Over the last six months, how much has stress cost you in:
Alcohol?
Therapy?
Coffee?
Cigarettes?
Binge shopping?
Anonymous sex?
Medications?
Recreational drugs?
Missed appointments?
Lost job opportunities?
Sick days?
When you stop to consider the actual toll stress is taking in terms of time, money, energy, and self-respect, it seems unimaginable that you wouldn't want to take steps to effectively minimize it.
Research shows that over 90% of illness is based on lifestyle and stress, not genetics.
That said, there are 3 types of stress:
Physical - injuries, accidents, falls, etc.
Chemical - flu, bacterial infections, blood sugar levels, hangovers, etc.
Emotional - family tragedies, single parenting, financial worries, etc.
And it's categorized as acute stress, episodic acute stress, or chronic stress based on frequency.
The type of stress I'm referring to in this post is chronic emotional stress.
It will wreak havoc on your mind and body because stress hormones shut down the immune system.
And it's a scientific fact that the long-term effects of the hormones of stress downregulate genes to create disease.
By definition, stress is "a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances."
In other words, it means to become tense, anxious, or worried.
Tense, anxious, and worried are all different words to describe fear.
So, "stress" is usually a code word for "fear."
Therefore, fear is the primary source of the stress hormones (cortisol, epinephrine, etc.) and the cause of the healthcare crisis that the World Health Organization was referring to when they declared "Stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century" nearly a decade ago.
So, if you want to minimize your chronic emotional stress, you must minimize your fear.
To minimize your fear, you must change your beliefs and habits.
Otherwise, fear will continue to fuel your suffering and you'll continue to trade your time, money, energy, and self-respect to run from it.