Mi Hamba Blog

What did you do wrong?  That may be the first step in trying to overcome adversity in your life.  It is so much easier to blame outside circumstances, situations, and other people for our troubles, after-all, we certainly wouldn’t have done this to ourselves. 

The trouble with blaming everything else is that you did play a part in creating where you are right now.  You are responsible for you past, your thoughts, your emotions and therefore the results in you life.  Until you take responsibility you cannot begin to move past the adversity and fix your problems.

By giving away the blame, you are giving away the power over your own life.  Until you start to take responsibility you will always be the victim of your results.  You can free yourself by acknowledging your part in creating the circumstances in your life. 

Now you can begin to focus on how to go about moving forward in a positive direction.  After-all, you created this mess, so you can clean it up.

It is time for our seventh and final tip on how to use stress to further your personal growth.  This tip can be summed up with one simple word — Gratitude.

If you have not already read my previous six tips on this subject, go back and read them now; doing so will help you to understand why I suggest that you should be grateful for the stress in your life. 

Stress is the way our body and/or our mind lets us know that there is a problem that needs to be dealt with.  If you did not experience a certain amount of stress in your life, it could be devastating to your physical and mental health.

Be grateful that your body and mind provide this wonderful warning signal so that you can make the necessary adjustments in your life.   If you didn’t know something was wrong, you would not be able to fix it.  Stress gives you that opportunity to find what isn’t working in your life and frees you to make the changes necessary to live a more fulfilling and joyous life.  Why be stuck in a miserable existence when you can instead be happy and free?

I hope that you have enjoyed this series of tips on stress management.  Remember, heed the warnings of stress.  Use it to motivate yourself to identify the problem and fix it.  If you simply just need a break, take it.  Live in the present, face your fears today, don’t waste time worrying about tomorrow.  Be grateful for the stress in your life, as it guides you to make the positive changes that allow you to live a happier life.

Tip number six on how to use stress to further your personal growth involves using the law of attraction.  Once we get to the root cause of the stress in our lives, we can identify what is not working and therefore what we don’t want.  Now we can use contrast through clarity to figure out what we do want.

 Let’s say you are extremely stressed out because you are really unhappy in your career.  You now can use this as an opportunity to sit down and write out on one side of a sheet of paper all of the things that you don’t like about the job; maybe your boss doesn’t appreciate you, or you aren’t paid well enough, or you don’t feel fulfilled in your work.

Now you can go through each of the items listed on the one side, cross them out and write the opposite or what you do want in a career, on the other side of the sheet of paper.  Examples of the opposite of the above issues could be: my boss expresses his appreciation for my work on a regular basis, I am blessed to be receiving a rewarding and competitive compensation for my job, my work is both fulfilling and rewarding.

Now that you know what you do want you can begin to focus on it, and take action towards achieving it.  The law of attraction can begin to do it’s job in bringing it to you.

One more tip to go.  Stay tuned.

Sometimes you will think that an expected situation is one where you will be able to spend some time on you and maybe even give your loved ones a bit of a break.  However, once you get into that situation you quickly realize that, what was anticipated to be a warm and friendly environment, quickly turns into a negative and scary one.

This is exactly where I found myself over the last couple of weeks.  I had been waiting for a surgery to fix my bad leg, and I had been waiting for a very long time so I was very happy and grateful when the call came and I was scheduled for the operation.  It was finally happening, I was going to be blessed with a healthy leg, body and I would recover very quickly.  My beautiful wife and I would be on the dance floor in no time — CHA, CHA, CHA!!

I was almost looking forward to the short stay in the hospital — 3 days was all.  I packed my bag with all of the neccessities — ipod with audio books, my favorite personal development books, notebook and a couple of pens just in case.  I was full of intention to work on my own personal growth and transform anybody that crossed my path.

