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National Stress Awareness Day 2025
At the peak of a week leading into the holidays, we find National Stress Awareness Day inviting us to be mindful and take care of ourselves.
Ability To Choose
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. ~William James
That sounds absurdly simple, but it’s entirely true.
Unless you have some kind of organic dementia or dissociative mental illness, you do have the ability to choose good thoughts over bad ones.
If you can maintain the clarity of mind to objectively analyze the bad thoughts in your life, it’s that much easier to replace those with good thoughts.
For most of us, stress is a cumulative injury from life’s tragic absurdities.
Any one of the things weighing on you are something even the most thin-skinned people could shrug off.
When you have a cascading series of moderately irritating things happen, it’s death by a thousand cuts.
You keep pulling the slabs from the Jenga pile and people expect you not to emotionally or mentally topple.
Being aware of the fact that your Jenga pieces are getting pulled is the best way to ensure your tower stays stacked and steady.
Awareness
National Stress Awareness Day
Meditation, prayer, mindfulness, being still and knowing He is God, are a variety of ways of saying much the same thing.
When you can find quiet and stillness, it’s easier to deal with the problems that are mounting up against you.
It’s been said that fear is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real.
In many cases, the things that are stressing you are actually small things that a calm, confident person can easily brush off.
In the clear light of day, being honestly aware of the issues you’re confronting often diminishes them.
Taking a basic inventory of what’s manageable and what is actually problematic makes it that much easier to cope.
Most importantly, you don’t have to handle everything yourself.
Call a friend, a relative, a professional, a helpline. Call somebody and get some help.
Take Care
Taking care of yourself is the most powerful way to begin to take care of others. ~Bryant McGill
That’s what they tell you on an airplane. Put the mask on yourself before you try to help anyone else.
You can’t help anybody if you’re more of a wreck than them.
I know.
I’ve been there.
Without my family’s love and understanding, I would certainly have gone under.
Nobody wants that.
Take care of yourself because you’re worth taking care of.
God put you here for a reason.
It may not be immediately obvious what that is, but somewhere, somehow, you will be the very person that someone needs you to be.
Give it some serious thought.
You might not even know that you did it, but it could make all the difference to someone on the edge of despair.
Be that hero.
Make yourself strong enough to be that hero when you’re needed.
That’s all for today. See you back on Saturday for a cappuccino…