Can You “Take It Easy”?

I’ve been talking about numerous ways to reduce stress and one of them is to take time out to smell the roses.  I’ve said it before, if you are too busy working yourself to death then that is how you’ll end up.  We need to force ourselves to take breaks in life just as we should take them at work or play.  I’ve mentioned before that athletes don’t expect to play every minute of every team sport.  They all take time to set on the bench and cool off or wind down for at least a few minutes every game.

Stress prevention is much more effective than dealing with it.  And again, it is better to choose how you are going to deal with stress in advance than to have to figure out how to deal with it when it is staring you in the face.  This doesn’t mean setting anything in concrete, it just means you have thought through most situations ahead of time so when they do pop up, you have a good idea of how to deal with them.  You aren’t blindsided by them, but you choose to deal with things as they come up and don’t worry about what might happen.

When you have planned to do something remember what Proverbs 16:9 says “In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.” or “Man plans; God laughs!”  Not everything will go according to plan, no matter how hard we try to make it so.  With the above in mind, we must not take things so seriously that we become stressed out if God laughs at our efforts.  If possible be somewhat flexible and allow things to happen a little differently than you had planned.  Taking it easy will allow you to go with the flow a little more so than if you are rigid about life.

If you don’t allow change you will likely have a lot more stress in your life.  Change is the one thing that is constant so we must choose to accept change in our lives.

Gossip is something else that leads to stress for us.  If we are constantly talking about what someone else did then we will be looking for things they did that we don’t agree with leading to more stress in OUR lives.  Taking it easy in this case would mean minding our own business and not spreading other people’s business around as though it were ours.  If we refuse to gossip and to listen to gossip then we can eliminate another possible source of stress.

As I’ve said before - don’t sweat the small stuff; and remember that it is all small stuff.  Try to find out how the small stuff fits in the big picture and you will see it doesn’t affect the big picture much.  Taking it easy also means spending time thinking about the big picture so you know what is important to you and what can be ignored because it is “all small stuff!”

Try to “Take It Easy” and read some material on Managing Stress available HERE!