I quickly realized that this was a very different world than my own protected little environment that we had created at home.  These were some stressed and negative people and I mean everybody, from my room-mates to the staff that were so stressed because of being so short handed.  I was so grateful for my mindset going in as it empowered me to fall back on all that I have learned with the Law of Attraction and Life Coaching.

My surgeon sat on the side of my bed 2 days after I got there, looked me in the eye and told me that the surgery did not work — he was going to go and re-do it, try and fix it but his words to me were — if it did not work the first time, it probably won’t work the 2nd time.  In my heart and mind, I knew that it would work and never gave up that belief.  I told him — you do the surgery and it will work this time.  It did.

I am so happy and grateful to be back home, in my “comfort zone”, with the people I love and cherish.  My ability to draw upon all that I have learned over the last few years was instrumental to my ability to handle and deal with the last few weeks.  I hope this article may inspire you to ensure that even though you are in your “comfort zone” right now, be prepared for when you have to leave it.  Get yourself armed with the belief structure and mindset that will allow and empower you to do whatever you want — live from the inside out!!

Tip Number five about how to use stress in a positive way relates to stress caused by fear.  Prolonged fear can be incredibly stessful. 

Often times if we know that there is something that we need to do which we are nervous or frightened about, we are consumed with anxiety about it.  The quickest and easiest way to eliminate these negative feelings is to just face your fear head on.  Whatever it is that you are scared to do, just do it and get it over with.  Why torment yourself with negative feelings of stress and fear any longer than you have to? 

The reality is that once you complete the feared task, you will most likely be filled with an incredible feeling of empowerment.  The sooner you get it done, the sooner you get to stop feeling bad and start feeling like the powerful person that you are.

If whatever is causing the fear is something that is coming up in your future that cannot be taken care of now, you can still eliminate the stress now by simply living in the present.  Let the future take care of itself.  Many times we look at the road ahead of us and question our ability to handle what may lie ahead.  The truth is we are more powerful than we sometimes realize, we can always handle our current circumstances.  When we get to the dreaded future task, we will be ready for it.

Stay tuned next week for the final two tips on how to use stress to further your personal growth.  

Tip number four on how to use stress as a means to further your personal growth is to use it as an opportunity for change.  We obviously have the choice to makes changes in our lives at any time, it does not have to be during a stressful time.  Change can be difficult and uncomfortable so many of us will not make a positive change until the stress has become unbearable.

You may realize that you hate your job, or you are unhappy in your relationship, but it is all part of your routine.  It is comfortable.  It may appear easier to stay at the job or in the relationship than to make the bold move of walking away. 

Until the stress of the horrible job or the unhappy relationship gets to an unbearable point, you may just continue to live in that miserable existence.  The stress can therefore be your friend as it motivates you to take that courageous action you need to become happy again. 

Once you recognize that the lesser of the two evils is taking action to improve your life instead of staying unhappy, you free yourself to live the life you truly deserve.   The change may be difficult and uncomfortable, but the long term rewards will far out-way the discomfort.  You will be free to find a more rewarding or fulfilling job, or a more positive, nurturing relationship.

The bottom line is stress can be your friend if you let it.  Stay tuned in for Tip number five on how to use stress in a positive way.

Tip Number three on how to use stress as a personal growth tool is to recognize it as an indicator that it is time for a break. 

It always amazes me with the advent of all of these new technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier, that we continue to get busier and busier.  Have you ever considered the possibility that while your blackberry is convenient and a great multi-tasking tool, it may actually be increasing your level of stress?

We are checking email while dropping the kids off at soccer practice and returning phone calls while making dinner.  What happened to the ‘Me’ time? 

We spend so much of our lives worrying about everyone else, that we tend to forget about ourselves.  The problem with that, is if you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of anyone else.    

When you start to feel overwhelmed, overworked, and under-appreciated it is probably time for a break.  You body and your mind are telling you something, they can’t take it anymore.  It is time to start looking after number one. 

