When I think of all the difficulties of most people have in our culture today, the one that stands out, the one that we seem to have the least ability to deal with is stress. And instead of taking on a tour of what you can do with yoga, meditation, Tai-chi, Chi-gong, guide of visualizations, journal writing, prayer, massage, aroma therapy, bach flower remedies, homeopathy, legitimate healing modalities. I want to take you to what I consider a deeper and more essential level of understanding, what actually causes the stress. Because what otherwise we’ll do is we’ll simply adapt healthier methods of processing the stress in the moment that we feel it. So you are in a situation, you are in a traffic jam, you are late, you are not going nowhere and you are starting to feel that your pulse is going up, your heart beating, you start to look at someone and get angry. And then what you will do is you feel that tension and then at some point during the day, you will say “Okay, what am I going to do with this tension that has build up? I’m going to go to meditate.” And you meditate or you take a B complex, you take I am St. John’s quarter, Cava, or you will put on some music. You do something to try to take that edge off of it. To dissipate the build up angst that occurs when we are stressed. But that does not change anything. It just means instead of what you might have been before which is over eat or yell or get angry or implode or explode, you’ve simply taken a stressful situation out there that you have responded to and you have created a better way of dissipating the energy that has build up. I want to show that there is a completely different way of dealing with that so you don’t get stressed to begin with. No matter what happens around you, no matter what someone says or does. You still maintain balance. You maintain your emotional equilibrium. Now, staying de-stressed in a highly stressed world is not difficult. As long as you understand how deep you have to go to get to the real underlying issues. But these issues differ with every single person. Everyone in this room will find that you have a different cause for why you react the way you do. So what I have done is I am going to take you on a little journey and this journey is a journey of exploring some of the most primary ways that all of us deal inappropriately with the stresses in our lives. I am going to number these and as I number them and give them to you. You are to give your own answer but I will give you kind of a little inducement and show you how I would go about answering these. But remember that is just my approach. How you deal with it is for you, alright? Let us begin.
Number one: What establishes the limits to what you can or willing to achieve? Stop right there for a moment.
