i received an email this morning from my dear friend, crystalyn, with the below attached. she and i have been talking a lot about stress and ways to deal with stress lately. and i absolutely love what she shared...
A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?"
Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.
The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the same weight...but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."
He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, the burdens will become increasingly heavy, to the point when we won't be able to carry on."
"As with the glass of water, you have to put your burdens down for a while and rest before holding them again. When you're rested and refreshed, you can then carry on with your burden(s)."
"So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow."
And here are some additional great ways of dealing with any burdens in your life --
Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.
Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.
If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to be kind to others.
Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.
We could learn a lot from crayons... Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
- author | source unknown
in closing, i wanted to share a few more photos of my cherished friend, steph, who always handles life and stress with such beauty and grace. her third baby is due in two weeks, while her husband is deployed (home mid-december). and i'm so very, very excited to have been invited to photograph her family upon his return.