Go for a nice relaxing walk with the dog, plan a romantic weekend away just the two of you, or have a nice hot bubble bath by candle light.  Whatever works for you, do it.  But whatever you do, the most important thing to remember is — Turn the Cell Phone off!!

Tip number two on how to use stress as a personal growth tool, is to allow stress to motivate you to make a positive change in your life.  Nobody likes feeling stressed out, so why not use those feelings as motivation to remove them from your life. 

In many cases it is these negative feelings that are the most powerful motivators for change.  We should all be able to live in a happy and relaxed state of mind.  When stress starts to rule your life, know that you deserve to feel better. 

The important thing to remember is that you must get to the root cause of the stress in order to eliminate it.  If you don’t know what is wrong, how are you going to be able to fix it?  If you just simply need a break then  go for a walk, or meditate, or listen to a nice piece of music.  Hiding behind things such as overeating, smoking, taking drugs or alcohol is just going to make matters worse in the long run. 

Remember prolonged stress can be a contributing factor to depression, anxiety and many health concerns.   Do not accept it as part of your everyday life.  Know that you deserve better.  Your life coach may be able to help you identify where the problem lies, and to help you get back on the right track.

There is a lot of talk these days about being in a state of Gratitude.  It seems to have become fashionable to say — I am so grateful for this or that. 

I have been challenging myself lately to really stay tuned into my feelings of gratitude and what I have realized is that it is extremely easy to say I am grateful, but it is a little more difficult to truly feel grateful.

For example, how can I be grateful that I have a credit card to pay for my lunch with a friend, and then be quite upset when the credit card company requests a security check?  or How can I be grateful that I live in a free society with Law Enforcement and the Military to keep me safe and then get upset when I get pulled over for not having my seat belt on, or to be delayed through a security check?

What I have discovered is that there is another Universal Law that empowers me to be able to keep my gratitude in place, most if not all of the time.  The beautiful thing is that it is proven that as long as you are in a state of gratitude, more great things will be attracted back to you with the Law of Attraction.

The Law of Polarity is, for lack of a better term, the Law of Opposites.  In “layman’s” terms that simply means that for every situation, there is an opposite situation or result.  So let’s look at the 2 examples I used before:

I could be upset at the fact that I am being delayed, all be it no more than 2 minutes, or I could take a second and think about the opposite result of that feeling which allows me to affirm:

I am so happy and grateful that my credit card company thinks enough of me to watch over my personal security.

In the case of being pulled over because I did not have my seat belt on, I could be upset at the situation, the fact that I am in a hurry, I could think that this should be my choice and whose business is it of the Police for me to wear that stupid thing anyway, or I could take a moment and think about the opposite result of that feeling which allows me to affirm:

I am so happy and grateful that there is an abundance of Law Enforcement to enforce the laws and keep our society safe and secure.

These are just a couple of “made up” examples so as you go through your day, keep an eye on your negative feelings in the various situations of your life and apply the Law of Polarity to them – I assure you that your ability to turn the negative into a feeling of gratitude will become a “no-brainer”.

We all experience stress in our lives at all times.  The levels and types of stress can be good and bad.  We can learn how to use stress in a positive way.  One effective way to do this is to recognize stress as the warning signal that it is.

When your stress level becomes noticeably heightened, it is time to identify what is really causing it.  You must recognize that either your body or your mind is trying to tell you that something in your life needs attention.

If the problem is not readily apparent, you can start to find it by making an appointment for a check up with your Doctor.  If there is a disease or malfunction of some form or type within your body, stress is the body’s way of letting you know it has a problem that needs attention.

Once you eliminate any health concerns, you can then continue to review each of the other areas of your life; financial/wealth, career/business, relationships, free time/fun.  With careful analysis, you will discover a problem in one or a combination of those areas.

Remember stress is a warning signal; use it to figure out the problem area in your life.  In order to fix the problem, you have to first know what the problem is. 

This is the first of seven tips on how to use stress as a personal growth tool.  Stay tuned for my next post which will introduce tip number two.