WEEK ONE
We welcome you to our 30-Day Challenge for less stress and better health! Over the next 4 Mondays, we will offer you some information and questions that can be your beginning to decreased stress levels and increased health! At the end of the 4th week, we will offer a brief online course that will tie the 4 weeks together and allow you to deepen the experience. Let’s begin:
Stress, Self and Better Health: Expectations
It has been known for all of time that stress leads to illness and injury. Today our media reports that stress is the leading influence for illness. There can be physical, chemical and emotional stressors. The physical stressors can be injuries, working out, sunburn, etc. Chemical stressors can be unhealthy food, medications, petrolatum products, pollution, etc. Finally, emotional stressors are anything that evokes the fear-based emotions (versus the love-based emotions). Consequently, if we have great nutrition, awareness of our body, and live in an absence of fear we will not experience the impact of stress!! Let’s get real. Most Americans cannot say that is their life. So, what can we do to begin decreasing the stress in our lives?
The physical and chemical stressors are the easiest to implement change. Once you identify where the stressors lie, you can, one by one, eliminate most of them. For example, you can hire a nutritionist (for healthier foods) or install a water treatment system (for water without chemicals) or work with a physician who has a holistic practice (to eliminate medications) etc. The emotional stressors are more difficult mostly because they are not tangible and are fear-based (and no one likes fear!). So, this series will address the emotional stressors more so than the others.
This week we are going to address expectations. Expectations are inherent in almost all emotional stress. Expectations are those thoughts or comments that are from someone or somewhere else and do not match your inner desires. They are an external frame of reference. Even if you think you are placing expectations on your self, you are truly using expectations that others had put upon you. Otherwise, you would have personal goals.
Let me give you an example. If I get home at the end of the day and I look at the dishes in the sink and I think, “Wow, I really should wash all those dishes,” then, I am thinking I need to wash the dishes because someone told me I should. Should is word that represents the expectation. If, however, I walk into the house and I see the dishes in the sink and I say to myself, “I’d really like to clean his dishes and make myself a dinner tonight,” or, maybe I say, “Ah, I’ll clean the dishes in the morning when I awaken. Either of the last two sentences is going to be closer to the way I feel inside. Maybe they both are. But as soon as I think I “should” do something or I “need” to do something, then I have switched from a personal goal or desire to an external expectation.
There is one glitch!! In the “workplace” and competitive sports there are going to be inherent expectations. That is because of the external structure and that it is that structure that dictates the outcome or bottom line. Once you become aware of expectations within yourself, you then will learn how to separate those that are inherent in the structure and those that are personally affecting you. It is at that point you will learn to balance the external structure with your internal personal being.
So, here’s the challenge for this week. I want you to become very aware of when and how often you say or think the following words or phrases:
You can do this by putting a rubber band on your wrist and popping it each time you hear yourself say or think any of those words or phrases. You can also keep a little notepad (or tape a piece of paper to the desk) and make a mark every time one of those words or phrases comes in language or thought.
Second, I would like you to be identify if the expectations are of you or another.
Third, I would like you to become very aware of those words or phrases in others around you. Who, around you, expresses expectations the most?
Go forth!! Enjoy your challenge!!
