Get Smart! About Modern Stress Management

Get Smart!

Your Personal Guide to Living a Balanced Life

By Michelle L. Casto

Published by Michelle Casto at Smashwords

Copyright, 2011, Michelle L. Casto

Everyday Enlightenment Publishing

San Antonio, Texas

USA

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

"There is more to life than increasing its speed."

—Mohandas Gandhi

Contents

From the Author

How to Use This Book

Chapter One: Get Smart! Decision Making

Chapter Two: Raise your Awareness

Chapter Three: Re-Program Yourself

Chapter Four: Work Less, Be More

Chapter Five: The Burnout Stage

Chapter Six: Get In Touch With Your Spirit

Chapter Seven: Stress in the Twenty-First Century

Chapter Eight: Manage Yourself, Manage Your Stress

Chapter Nine: Enhance Your Energy

Chapter Ten: Utilize Stress Mediators

Chapter Eleven: Develop Coping Strategies

Chapter Twelve: 141 Ways to Alleviate Stress

Chapter Thirteen: Become a Change Agent

Chapter Fourteen: Whole-Life Wellness

Chapter Fifteen: The Seven Steps to Living a Balanced Life

Chapter Sixteen: What Is Life Balance?

Recommended Websites and Resources

From the Author

Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.

—Buddha

How many times do you come home from work not only physically exhausted, but also mentally exhausted? How often do you complain, There’s never enough time in the day? Do you spend enough time doing things you actually enjoy, or are you so focused on the things you have to do, that you miss out on the fun times in life?

You, along with a million others, have experienced stress and the feeling of being overwhelmed. You have probably believed that tomorrow, you will go on a vacation or take time for yourself. But tomorrow never seems to come. Like you, I have felt this way, but finally, I took a step back to view my whole life. Moreover, I realized I wanted to experience more fulfillment, so I made the conscious decision to bring more balance to my life, to relax, and to learn better ways to manage my stress. I have put my experiences and knowledge to work in the form of Get Smart! About Modern Stress Management: Your Personal Guide to Living a Balanced Life. I know that you have the capacity to make smarter whole-life decisions. You just need to learn how.

One of my life purposes is to educate and empower people to make spiritually smart decisions in important life areas, which is how the Get Smart! idea evolved from a random thought to a workshop, to an interactive book. Unlike other stress management books, you will not find a magic pill that holds all the answers to your questions. In fact, after reading and working through this book, you may have more questions than ever, which unbelievably, will enhance your decision-making skills, because as the saying goes, The one who questions never loses his way.

You individually design and define the Get Smart! approach to modern stress management. With the help of Get Smart!, you will decide for yourself how to bring more balance to your life. Self-awareness, active reflection, and intuitive guidance are the key components of smart decision-making. This book has been designed to be a self-discovery tool. It includes numerous activities and journal assignments to enable you to learn about yourself. By deciding today that you want to Get Smart!, you have decided to live in awareness and to become empowered to make choices that will bring you the most fulfillment.

Because I have learned to listen to my head as well as my heart, I have made smarter whole-life choices. Through my research, I have learned that thousands of stressed-out people cannot seem to find meaning in their lives. They too make the not-so-smart decision of living an overloaded life with too much to do and not enough time just to be. Despite what many people believe, life is not meant to be a struggle; it is meant to be enjoyed.

Much stress comes from work. Career experts say that we will change careers (not jobs) 7–10 times in a lifetime. Everyone needs to feel that he or she is contributing. We often seek meaning from our work, but we also need to realize that work is just one way we can express our inner selves. As living, breathing, thinking, and feeling human beings, we also need oxygen, food, water, exercise, intellectual and emotional stimulation, friendship, fun, romance, and much more to live a fulfilled life. It is vital to strive for balance in all of these areas.

Smart people know that before you can effectively manage your stress, you must first undergo a thorough self-assessment. This book will help you to do some intense soul- searching, which is necessary to prepare you for a balanced life. In fact, the first half of the book focuses on measuring your current stress levels and learning about how stress affects your life. Get Smart! will teach you how to manage yourself and your reactions and reduce the amount of stress you experience.

Someone once said, "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst and take what comes." This describes modern life. We all need to be optimistic about our future, prepare for the unexpected, and enjoy what shows up. Life is about change, and change can be stressful. To become a smart stress manager, you have to find your unique balance. How can you bring more balance to your life—by developing inner guidance, a road map, if you will? Intuition is the internal faculty that humans possess that provides direction. Intuition will lead you to the kind of lifestyle you desire and deserve. However, this requires a strong belief that you possess a higher self that knows what is best for you.

How do you develop your intuition? Your first step will be to use this book to learn about yourself. In order to see results, I ask that you read this book with a willingness to Get Smart! and a desire to make positive changes. The journal assignments are a journey to your inner knowing. Success requires that you set aside your personal beliefs and begin to perceive your stress on a more realistic and intuitive level. I believe that after reading and working with this book, you will begin to see an increase in positive and uplifting events. This will be a direct result of your ability to Get Smart! by allowing your higher, more intuitive self to make your choices and increase your chances of creating a meaningful, balanced, and whole life.

