About to Break

For almost all people in today's society stress has become a major problem, but many people remain ignorant to the massive role it is playing in their lives. I decided about four months ago to start on a path in my life that would hopefully lead to a stress-free life with no worries. This sounds great when typing it out, but it is incredibly difficult. I knew that it would not be something accomplished quickly or easily, but they goal would be worth it. A lot of this stemmed from growing up in a family that is very close and great, but there is a lot of stress among the members of my family. It leads to tension and bickering among other things, and it got me thinking how much better life could be if the stress could just stop. I have been embarking on a task to figure out how exactly I can make myself stop stressing and worrying about everything. I don't just want to stop stressing about the small things like every song out there tells you to do, but I want to stop stress all together. Many movies will show you a character who is completely relaxed and just "goes with the flow." Now I realize that movies are not accurate representations of reality, actually far from it, but  I believe this to be a possibly mentality. When I say "go with the flow" I don't mean that I want to become one of the typical college students in today's world that accept everything, but I instead mean that I want to become a person who does not stress about changes in life and can happily adjust to whatever comes. I don't ever attend to accept things that are wrong, but I do want to reach a point to where I do not stress or worry about them. I want to obtain complete confidence in God, and have the blind faith that I know is possible. People speak about it in church all the time, yet I have never met a person in my life that has achieved this task. I want to add a side note that I am not making this post just to tell everyone about my own life experiences, but instead I want to share this concept with people and see if I can get any positive feedback to build on it with. I have made great progress in these four months, and have noticed a large increase in my overall happiness. As great as it has gone so far I just can't seem to make it over that hump into complete relaxation with zero stress. Bad things are bound to happen eventually throughout one's life, but I want to know if it is possible to not let those effect your overall happiness for even a second. One of the things that make this seem near impossible sometimes is when I have days like today where I seem to be stressed out with no solid reason as to why. I feel that many can relate to this feeling of anxiety and stress with no apparent origin. When I think about my day I cannot come up with any solid reason as to why I should be worried or stressed yet I can't seem to relax. This makes me curious if it is possible to be truly stress free or if it is coded into humans to have a small level of stress rooted in instinct. Is this just another Hollywood mythical character that is impossible to achieve in reality? I want to think that it is not, but on some days it can seem very difficult. I am getting far better at seeing the bright side of things and trying to stay optimistic, but this random stress with no origin is something that I don't see a way to fight against. Many public speakers will throw around the quote "mind over matter," and talk about stress and worry as if it is just something that one can turn off and on. When I first thought about it that seemed like a logical solution to just mentally force yourself to not stress until it becomes a habit. This has been the method I have been practicing so far, but it seems to only be able to get me so far. It is like have the Galva Knuckles on Nazi Zombies where I can make it to wave 13 with ease, but going any farther requires more talent and skills. (I could not resist making the comparison, my apologies to any non-gamers) Another thing that I have noticed is the way people differ so much in "natural" happiness levels. Everyone has met that person that never seems to be unhappy, and is always optimistic. I love meeting these people, but it makes me wonder if happiness comes down to a lot of genetics as well. What if mental control will only get you so far, but to get true stress free happiness one must already have a genetically happy personality. Along with these "naturally" happy people I have met those who seem depressed and sad by nature. Depression is even a chemical problem that a person could have, but does this mean that complete happiness is a chemical gift that some may possess? Even if this is the case I do not plan on ever giving up on my attempt to reach "complete happiness" (complete happiness is what I am using to describe the stress-free and worry-free happiness I have been speaking of). I have found small fixes and daily tasks that can help get me closer to this goal, such as blogging, meditation, music, and many other things, but I am hoping for a more permanent and universal fix. I don't mean that I want a one time antidote to stress because I am aware that this is impossible as far as we know so far, but I am talking instead of a routine method that can be used to completely remove stress from a person's life. For me personally I have found that the more I focus on God the less I seem to stress, and I know that many are rolling their eyes because this is pretty well known knowledge. I am just wanting to point out how much it actually works to do that, but it is difficult to not succumb to the days of doubt and stress that seem so inevitable no matter how much faith you have in God. My most reason plan is to try to revisit meditation and prayer, but on a far more routine and obedient scale this time. In the past I was merely trying to see if meditation was actually effective. I know that many people laugh at the idea of meditation and see it as ridiculous, but I can say from experience that it does actually work. I found it incredibly helpful and relaxing when I meditated with no real experience or previous knowledge. One thing that draws me to meditation is the purpose of it. Meditation is intended to train your mind and give you control over it, and if this proves to be true then I am hoping to be able to gain better control of the stress that can plague my thoughts some days. I will also tell some of the far more obvious techniques that I have done which have worked wonderfully for me in removing stress from my life and making me an overall happier person; avoiding news as much as possible, removing television watching as much as possible, getting things done as soon as possible, spending time with people, limiting video games as much as possible, getting outside, writing down as much as you can, and many other things. Many of these may seem horrible and seem as if they would do the opposite of relax you, but you would be surprised at the results. Removing news is for obvious reasons, such as the constant negative information flowing from news sources, but the surprising ones are the removal of television and video games. Some people say that video games and television is their way of relaxing and I fully agree this is true for some, but I found that they are a source of stress in disguise. While video games are great most people can't help but get irritated, pressured to get the next achievement or level, and get a feeling of counter-productiveness. I have been playing video games for over a decade and they still will get my frustrated sometimes and I always feel like I have to do better and better. Video games are an endless cycle of "just a little bit more" because in the gaming universe there is always another level, achievement, or game. This makes a stressful feeling of never being good enough, and few even realize it is stressing them out so much. The other one is television and while it may seem relaxing while you are doing it, it comes with many hidden curses. Some of these are along the same lines as video games where you feel like you wasted time afterwards or get a sense of frustration while watching a show for any of a number of reasons. I realize that this does not apply to everyone and I may be in a party of one feeling this way, but I can definitely say that I am a lot less stressed when I watch no television and don't play video games. In the end I have found that the most stress relieving thing that I do is just listen to music and relax. So this is enough on my ways of relieving stress because it is different for each person. Thank you for reading and hopefully this is a good enough post to make up for missing a couple days.
Sincerely - CO