Stress in life

Dear Friends!

We all have stress. We have to face it all the time in our lives right from we are this high in childhood.

It is mild and perhaps we have support from our near and dear ones in our childhood so we manage it somehow.
Into our teens we see it in a different way. Stress due to poor marks scored at the school exams, peer pressure for some things and how we deal with it, friends whom we discover are not really our friends! All this plus those embarrassing questions from our parents who want to know what's happening in our lives outside home.
For some a love failure or a crush could make matters even worse.
But it is friends again who support us and we somehow sail through these years without health issues.

Then its college time. This is the most difficult of all in many people's lives. There's lot more exposure to others from many places than the same friends we have been seeing at school for a long time since childhood - of course, it depends on whether we have studied at the same school for 14 long years!

At office we face another set of people and we are lucky if we have good humans as our superiors rather than those who feel threatened at every shake of their chair to mean that we are up to grab it!
In the efforts to prove ourselves worthy of our jobs we learn, re-learn, unlearn many things at work. We make mistakes, get pulled up, never make mistakes, get pulled up, work hard, but never get praised, never work hard but feel we ought to be praised for attempting to attend office :D
Some bosses put up and some don't suffer upstarts or juniors kindly.
Through all this we learn big and small things which mold and shape our lives.
We are not what we were 10 years back, well even 10 hours back if a massive event had occurred to change our lives forever!

So what does all these things tell us? Life has its ups and downs. How can we wish only the happy events to take place all the time in our lives. How can we also be depressed and bogged down only with bad events all our lives. Is it not then in our own hands to try to make our lives better by taking whatever positive steps we can to damage-control our mistakes, be ready to learn from our mistakes and try to lead a calm and peaceful life.
Stress can be dealt at every turning point in our lives by keeping our balance in happy as well as not-so-happy times. This does not mean we should savor in the happiness an event brings. Not just cling to it all the time is the secret of letting it go. This letting go after a while is to be applied to both happy and sad events. Let go means not simply trying to forget but to learn to move on with more maturity and strength. To get up and move on with the set of goals we have before us. If goals are too long to reach, it makes sense in breaking them into smaller segments so that the length of time does not bog us down which could result in our losing what little interest we started the work with.

Finally, the best way to de-stress is to talk to someone close who is not judgmental about us, or chant some routine mantras repeatedly until we can divert our minds in a more positive way and meditation is another excellent form to overcome our disturbed minds.
In these modern times it may be hard to find friends who have time to lend an ear to our problems but chanting and meditation can be practiced to good effect to put our lives back in order!

Cheers!
Happy chanting.
Mahalakshmi