Are You Experiencing Signs of Runaway Stress?

Here are most of the common signs of runaway stress. The list is long, but you need to recognize the most common expressions of stress before you understand the importance of doing something about it:

• You cringe in front of a mirror because of growing bulges, fading muscle tone, or unmistakable signs of “premature aging.”
• Aches, pains, or a foggy brain have become your closest friends.
• You feel tension. You’re irritable. You aren’t able to concentrate.
• You experience dry mouth, tooth grinding, sweaty palms or cold hands, a pounding heart, shallow breathing, chronic headache, low self-esteem, or withdrawal.
• Your sleep quality is in the pits, and exhaustion rules your day.
• You get an upset stomach or urinate frequently.
• You have a lowered sexual drive.
• Your workouts are, well, not working out!
• Tight muscles may cause pain and trembling, or you might have nervous twitches.
• You know your hormones balances are all out of whack, but you have no idea what to do about it other than suffer.
• Your doctor has you worried about the “numbers” from your last physical exam.
• Your single greatest weapon for warding off surgery or chronic disease is … hope!
• You are handling your quality-of-life problems with stimulants, products from a
  drugstore, and/or the services of “sickness care” professionals.
• As a spouse, parent, lover, friend, business owner, employee, student, fitness
• seeker, or creative worker, your lackluster performance is leaving others out in
• the cold — and you’re not feeling very warm about it, either!

Got stress? Of course you do. We all do.

How you manage your stress determines if and when you ride the conveyor belt to a living hell ( “ride the conveyor belt to a living hell” is a term I use in my book, Metamorphosis, to explain what it actually feels like to my patients – they often describe this “ride” that they are putting their body’s through day after day as a downward spiral into the depths of poor health).   If you want to experience the pure joy of optimized living and satisfy your personal wellness potential, you must:

1. Be able to recognize the early symptoms of stress buildup in your body and how it affects your emotions.

2. Learn how to avoid — or at least sidestep — life challenges that lead to stress buildup.

3. Learn how to heal stress buildup that has already occurred.

If you’d also like to live a fabulous, productive, vital, and supportive life, and then just cease to run when your time has come, then you need to know much more than what comes out of medicine, pharmacology, and TV drug commercials!
You need to know that it’s not the passing of calendar years that harm you, but inactivity, faulty thinking, and accumulated, chronic, unchecked stress!