[Raya]

I am actively looking for ways to deal with stress these days. This tidbit I got in my email was very timely:

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, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on.

"As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.

"So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can.

"Relax; pick them up later after you've rested. Life is short. Enjoy it!"

And then he shared some ways of dealing with the burdens of 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.
* Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
* Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be recalled by their maker.
* 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 serve as a warning to others.
* Never buy a car you can't push.
* Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.
* Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
* Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.
* The second mouse gets the cheese.
* When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
* 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.
* Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.
* 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.
Have an awesome day and know that someone has thought about you today. . . .I did

[Heloisa]

I really like that analogy with the glass of water



-Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.

LOL done that a few too many times I'm afraid hehe

[Ieranii]

Thank you for sharing that. I love this one...

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.

[Raya]

Yeah, the one that really stands out to me is:

Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

I figure if I follow this one, I won't have to learn stress management

[Nepenthia]

I really like the glass of water analogy too. It's just too easy to keep holding something up when you could drink the water and smash the glass! Did I say that??? Laugh, well I thought it so I said it but ... heck I'd put the glass down gently after I drank the water and then look around to see what would happen next.

It must be the chocolate covered cranberries I just ate! /Nod me.

Nep

[Ieranii]

Can I help you eat the chocolate cranberries?

[Nepenthia]

Yes and you can find more at your nearby friendly Trader Joe's if we happen to run out!

Nep

[Garioch]

The glass of water.
What an invaluable teaching tool it has become.

But perhaps I am skewed in my thinking, because there are some standard ancedotes that I have come to observe perhaps a bit more objectively.

"Is the glass half full or half empty"
Who cares? If you are thirsty drink it!!

"You cannot have your cake and eat it too..."
Then please remind me why I would want to make the cake in the first place?

"If you talk to yourself you are crazy."
But it is ok if you set it to music and sing to yourself?
"Well, you are really only crazy if you talk to yourself and you answer."
So you are really only crazy if you are singing to yourself and you are doing a duet?

Why is it that the word NOWHERE is really the two words Now Here stuck together?

Sometimes the majority only means that all the idiots are on the same side.

And finally;
There is no such thing as Nothing.

Garioch, Last of the Lone Rangers

“Truth, Courage, Loyalty……..These are the Pillars of Honor”

[Niborea]

"And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on.

As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.

I find this very true indeed.
As someone who has had/has thier share of stress/burdens, I have always (blessidly) been able to "put down" the stress/burden so I can continue on with other things. Thus alot of people tell me how well I handle everything...... it is because I don't try to carry it all at once

Hope your stress/burdens lighten soon for you Raya

[panjandrum]

Although I am generally referred to as a stress sink, the water analagy is great.

"If you can't be kind, at least be vague" made me spill my coffee.

For stress management, I rely heavily on an old line from someone wiser than I, "Life is 10% what happens, and 90% your attitude towards it"....that and frequent trips to the gun range and jacking cab drivers for anything I can think of.

[Garioch]

I feel there are generally two methods involved with stress.
You either suffer from it, or you cause it.

I prefer to cause it, it is after all, less stressful to do so...

Reminds me of a joke:
A fellow goes in for his follow up appointment with his Doctor.
"The bad news is that you have hyper tension." the Doctor tells him.
"Well what can I do about it?" is the nervous reply.
"I suggest one of two things," the Doctor offers with a deeply drawn breath. "If you don't play golf, START; however, if you do play golf, STOP."


I sardonically made this comment off hand recently after being stonewalled in one of the departments where I work, and is now the mantra of my stress there.
"If you cannot dazzel them with service, baffle them with Bureaucracy"

Ahhh well

Garioch

[Raya]

Originally Posted by Garioch

I feel there are generally two methods involved with stress.
You either suffer from it, or you cause it.

I prefer to cause it, it is after all, less stressful to do so...

Reminds me of a joke:
A fellow goes in for his follow up appointment with his Doctor.
"The bad news is that you have hyper tension." the Doctor tells him.
"Well what can I do about it?" is the nervous reply.
"I suggest one of two things," the Doctor offers with a deeply drawn breath. "If you don't play golf, START; however, if you do play golf, STOP."


I sardonically made this comment off hand recently after being stonewalled in one of the departments where I work, and is now the mantra of my stress there.
"If you cannot dazzel them with service, baffle them with Bureaucracy"

Ahhh well

Garioch

ROFL That is priceless. I have found that humor is a GREAT stress reliever, especially if I can laugh at myself. One of the things I have taken up in my life is a job of reading to an elderly gentleman in a nursing residence. He has Alzheimers, Parkinson's Disease, and prostate cancer. He is well educated, used to be quite articulate and used to love to read his newspapers. However his eyesight has failed and he had missed all the reading he used to love to do. So when his daughter, a friend of mine, was looking around for someone to hire, she thought of me. I jumped at the chance.

Anyhow, my gentleman has had quite a bit of difficulty in communicating. He could hardly speak and it was quite difficult to understand him. So I do most of the talking. After having read to him for a few weeks now, I, along with others, have noticed a big change in him for the positive. It delights me no end. I have to work at it though. He lets me know exactly what he thinks if I read boring stuff to him, because he falls asleep. So I have to make it active and get him involved. (I am warming up to the punchline here )

This one day, I was reading to him about WW2 (he is a veteran - machine gunner in the Sicily theater) and mentioned about how hard it was for the Allies to fight this particular war at first, because everyone was going by the rules of WW1, i.e. only the Commanders-in-Chief of the national armies could give the orders. Other officers could only pass on the orders, not initiate them. Well, WW2 moved too fast and a lot of lives were lost before the Allies realized that the officers in the field had to be able to give orders to meet changing conditions.

I hadn't known that and my gentleman and I pondered it for a bit. Then I said, "You were a corporal in the war, so you must have seen some of the change in the chain of command."

He looked blankly at me.

I said, "Well, even if you didn't get to give fresh orders, you must have assisted the officers in gathering information for giving timely commands."

He still looked blankly at me.

Finally I said, "Well, um, what did you do in the War?"

He thought a moment and then said, as clearly as anything, "Bugger all!"

I nearly fell of my chair laughing. He finally laughed too - apparently, according to his daughter, the first time he has laughed out loud in months, if not years. And he looked very pleased with himself. I also have to say he is easier to understand these days.

[panjandrum]

At work the latest form of stress relief is a two-line gag.

Drone #1: Wouldn't it make more sense to do it this way?
Drone #2: Exactly! That's why we cant do it that way.

Thats a great story Raya.

[Rachel]

Hello All, I am Rachel!

[Rachel]

Hi Garioch, Good Joke.

[Rachel]

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