Stress Management – A Key to Health and Wellness
By Dave Schmitz-Binnall
About five years ago I had the brilliant, though not very original, idea that I would open a stress management clinic. On the face of it, the plan was a “no-brainer”. After all, it was obvious that people were struggling more and more with the stress of just keeping body and soul together. I was continually meeting business people and other professionals who were feeling hopeless, burned out, or were sick as a result of the stress they were under. All I had to do was offer some classes on how to manage stress, coupled with a little individual coaching and people would be lining up round the block, desperate to take advantage of my wonderful program.
We put together a couple of ‘pilot’ programs to test this out and two things happened. Firstly, hardly anyone showed up. Secondly, as we designed the classes, we discovered that stress management is about much more than learning to relax.
Why did so few people show up? I don’t think most of us are aware of what it really means to truly manage our stress, or how massive an improvement in our lives, our health, and our happiness real stress management can bring. This is what I mean when I say that stress management is about more than just learning to relax.
I like to think of total stress management as having two parts, even though there are obvious overlaps.
- ‘External’: Activities that we can do or learn to do that help us to relax and feel less stressed e.g. playing a round of golf, yoga, meditation, relaxation exercises, listening to music, massage, exercise, organizing and prioritizing our lives, going for a walk etc.
- ‘Internal’: Changing what we say to ourselves about things that cause us stress, especially those things over which we have no control. Learning to develop inner peace. Taking the time to center ourselves in our spirituality, values, our vision for our lives, and what is really important to us.
In this way, learning to manage our stress is actually learning to love our life – even when things aren’t going the way we’d like them to go. This doesn’t mean that we will be happy all the time, but it does mean that we will be able be at peace with our lives and to make the most of them all the time. This may seem impossible to you right now but, over the course of the next few articles, I hope to show you that not only is it possible but also that you can do this for your self.
As we work our way through the steps we can all take towards a less stressful and happier life, I hope it will become clear first, that stress management is an essential and fundamental core factor in our health and wellness; and second, that we are actually doing all of the things that we need to do in order to create health and wellness in our lives.
Dave Schmitz-Binnall, MS, CHT