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I've Got Way Too Much Stress!
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How To Use Thought Awareness To Reduce Stress

Being Aware of How We Think (Rational and Positive Thinking)

Much of the stress in our everyday lives comes from our thought processes. How we perceive a situation can be off and so we can feel that we are off. We can jump to wrong conclusions about people’s motives and so be seen as unreasonable. All of this can send us spinning downward into a spiral of negative thinking and so stress is born.

Here are some effective and simple tools that help to change this negative thinking.

Any given situation in your life is not stressful in itself. Your perception of the situation is what will or will not make it stressful. Stress will arise quickly if:

• You feel threatened in any way
• You feel your resources will not be sufficient to meet with a demand
• How much damage you feel this situation can do to you
• Whether or not your resources will be enough to meet with the demand.

A person with a calm and well-balanced life will not perceive threats easily, while a person who is frazzled and feeling low certainly will.

When we are feeling low and without reserves to deal with stress, we become easily stressed: Physically, socially, emotionally and in our careers. Feeling this type of stress serves as an early warning signal to alert us to take immediate and positive action! To ignore these important signals means we will definitely suffer.

Using Thought Awareness to Deal with Stress

Be on guard to watch for negative thinking when stress arises. If you are thinking negatively about your future, putting yourself down, criticizing your efforts, doubting your abilities, or planning for failure, you then become paralyzed to deal with stress.

Your negativity will only serve to damage your much needed self-confidence, harm your performance and deplete your mental recourse.

>>> One way to effectively counter-balance stress is to be forever aware of your stream of consciousness as you think about a stressful situation. Do not deny your negative thoughts, instead, just let them happen, acknowledge them, and then write them down as they occur.

As you become more and more familiar with your thought patterns, which are negative and which are not, look back at your Stress Diary. You will easily see patterns that emerge detailing the same or similar negative thoughts.

Once you have identified which negative thoughts cause you the most problems, you can then take action to deal with them more effectively.

Step One to Managing Negative Thoughts is to acknowledge them.

Step Two to Managing Negative Thoughts is to write them down.

Step Three to Managing Negative Thoughts is to deal with them.

Thought awareness can be your first effective step in the process of managing negative thoughts. Remember, you cannot manage thoughts that you do not acknowledge first.

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