How You Can Change Your Stress Level

When I began my spiritual journey, the first quality in others that I was attracted to was serenity. I didn't know that I was attracted to the quality of serenity. Instead I was attracted to serene people. I was going to AA and one of the strengths that you are taught in 12 step meetings was to learn how to help others.

The jobs that a beginner can volunteer for to set up the meetings and help clean the rooms after the meeting. For the beginner these choirs can be a
humbling experiences designed to help learn the true lesson of anonymity which is to do something without taking credit or bragging about what was done.

The meetings that I volunteered for were overseen by this man that was so calm and peaceful that I knew I wanted whatever he had. Finally one night I asked how he had gotten whatever he had. It was hard for him to define "it". But he recommended a little pamphlet about serenity. The booklet taught me two major lessons.

The first lesson was the story of the man in the desert with the whirling dervishes. Someone came up to the man and asked him what he did about the whirling dervishes and he said that he just let them whirl. What a concept! I was beginning to be introduced to detachment and letting it go and change what you can and let the rest go.

The second lesson I learned from the booklet was an illustration that contained an explanation of serenity as picturing a swan beautifully gliding on the surface of the water. But under the water, the swan was paddling furiously in order to go forward. With my thinking at the time, I thought that this seemed dishonest. Such was the power of my brain to distort everything I experienced.

The group therapy techniques that I have found to be the most effective for most addictions are cognitive (thoughts)behaviorial (actions). The first main learning I had was in what is called cognitive restructuring. Simply put, I had to relearn how to think. I learned how to be what I call my observer self.

I never realized that my way of thinking everything was a major disaster was contributing to my life's disasters. In other words, I was creating the drama instead of just reacting to it. So I learned that if I created the drama, I could uncreate it. The simple technique I used was to shout "Stop!" at my obsessive thinking. Scream it loud enough and you tend to get your own attention.

I learned that my mind was out to get me--or, at the very least, my mind was out to control me. I think that I was addicted to feeling bad. The main reward from negative thinking is low expectations of ourselves. If you think you're not worth much, you don't have to do much.

Negative thinking or fear controlled my mind and therefore my emotions. I also have learned that feelings can't hurt me unless I hold on to them.
Learning techniques to retrain my brain from negative thinking to positive thinking changed my life. I have collected several of these techniques in the Changemaker Mental Healing lens.

When beginning a new job or getting married or other life challenges, extra stress helps to solve these experiences. But often we experience stress that is non-productive and is robbing us of our energy.

Some and even great stress can be beneficial. The added energy from stress helps us to more to more and better solutions for our lives. Changemaker is aimed toward finding the repetitive non-productive stress that robs you of energy.

Since stress has been found to contribute to most of human illnesses, Changemaker encompasses mental, physical, emotional, behavioral, social and spiritual reduction techniques.

Your mind, body and emotions either work together to help you experience your life more fully or are each using energy in avoiding behaviors. The way to control your life is to control your thoughts and your words. So many of the techniques you will learn from Changemaker will introduce you to ways to stop over-reacting and/or using avoiding behaviors.

When we were children, we often had to learn self-defeating or self-limiting behavior to appease our authority figures. Many parents confuse discipline with punishment. To avoid punishment, we often learned ways of avoidance or delay that robbed us of our true being. So in continuing these behaviors we are using our energy non-productively.

We tell our bodies how healthy we want to be by the choices we make in using our energy. The Changemaker goal is for you to learn how to tell your body that you want to be completely healthy. By learning how to reframe your thoughts in order to choose positive thoughts, you are telling your emotions that you want to be healthy.

By learning convenient and easy ways to exercise, you are telling your body that you want to be healthy. By learning how to incorporate meditation, relaxation, visualization, and other coping techniques, we tell our minds and our soul that we want to be healthy.

The Changemaker products are available at kathyberman.com.

The Changemaker Test only (explanations included for all personality labels) ($19.00)

The Emotional Eater Diet (also labeled the Changemaker Diet) ($19.00)

The complete Changemaker ebook (which includes Changemaker test, explanations resources for small groups, and the Emotional Eater Diet) ($29.00)

Changemaker Online (which includes everything in the ebook but it is interactive as it is a password-protected blog) ($29.00)