Michelle L. Casto,

The Destiny Mentor & Author

How to Use This Book

Keep a green tree in your heart and the singing bird will come.

—Chinese Proverb

Dear Reader:

This is not your typical self-help book. You will not come away with the answer to stress management. As you have already figured out, there are no easy answers to some of life’s tougher questions, such as, How do I live a more balanced life? However, I can assure you that you will have quite a few revelations about yourself. What you do with the information is entirely up to you.

Get Smart! About Modern Stress Management is not about how to get rid of stress entirely. There is no such thing as no stress. Get Smart! is about how to create a life of balance—one that integrates the 4 Ls: love, labor, leisure, and learning. Get Smart! will teach you to use stress in a positive and productive manner. It is your personal guide to finding your unique life balance by knowing your stressors and selecting appropriate coping mechanisms and stress mediators to reduce the amount of negative stress that you experience.

Unlike other stress management books, you will not find one perfect formula but rather a philosophy of what the meaning of your whole life is. By raising your self-awareness, practicing active reflection, and developing intuitive guidance, you will learn how to create consciously the kind of life you have always wanted. Moreover, you will learn how to harness healthy stress to live a more vibrant life.

Get Smart! means becoming aware of how you think and feel about stress in order to turn around your not-so-smart habits. You will learn about the modern world and the choices that come with it. This will revitalize your lifestyle, because you will realize that you can choose a different, healthier path—one that is right for you. I also encourage you to use this LearningBook as a resource that you can refer to repeatedly. Using this book in conjunction with your own journal will empower you to make thoughtful, smart decisions. Reading, reflecting, and writing will provide the framework for those decisions that will lead to positive changes in your life.

My ultimate wish is that you will gain a new and enlightened perspective about what is important to you, and, in so doing, will bring more balance and inner peace to your life. As a result, perhaps you will become inspired to share what you learn with a friend or colleague. To be an effective learner about stress management, you will need the following:

1) An open mind and heart

2) A desire to create consciously a balanced life

3) A readiness to make some significant life changes

4) A favorite pen and journal

Let’s get you started on the path to living a balanced life…

Chapter One

Get Smart! Decision-Making

There is an art of which everyone should be a master—the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking human, to what are you human at all?

—Samuel Coleridge

Get Smart! Decision-Making

Of course, you want to make more educated and enlightened decisions regarding the balance in your life, or you would not be reading this book, and truly, the best way to revitalize your life is to change your attitude and the way you think about stress. The Get Smart! decision-making approach to stress management includes raising your self-awareness, utilizing active reflection, listening to your intuitive guidance, and then making an educated decision. Throughout this book, you will be raising your self-awareness. It is important to know that if at any time you feel lost or confused, you go back to the initial step of understanding yourself, because the person who truly knows himself or herself is the person most capable of making smart decisions.

We have all heard of people who use half a brain when making decisions or those who make a half-hearted attempt at changing their lives for the better. Get Smart! reminds us that we need to use our whole brains and whole hearts when making important life decisions. The fact that we have been given these special gifts is proof enough that we have the capability of becoming smarter about our own stress management.

In life, we struggle with our inner knowing and outer information. We usually make decisions based on the outer information, rather than intuition. When this happens, we usually get what we think we want from life, instead of getting what we need. Often, what we think we want to do with our life is not what we need to do.

Our inner self or the soul sees what is right for us and knows that we are meant to do something else. If we could only learn to follow our deepest intuition, we would end up with everything we need and want—including the right job, the right person, and the right life. We just have to be open to what comes to us wrapped in a different package than what we expected.

If you do not know what you want, you will change your mind all the time—going back and forth, making one decision one minute, and then changing your mind again. This kind of waffling leads to self-doubt about your ability to make smart decisions, and the more you doubt your ability, the more you go back and forth. You must learn to make a decision and then stick with it. You must commit to a lifelong program of taking care of your mind, body, and spirit.

There are many reasons why people in the modern world are stressed out, including lack of control over time, information overload, feelings of disconnectedness, high cost of living, increased competition, advanced technology, personal and professional change, and a more complex society. No one can deny that life is more complicated today than any other time in our history. Even at the turn of the century, people led simple lives and had the combined support of family and community resources.

Nowadays, we live a more modernized lifestyle and we have lost much of our support in our families and communities. Even with all of the technology that connects us, we remain relatively disconnected. Our sense of independence has led to a sense of isolation and more stress to shoulder alone. Thus, most of us tend to live life from a survival mode. We do not have to, though we can learn to call on spiritual support to ease our stress and make our lives easier.

Survival Mode

Existence

Life/world controls us

Forgetting/reacting

Disconnected

Abuse and power rule

Ego-based

Competition and individualism

Fight or flight

Animalistic instincts: Kill or be killed

Spiritual Mode