Eliminate Stress -- Eliminate Illness

What do you think happens when you hate your job, or your spouse, or your kids, or your house? Did you know you get sick - literally? It's true; and it always has been. In fact, your emotions are simply a signal to you that your body is not where it wants to be, or where you want it to be. If you don't listen, or change your perspective, you get sick - simple as that.

Don't think that this is a "different" kind of sick; there's just sick - and the symptoms, pain, and suffering are all real. The good news is that you can change your situation if you want to. I know you probably haven't been told this before; but you have been given hints. Before pharmaceutical companies came along and took over the world, everyone knew where illness came from; and we weren't exactly dying out or going extinct. Sayings such as, "You'll worry yourself sick," are literal warnings about the way dis-ease really works.

When you are worried, angry, afraid, grieving, or any variation of these emotions, you are aware of it because of the way you feel; and that feeling is your visceral response to your thoughts, thought-patterns, or way of thinking. Your thoughts cause emotional responses - every single one of them. Emotions are natural, and healthy; but when they aren't processed completely, or appropriately, they become stress. Stress has been blamed for up to 90% of all trips to the doctor's office.

Did you follow that? Thinking causes an immediate emotional response which you feel in your body as some form of stress. Those feelings aren't as pleasant as the feelings you have when you aren't stressed, so we seek to soothe or medicate them with whatever we can find: Food; Candy; Alcohol; Cigarettes; Prescription drugs; Illegal drugs; Television; and a number of other distractions. Again, this is quite normal; and many of the things we call "addictions" are simply habitual escape patterns. Most of the people who go to the doctor are going because of stress-related complaints. The good new is that you can control stress if you can control your thoughts.

Here's how it works: You have beliefs about the world - everybody does - and as you experience the world, you compare what you find "out there" to those beliefs you hold "in here." If your beliefs tell you everything is fine and going your way, you will be relaxed. If you believe things should be a different way, or someone should change, or you think you are in danger, or life just sucks, then your stress response (fight-or-flight mechanism) will be active. Any discomfort you ever feel is due to the actions of the stress response, or the immune system as it attempts to heal you.

When you are in stress, your immune system is disabled, along with your digestive system, and reproductive system. Problems like, constipation, E.D., low libido, weight gain, gastrointestinal problems, high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, diabetes, Fibromyalgia, and most other chronic pain and illness, are all examples of stress-related conditions. If you are stewing in resentment, you are unwittingly keeping yourself in a state of low-immunity; and you are pumping out the stress hormones that produce and store fat. If you hate your job, for instance, and you don't quit, you will end up sick, or in chronic pain - and you will end up getting fired, or something similar. Your body will not allow you to stay miserable forever. Unfortunately, before most of us break free from the things stressing us out - or learn to change our perspective to one of gratitude, compassion, and acceptance - we are so far gone that even if we change jobs, we are likely to be on the pharmaceutical merry-go-round with new symptoms (caused by the drugs we took for the old symptoms) we are mistakenly blaming on germs, aging, or a weak body, or some other thing we believe we have no control over.

What do you think twenty-years of hate, anger, worry, or frustration look like? Do you think you can make such judgments free of charge? Our judgments color our perception; and when we perceive ourselves as victims, we become victims. Not of our unfair boss, or unfriendly spouse - but victims of our own thoughts, judgments, and perceptions. Stress is stress; and that's where most illness comes from. You really have to think about that one for a while; because stress is easy to eliminate. And changing your health and life is as easy as changing your mind - and keeping it changed.