Get a handle on stress

Every day brings a hurricane of stressors. You get up early, herd the kids out the door, rush to work and then scramble to complete projects that were due two days ago. All the while you’re worrying about the economy, layoffs, bills and finding time to run errands. Eventually, you leave an hour past quitting time and race once again to get all the evening chores done before bedtime.

Whether you realize it or not, your emotions, behaviors and perceptions are as much to blame for your stress as your schedule, boss and bank account. Our minds become trapped by the automatic patterns and reactions upon which they rely. So when a triggering event occurs, you spiral into a frantic or depressed state. You’ve unwittingly trained your brain to react this way, and simply willing it not to won’t work.
The good news is that you can deliberately rewire your brain. New research shows that the brain is capable of changing and growing at any age—a quality dubbed neuroplasticity. If you invest time in learning how to train your mind, you will be better equipped to access the kind of mental flexibility that enables you to see other options.

You’ve tried to outrun the stress hurricane, but eliminating the stressors from your life is an impossible task. What you can do is change how you respond to the inevitable stressors that pop up: to dwell calmly inside the stress hurricane’s eye. It’s time to stop running from stressful situations and learn how to dance with them. That means changing your mind—literally.

Stress is Contagious

A lot of stress comes from cultural expectations. In the U.S., for example, society puts people under the gun to do more, faster, better. However, few of us can naturally meet every cultural standard of achievement, so we’re saddled with unmet expectations and compulsive drives that sink our peace of mind and morale.

Wanting to be the best you can be isn’t inherently bad. But it’s incredibly easy to become myopic and stressed when you’re blindly striving to reach the next level. Unfortunately, chronic stress can impact your energy levels, weaken your immune system, raise your blood pressure and even interfere with tissue repair. It can also contribute to depression, predicted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to be the leading occupational disease of the 21st century.

Chances are you have a coworker, friend or family member who is a walking ball of anxiety. How do you feel around this person? Most likely, your own anxiety levels rise, and you find yourself spending less and less time around them. In fact, the brain contains mirror neurons, which cause us to unconsciously emulate others’ feelings and behaviors. So, yes—stress is in fact a communicable illness!

Plot New Pathways

Think about it this way: You can dam up a riverbed’s waters, but once they’re released, they’re going to flow through the same old channel. Your brain works in a similar manner. To make a change, you need to literally carve new channels—new neural pathways.

That’s where mind training comes in. There are four types of brainwaves: beta, alpha, theta and delta. Ideally, they should all work together in harmony, but one often dominates the others. This leads to negative feedback loops of behavior. Mind training—a serious form of meditation—helps you to focus on each of these four brainwaves, which in turn triggers the brain’s neuroplastic function.

Depending on which brainwave is dominant, you might experience racing thoughts, uncontrollable worry, an inability to meet deadlines and more. When you become truly aware of your thought processes and emotional responses, you will be better able to identify what triggers your stress response and what you can do to alleviate it.

Flow Your Stress Away

Find an object and try to hold your attention on it. Did you notice all the thoughts that popped up as you tried to focus on the item? In a sense, you didn’t fully see the object itself, because your mind was clouded with relating it to other things, naming it, evaluating it and judging it. Can you see how in other situations this kind of mental jabber can increase your anxiety and prevent you from acting positively and decisively?

When you’re able to silence this inner voice through mind training, you open yourself up to a state called “flow.” Flow is that all-too-fleeting mentality in which you are on fire: focused, engaged and immersed in what you’re doing. Scientifically, flow moves in the direction of the prefrontal lobes—the area that gathers meaning from the external world. It’s a state that merges action with acute awareness. Neural networks are working together optimally. And that means less stress!

Meet Challenges Head-On

With enough practice in mind training, you will notice a difference in your ability to remain calm, cool and collected, even during your most hectic days.
Of course, stressors will never go away. You’ll still have deadlines to meet, bills to pay and children to chauffeur. But with the help of mind training, these challenges will no longer send you into a self-perpetuating tailspin of worries. You will be able to meet them head-on with a stable, focused mind. And that will make all the difference.

Patt Lind-Kyle’s book, Heal Your Mind, Rewire Your Brain: Applying the Exciting New Science of Brain Synchrony for Creativity, Peace and Presence, is available at bookstores nationwide and through major online booksellers.