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If you’ve been searching for a way to better deal with the stressors in your life, I’ve got the tool for you. Yes, of course, it’s mindfulness!

Mindfulness is about shining a light on what’s happening. It’s about fully exploring what’s going on so that we gain an intimate understanding of it. The insights we get from being mindful teach us how to manage our reactions to what’s happening.

It takes a little courage to do this. When we’re stressed, for example, we don’t feel good. Our chest may be tight, our breathing shallow, our body tense, and our thoughts negative.

Naturally, we want to avoid feeling this way. We might try to distract ourselves from these feelings by watching TV, gaming, or listening to music. Or numb the feelings with alcohol or drugs. Or cover up the bad feelings with good ones generated by eating junk food or shopping.

But, none of these tactics help us directly deal with the stress and the bad feelings it causes.

They may work, but the effects are often temporary, and sometimes come with harmful side effects. Mindfulness, on the other hand, provides a way to directly manage negative feelings.

What I’m asking you to do may sound strange. When you’re feeling stressed, I want you to try to sit with the stress. Sit quietly and explore all the ways in which you feel the stress in your body

Notice how the negative thoughts come and go. Become very familiar with what your stress reaction really feels like and notice how it changes from moment to moment.

Maybe right now you’re thinking, “I don’t have to do this. I know how stress feels. It feels awful. Why would I want to wallow in that?”

I’m telling you that you only think you know how stress feels. Until you thoroughly explore your stress, you only have a surface understanding of it. And there’s only one way for you to find out if I’m right: Try sitting with stress.

At this point, you might be concerned that sitting with your stress might make you feel worse. After all, if you focus on negative feelings, won’t they become stronger? The truth is, they probably won’t. Instead, you’re likely to discover that the feelings are neither as strong nor as ceaseless as you thought they were.

And when you allow negative feelings to just be, when you accept them without judgement and sit with them quietly, they begin to dissolve all on their own.

But if you’re still concerned, keep in mind that you are always in control of your meditation. If I’m wrong and you start feeling worse, you have the power to simply stop.

Try sitting with stress

If you are feeling at all stressed or anxious right now, forward either the podcast or the video above to 3:26 for a meditation on sitting with stress. 

If you are not feeling at all stressed right now, you might instead use this simple guided meditation on the breath and reserve the sitting with stress meditation, above, for a more stressful time. The sitting with stress meditation will be posted on both the Stress Busters and the Free Meditations page, so you can use it later.

 

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