Don’t Sweat It!

How many times have we heard that expression?
This is Summer.  When the living is supposed to be easy.  

But thousands of us, if not millions, do “sweat” it every day, and in every season.

It’s not just about stressing over the big stuff, but about the low grade, internal pressures that ultimately take many of us down.  Down into fatigue, or possibly depression, if not chronic, physical illness of one kind or another.

We tend to underestimate “pressure”.  But as a form of stress, the damage that such an ongoing, low grade, pernicious form of depletion can cause is often under identified as an issue.

It can really be insidious, because the repercussions creep up and creep into our body slowly, with symptoms such as poor sleep, listlessness, loss of appetite, or alternatively behaviors like self comforting eating ……. Day by day, by day, by year, by year.

Pressure of one kind or another is now so much a part of our daily lives, that it doesn’t even stand out in our awareness.  Because  It doesn’t have to be associated with  an event, and often isn’t.  The experience of it can be much more subtle.  Like misplacing your car keys every other day, just when you need them to rush somewhere.  Our life is full of missing car keys.

The chronic habit of rushing is one type of pressured activity.  Of feeling you never have enough times to get things done. Of always running from one commitment to another……

Skipping meals, eating them in the car while driving, or in front of the computer while we work.

Perhaps it is as simple as feeling we need to be doing something, or being someone…

As so many on-line health gurus remind us, it’s  all just enough to tap into our adrenal glands constantly and mess with our biochemistry.  We take coffee, tea or soda as a tonic during the day, and in the evening that glass of wine… or two to unwind.

But, do we ever unwind deeply enough before we start another day with all its old and new pressures?

What can we do about this constant bottled up pressure?  Well, the answer is simple if not easy.  Let the pressure go….  

Look for and develop ways that work for us to let pressure go.  Start by being conscious and present in our understanding.  Identifying the pressures that are there, and what factors contribute to them is a great place to focus awareness, and begin to move those pressures out.

We all need to remember to breathe….  More deeply and more often.  Remember to be the people we want to be. To live the life we want to live, the way we want to live it. And, to go within ourselves to determine how we want to choose to live that life outside of ourselves: what kind of decisions we want to make as we face another night and another beautiful Summer day.