Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 55 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

Turn Stress into Success

Thank you for joining us for our 7 day a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 55 of our Trek and, as we consume the daily nuggets of wisdom, we need to apply that wisdom to know and understand ourselves better. As we looked at yesterday, the proper management of stress, not the stress itself, is paramount. As we grow in wisdom, we will learn the lessons needed to manage our stress proactively before it causes illness or death. Today we will learn how to move from "Stress to Success."

We are recording our podcast from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. We are getting ready for our large yard sale, which will be the same day as this podcast is originally released. My plan today was to actively assist in organizing and preparing but during the day, I was not able to. Instead, the software technical support that I provide for one client filled the entire day. I am very thankful that I have the skills and opportunity to be utilized in this manner, but as we learned yesterday, when our expectations and plans are stifled it generally results in one outcome…

Stress!

Stress is a normal part of contemporary busy lifestyles.We all have our share. Ignore it, and it will take years off your life. Accept it and deal with it creatively, and you too can turn your stress into success.

How can you do this?

First: Realize that some stress is actually helpful. It provides you motivation. For instance, if it weren't for the stress of having to pay your bills, you may not want to go to work.

Second: Be aware that stress is only troublesome when it continues for too long or if there is too much of it at one time.

I read recently about a ten-ton bridge that had been serving a community very well for over fifty years. During the course of those years it had carried millions of tons of weight. But one day the driver of a logging truck ignored the ten-ton load limit sign. The bridge collapsed. Life is like that. All of us can carry our ten-ton load day after day, year after year, but only one load at a time. Overload us and we collapse too.

You may be familiar with the research Thomas Holmes has done on stress. He found that too much change at one time was the greatest cause of stress. An accumulation of 300 or more "life changing points" in any one year may mean an overload of more stress than an individual can carry. On his scale, death of a spouse equals 100 units, divorce 73, marital separation 65, marriage 50, and so on. If you would like to see and take this "stress test" for yourself click on the image below or find it in the Free Resources section of our website.

Third: The next step in turning stress into success is to recognize symptoms as early as possible.

As mentioned in yesterday’s Wisdom-Trek, Fred Stansberry talks about "stress-related diseases such as cancer, arthritis, heart and respiratory diseases, migraines, allergies and a host of other psychological and physiological dysfunctions which are increasing at an alarming rate in our Western culture."

Other symptoms of stress have been listed as, "fibromyalgia, tense muscles, sore neck, shoulders and back, insomnia, fatigue, boredom, depression, listlessness, dullness, lack of interest, drinking too much, eating too much or too little, diarrhea, cramps, flatulence, constipation, palpitations-heart skip, phobias, twitches, restlessness and itching." This list sounds like the side effects of most modern medicine..

Fourth: Identify causes. As already mentioned, change is one of the chief causes of stress.