As we all realize stress is inevitable, what makes the difference is how we manage and cope up with it. Stress can range from short term to long term depending on the cause, such as personal, professional, social etc.
The easiest and the most common coping mechanism used by most of us is Avoidance, where we tend to distance ourselves from stressful situations like making decisions or taking responsibilities.
While avoidance gives us a temporary relief from stressful situations, it ends up lowering our Self-esteem and confidence and make us overly self-critical. Not just stressful situations, sometimes we tend to avoid certain people as well, which hampers our interpersonal relationships and social life.
Avoidance restricts you to your comfort zone which in turn inhibits you from exploring your skills and developing resilience. It can be tackled only by spearheading through it. Fear and Anticipatory thoughts are the major reasons for avoidance. Challenging such thoughts is the first step towards coping with stress, rather than letting the fear and anticipatory thoughts control you.
In the process of meeting our professional and personal needs we end up spending our lives jumping from task to task and we fail to acknowledge our being. We are unable to experience our lives completely instead we are just focusing on completing different task.
When was the last time you took a pause and experienced your surrounding and yourself?
It is equally important for us to experience life as it is than just restricting it to goals or tasks. Mindfulness is a way to experience life efficiently, to be mindful is to be completely aware of our feelings, thoughts, physical sensations, and surroundings, from one moment to the next. It requires us to switch off our default auto-pilot mode and pay close attention to our present moment. Being mindful involves observing our thoughts and feelings as impartial witnesses – without judgement, belief or disbelief, and without letting them take over. Solutions that ask us to change who we are or become something we’re not have failed us over and over again. Mindfulness recognizes and cultivates the best of who we are. We already have the capacity to be present, and it doesn’t require us to change who we are. But we can cultivate these innate qualities with simple practices that are scientifically demonstrated to benefit ourselves.