America’s New Breed of Freedom Fighters: Law of Attraction Guide for Democrats, 3rd edition by Evelyn Roberts Brooks - HTML preview

26. ZAP YOUR STRESS

Here is a lesson from a program I created a few years back called "Zap Your Stress"—I produced it when I saw that so many people were totally zonked by the housing market downturn and financial crash of 2008. Even though I experienced the shock of a financial hit, I knew that I could help others make the best of the bad situation by moving out of the negativity of focusing on the problem and into the kind of thinking that would create solutions and recovery.

Years ago, a minister named Frederick W. Robertson said, "No one can be great, or good, or happy except through the inward efforts of themselves."

Robertson was born nearly 200 years ago in England. You may not be familiar with his name, but during his relatively brief lifetime – he only lived 37 years – he had a famous ministry at Holy Trinity Church in Brighton, England. His sermons attracted throngs of people in all classes of society and with all shades of religious belief. He had a great insight into the principles of how to lead a spiritual life, and that's what intrigues me about him.

In a recently published book about Robertson's life, his biographer, Christina Beardsley, said that thousands of people found in his sermons "a living source of impulse, a practical direction of thought, a key to many of the problems of theology, and above all a path to spiritual freedom."

Do you feel enslaved by your anxiety and stress?

Are you ready to leap onto a path of freedom?

You may have heard the saying "happiness is an inside job" – but it's easy to repeat platitudes and proverbs, and not know how to put them into practical use in your life. When you are overwhelmed with too much going on all at once, and one crisis after another comes at you from every direction, the big challenge is usually just getting through the day without cracking up.

Who has time for a lot of serious thinking and introspection? Your mind is probably flooded with nonstop worries.

Stop focusing on all the bad stuff going on in your life – you may have studied the Law of Attraction, and if so you already know that the secret to attracting the great things you want in life is to stop paying so much attention to everything that's going wrong.

When you feel frustrated, irritated and discouraged, it's usually because you are resisting reality. Something in your life or in the behavior of people around you isn't going the way you want, but instead of accepting it, you keep slamming your head against it, determined to make things go your way.

The result? Lots of tension and stress.

By learning to pay attention to our emotions, we gain insight into our thought patterns. From there, we can examine what our beliefs are. That's an important part of being able to release stress, because when our results are being driven by hidden beliefs, then we have no control over the outcome in our everyday world.

Once we recognize the disempowering beliefs, we change them by steadily affirming what we do want to believe about ourselves. A simple method is to use a tool created by Benjamin Franklin called the "T-Square"—no, it's not the t-shaped ruler you would find at an office supply store, although that is what it resembles.

Take a plain piece of paper, then draw a line across the page about an inch from the top of the paper. Draw a vertical line down from the horizontal bar to the bottom of the page, making a large "T" on your paper.

On the cross bar, write the issue you're having the most trouble with. Or you might want to just write "MY LIFE TODAY" and use the page to list all the issues that have you feeling stressed.

On the left-hand column of the page, make a bullet list with a brief description of each problem you are trying to handle. Then in the right-hand area, write the polar opposite of each problem next to it.

Realize that the items on the left side of the page are actually affirmations that you are inadvertently repeating day after day by putting your attention on problems.

Affirm instead the beautiful outcome you desire on the right hand side of the page, and understand that while you may need a transition time for getting yourself out of a financial problem, for example, it can also happen very quickly, as with a phone call out of the blue where someone offers to purchase a car you thought you'd never be able to sell.

Expect miracles in your life, and they will come.