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. [Philippians 4:13]
• I can trust the Lord with all of my heart, and I will not lean on my own understanding. [Proves 3:5,6]
• God has not given me a spirit of fear, but a spirit of love, power and a sound mind. [II Timothy 1:7]
• The Lord will be faithful to complete the good work He began in me. [Philippians 1:6]
• I will delight myself in You, oh Lord. You give me the desires of my heart. [Psalms 37:5]

You can create your own affirmations according to whatever challenges you might be facing. This is actually quite powerful because you are changing the way you respond to a stressful situation. For example, if something occurs in your life that you might at first perceive as a calamity, take a few breaths and step back before you react. Assess the situation from all available angles and see if there might be a different way of viewing the situation. Create a positive affirmation: “Everything is working out in my favor,” or you might say, “I always have everything I need,” or “I am filled with health, vigor and vitality.”

As you are reciting your positive affirmations, your conscious mind is striking them down as soon as you voice them. You might say, “I am full of confidence.” and your inner-critic will respond with, “You will never amount to anything.” Simply ignore that negative voice and keep repeating your affirmations. It can be helpful to listen to a recording of affirmations that you can play on an .mp3 player with headphones. You can set your affirmations to play on a continuous loop in the background while you do other tasks during the day or as your drift off to sleep at night.

If you’d like a recording of positive affirmations, sign up for our newsletter, the Stress Free Mind Journal and you can download a free .mp3 recording called, ‘Affirmations for Anxiety,’ a short, five minute program that you can listen to whenever you need to relax and de-stress quickly during the day.

The great thing about affirmations is that they are incredibly empowering. When you get into the habit of using them you quickly realize the power you have to transform your life. Try using affirmations today and see what happens for you.

Celebrate Earth Day: Manage Stress by Embracing Nature

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, it’s a great opportunity for you to indluge yourself a little bit and find a way to get out in nature as a way to relax and manage the stress in your life. If your life is harried and stressful and your first response is, “But I don’t have time!” you really need to take a break.

You might wonder what good it will do you to get out and embrace nature, so I’m going to tell you. Being outdoors in the fresh air where you can jest relax and let down can be very calming. Even if the closest you can get to nature is the corner of a city park, or the potted plants in the atrium of your building, that will do.

If you can’t escape to the woods, take a moment to appreciate our beautiful earth. Watch a nature video and meditate on the beauty and complexity of life on this planet. Take slow, deep cleansing breaths and focus on a particular plant. Then bring your focus to a single leaf or flower. Peer into the leaf or the petals of the flower. Witness the delicate beauty and be grateful for this moment.

If you are fortunate enough to be able to get out in the woods, or even for a walk in the park, take you shoes off and let your feet and your toes come in direct contact with the earth. If the sun is out, feel it shining on your face as you wriggle your toes in the grass or the soil. Feel a deep connection between yourself that goes deep, down into the center of the earth. Let your love and gratitude travel deep down into the earth and feel that gentle tugging sensation from the magnetic field at the center of the earth. You are grounded with the earth and you can feel a solid connection. You are standing in between earth and sky.

Sit and meditate or just do some slow, mindful breathing. Listen to the birds singing. Maybe you can hear a dog barking or children laughing. Embrace everything about this moment. Bask in the glow of this feeling of bliss and contentment. Wrap that energy up and carry it with you for the rest of the day. If something comes up that is threatening to steal your joy, let your mind travel back to those moment of bliss. Breathe deep and remember the smell of the earth, and the feel of the cool, damp grass on your bare toes and let the angst simply melt away.

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7 Tips for Natural Stress Relief

It has been said that the only constant in this life is change, but change often causes a lot of stress in our lives. Do you ever wish that you could find a way to not let things get to you so much?

Well, here are 7 quick tips for stress and anxiety relief that you can try wherever you are:

1. Breath
Our breath is what reminds us that we are alive. It is the vehicle for spirit and the perfect way to anchor our attention in the present moment. Using deep, mindful, cleansing breaths is a stress relief technique that works every time to snap you out of a downward spiral.

2. Meditation
Whether you use silent meditation where you simply focus your attention on the breath, or a guided mediation where you listen to a voice that is guiding you to find your center and your connection between mind, body and spirit, incorporating a meditation practice into your daily routine will reduce stress in your life in a tangible, measurable way almost immediately.

