Mandala coloring books are fun and a great way to de-stress!

The most intelligent approach to stress relief is to look beyond managing and coping with the symptoms. Managing and coping is for people who are feeling a temporary powerlessness. As spiritual students, we aspire to transmute and transcend. Transcendence is the way!

Bottom line: Stress is the byproduct of thinking things that are untrue.

Why manage and cope with something that’s the result of thinking untrue thoughts? Only those who feel unloved and unsupported – however temporarily – feel stressed out. We get stressed because we have forgotten that we’re one with all life and that all life is available to support us if we’re willing to receive it. It always comes back to our willingness.

One way to relieve stress is to change the channel of our mind from the ego thought system to the Love thought system. That’s what meditation is for, but sometimes we just can’t get ourselves to sit still. Prayer works, obviously. Taking a breath and moving into your heart is a great way to change the channel.

In relieving stress, the key is to look at your thoughts. We think that it’s the environment, the situation and circumstances of our life that are causing the stress – but that’s just not true. It’s how we hold the circumstances in our mind. Our thoughts are the precursors to our emotions. Our thought determines many of our emotions. One thing I trained myself to do is look for the thought that is the cause of the stress. I call it “looking for the lie.”

We think we’re upset because we made an error, but usually it’s because we’re judging ourselves and thinking that others will judge us and now we’re going to lose our job, and then we can’t pay the mortgage and then next thing you know we’re in bankruptcy and living on the street. Yes, it can go like that – but it doesn’t have to. If we can take responsibility for the error, learn from it, have compassion and move on, it creates a different set of circumstances. A Course in Miracles says it this way: “I’m never upset for the reason I think.”

We don’t have to know what the reason is in order to release it and have a healing. All we must do is be willing to surrender our attachment to the thought chain of potential unhappy events. We surrender for healing all of our attachment to the meaning we’ve made of things. Let the Higher Holy Spirit Self do the heavy lifting of figuring out HOW we’ll have a healing. Our job is to ALLOW the healing.

A great de-stresser is this wonderful teaching from A Course in Miracles: “Infinite patience produces immediate results.” If we’re willing to practice patience, we immediately feel better. Our mind clears and becomes available for insight, wisdom and prosperous thinking. Gratitude is SO helpful with this. Being grateful we remember to practice patience is SO powerful. It’s literally life-changing. Patience and gratitude are a spiritual practice that allows our mind to go from judgmental to compassionate.

Remember, it takes 28 days to make a new habit. Patience is a great new habit to have as part of our Loving Ourselves Free of Suffering program! Decide to cultivate more patience and gratitude during our Pray & Clear and see what a REAL difference it makes in your life. Remember:

Spiritual practice SAVES time that would otherwise be spent in suffering.
Invest in spiritual practice rather than in suffering.

Following up on our adding more fun into our life, I have always enjoyed coloring books. I got myself several really cool coloring books with mandala patterns and I got some colored pencils, magic markers, crayons and a big set of gorgeous gel pens with glitter and metallic colors in it. FUN! All this was a fairly small investment and it’s brought me hours of enjoyment. Coloring in these books has been a delightful way for me to enjoy long meetings on the phone where I must listen attentively and not let my mind wander. I can listen and color and it’s great! Sometimes I just feel like taking a short color break to reboot my brain into a different mind set. It’s playful. I experiment with all kinds of colors and contrasts. Sometimes they turn out beautifully and other times not as much. It’s all ok, because it’s only for my enjoyment.

One of our goals in our Pray & Clear 40 day reboot is to recover our Joy making simple changes and being playful, having less stress these are two great steps! What about replacing being stressed with being self-nurturing with something you enjoy that is a form of self-medicaton. When you find something you like, please share in our facebook group. Let’s all see if we can find some NEW ways to have self-nurture!

When stress brings up the temptation to self-medicate choose self-nurturing and cultivating that willingness to look at the thought that causes the stress – rather than manage and cope with circumstances. Strengthen your alignment with Love and remember to choose transcendence – PRAY and Partner UP! Build the healthy habit!

Nothing tastes as good as Joy feels!

On the cleanse side of life: If you’re eating processed foods, there are a lot of hidden chemicals, sugar and even wheat and corn in there. We’re temporarily letting go of all these items during the cleanse. Be willing to read the ingredients. Remember, the cleanse has a main purpose of helping to restore serotonin – the natural happy drugs that our body makes in our digestive tract that send the happy signals to our brain. We don’t wish to sabotage this healing process. It really works! One of the side effects I notice is that a few of the processed foods I used to enjoy, I no longer feel like eating. That’s so cool! Love is the healer and we’re loving ourselves free of all limitations, including limiting behavior.

If you’re finding what I’m sharing to be helpful won’t you please share at facebook and twitter to let others know? Thank you!

Come run away with me! Check out my Stop Playing Small Retreat this May in North Carolina! ALSO I’m offering my Spiritual Counseling Intensive Training again – check it out, also in May in North Carolina!