Do Social Media and the News Only Add to Your Stress, Crushing You Under the Weight of the World?

Three quick steps to relieve and reset the authentic you

How can we have gotten to the point where COVID would shut down our city, state, country, globe?

Work?

Travel?

Economy?

Healthcare?

The very life we knew . . . or at least the life we thought we knew and loved?

These are big questions, and ones that are beyond what any one of us can really manage. So, why do they somehow cause us unbelievable stress, even when we likely had nothing to do with them?

Placing blame?

It is so easy to place blame on what the world has become . . . blaming politics, the media, corporations, planners, or any form of a lack of this or that. If we cannot blame ourselves, as we did not cause this, then it may be tempting to blame others.

In fact, placing blame does not matter.

Let me show you.

Blame the politician you most dislike. Does that change your life in any tangible way? Does it help with your work, or savings, or food supply, or health? I do not mean long-term or the future, I mean right now.

How about blaming the company or organization you most hate at this moment. Does that change anything immediately within or around you this moment, or even today?

The news? Social media? Anything else? Place all the blame you want, and while it may feel good, that feeling is fleeting, as it does not change anything within you, except it may actually increase the feelings of anxiety, weight of the world, or feeling of why me at this moment.

Placing blame invites us to name the cause of some effect we experience, yet often this is done too simply and . . . really does not change anything in the near future. It does not change anything beyond bringing us to a darker, more stressed and anxiety-ridden state. We don’t feel better in the long run.

In fact, little good ever comes from placing blame.

Feeling better when under the weight of the world

There are no magic steps for feeling better when we are seemingly crushed from stress, that is unless we get out from under that feeling.

To this point, I have found three quick steps helpful in relieving the immediacy of feeling stressed to the level we can barely function.

The next time you feel under the weight of enormous stresses related to any global or external events, try these three steps. They just may work!

1. Close your eyes

Do this safely, of course, in a place where it is quiet and secure to do so. It can be in a chair. Leaning against the kitchen counter. Outside on the sidewalk. Anyplace that is safe and

where you can though closing our eyes helps us to focus more on ourselves and our own needs and feelings and thoughts we are having right now. It shuts out the world before us, and immediately helps us to reorient.

2. Breathe deeply . . . once

Breathe in slowly and deeply. Then, intentionally breathe out, slowly and deeply.

Think and feel the external taint of stress and the external foulness we were weighed down with go out with it.

Feel it leave. Like all breathing out, we release what we no longer need, so let it go.

3. Slowly open your eyes

Open them and notice the first thing you see near you.

That thing is your resource at this moment. Whatever it may be, it is not your enemy. It is not against you. In itself, it is not adding anything to nor taking anything away from you . . . it is simply doing its own thing.

That feeling of doing my own thing is exactly what we are after, as that is the resource we need to help ourselves ground to this moment in time.

The past cannot change and the future is beyond our control at this moment, but just being ourselves at this moment . . . that is the freedom from the weight of stress.

I tried this very exercise, an entire 10-second process, just before I started writing this, and when I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was a bird eating at my bird feeder. It has no idea about COVID or stress, and goes about its life right now, with or without any of the feelings I had before I started. Its doing what it does, and not worrying about the world, seems to help it happily eat and live its life.

This is exactly what I needed to help me reset . . . as in the process I momentarily forgot about the weight of my stress, and in that moment it immediately was no longer there.

Mind you, these do not address the cause or help us in the long term, but sometimes when we face severe stress in factors beyond our control, the best we can do is to help ground ourselves and be intentional and mindful of what is within us, and what external forces are beyond what we can control.

This is the essence of reset and relieving stress and anxiety that only serves to weigh us down.

We can strive to feel better for right now, and leave the future to the future. We can’t do everything, but we can attend to ourselves at this moment.

I am really eager to hear how this makes sense to you, and what creative recharging you seek out to help bring you balance, energy, and happiness!