3. Affirmations
Repeating affirming phrases, like a mantra, can be very soothing to the mind and the body. Whether said out loud or inside your head, phrases such as, “I am calm. I am at peace. All is well,” will help you to feel more serene and centered.

4. Diet
Cut back or eliminate sugary, refined foods from your diet and adding in lots of living foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, water and tea instead of sugary soft drinks, and taking vitamin and mineral supplements helps your body attain a state of optimal health so that you have the energy and vitality to deal with the challenges you face each day.

5. Prayer
If you believe in the existence of a higher power, prayer is the ultimate stress relief technique because through prayer we acknowledge that we are relying on the strength that we receive from Source or the Universe to help us to overcome the stressful challenges of each day.

6. Gratitude
Expressing sincere gratitude for life and for all that we have is the gateway to abundance, peace and joy. Gratitude creates more space in our lives, and it communicates to the Universe and our Creator that we are thankful for what we have and that we are open to receive more. It’s impossible to feel stressed-out and full of gratitude at the same time.

7. Forgiveness
Nobody’s perfect, so forgiveness is the gift that we give to others that wipes the slate clean giving them another chance to get it right. It’s also a wonderful gift to give ourselves.

In this crazy, busy world, it’s so important to learn ways to relieve stress naturally so that its effects do not begin to take a toll on our health and vitality.

Dealing With Stress Doesn’t Need To Be Stressful

Stress is a blight on many people’s lives, and if left unchecked it can contribute to, aggravate and even cause a plethora of health problems, from the irritating to the downright dangerous. No-one lets stress develop through their own personal choice – we would all much rather have a serene lifestyle – or if not that, at least one where the rocky periods were self-inflicted and even invited upon us by ourselves, like parachuting or ski-jumping. But no-one wants to just sit there and invite stress upon themselves, because it is destructive and unpleasant to live with.

If you devote a little bit of time to washing stress away, it never needs to build into something that can infringe upon your life. There are numerous ways of dealing with the everyday stresses that you can do without spending much money – in some cases they are in fact completely free – and the great thing about them is that you can fit them into your everyday routine so that they become habitual. This is obviously advantageous, because relying on one thing to cure your stress can lead to a lot of artificial pressure – which is one sure-fire recipe for lots more stress.

Think about things that help you relax. It could be something as simple as a nice, cool glass of water, or a good book – ideally not a thriller or anything where good guys chase bad guys and things blow up – but the main thing is that is something that takes you away from the things that are causing your stress. There are simple breathing exercises that you can do that really make you feel like you are breathing stress away and bringing in positive energy and relaxation.

The most important thing about an anti-stress technique or product is that it fits seamlessly into your life. If you are going to a lot of trouble or moving things around in your home life in order to chase away stress, the chances are that you will build up stress in doing so, and the frustration of that just means more anxiety.

Enjoy A Little Bit Of Music

If stress is a major problem for you, then the chances are that it infringes upon so much of your everyday life that you feel like there is no escape. It is a horrible way to live, not feeling sure about how you can address the problem, while it continues to accumulate and make everything that little bit less pleasant. It can come to you even when you are having fun, and once it is in it does not go away, sticking around to annoy you and unravel the good time you were having. Getting rid of stress is doubly difficult because – as with most things that limit your enjoyment of life – you need to address it, and addressing a problem can be stressful in itself.

More and more people are approaching stress with a method that has been passed down through the ages – meditation. Although the very use of the word will have people thinking about esoteric approaches with the use of joss sticks, scented candles, chanting and the like, it doesn’t have to be that way. Though those are popular ways to approach meditation, and they work for many, meditation is really about what works for you. It is, in the main, about finding some peace and quiet among all the frantic rushing and pressures of life.

Music is a good accompaniment to meditation. It has its place in any relaxing context, but as with anything else, it needs to fit in. No matter how much you might enjoy the occasional guitar solo, or the Wagnerian opening strains of a classical concerto, they can be unsuited to a relaxing situation. The best music for meditation is something light, unhurried and familiar. While some people favor ambient noise or New Age, chant-based music, it is perfectly acceptable to have something folky and acoustic if that is what works for you. Try and think of the beat of a song as being like the beat of your heart. Too fast and there’s no way you will relax. Slow and gentle and everything will seem a lot more serene.