How to Deal with Stress

I’ve just spent a few of days with a client who is learning to deal with stress here in the Alps – somebody who views his personal development as his number one priority in his life, someone who changed his daily routine, going to bed one hour earlier to ensure that he has an extra hour every morning for meditation. He has been regularly meditating for up to an hour every morning for the last two years. The payback? His health and fitness have greatly improved. His level of focus at work and at home has become razor-sharp and he has suddenly discovered a new-found creativity – in terms of news ideas and problem solving. He is in “flow” .

However, a couple of months back, he found himself confronted by a major career decision and, as a result, found himself reverting to the indecision and stress that had almost ruined his life many years ago, that had almost cost him everything. So, here’s his question to me – why, when it came to the push, did his meditation have no effect in the rough and tumble of daily life? First of all, of course, he freely admitted that things would have even been a lot worse were he not meditating. As I said to him, at the very least, he is one of a small minority of people who are fully aware of their thoughts and fully aware when what they are thinking is unhelpful or damaging.

But the key point is that, unless you put what you learn in meditation into the moment to moment living of your everyday life, you cannot get the downstream and all-important benefits of clarity, focus and presence of mind. Of course, you don’t wait until everything goes wrong to start putting what you have learned in meditation into practice – you have to do it when things are just normal. It’s pretty much like training for a big match – you train beforehand to make sure that you can play your best on the day.

Your training consists of regularly checking your state of mind during the course of the day – every day. If everything is running normally, chances are that your mind is wandering and distracted – after all, this is the normal adult default state of mind. Research shows that the normal adult pays approximately one percent attention to what is happening when all is running smoothly. Obviously, this level of commitment to your life is not sufficient to have a great life – and this is why most people live lives that are “not-too-bad”. As a consequence of this, the ordinariness of everyday life presents us with the perfect training ground. Simply stop yourself every-so-often during the day and check to see whether you are clear, present and focused or not – the way you feel when you meditate will be your benchmark for comparative purposes.

If you are not in a clear and present state of mind, bring yourself back to that state by coming back to now. Practically speaking, this means that you take a few moments to pay full attention to the moment – you could stop and focus your sight, feeling, hearing, senses of smell and taste on the moment in question, or you could simply take and fully experience a few deep breaths. Our contact with the reality of now – and the opportunity it provides us with to live our ordinary day extraordinarily – is through (and only through) our five senses. You need to come to your senses!

And, if you do this when nothing difficult is happening in your day, you will be fit and ready to be at your best when things actually do go wrong.