How to get rid of stress?

MySAR for 27th November

How to get rid of stress?    http://youtu.be/eic9w-ktf9A One youngster comes to me very depressed and asks this question "Why is God creating so many difficulties for us? How to handle stress?" I tell this youngster to reflect on this beautiful story:  A man goes to a shop, picks up a beautiful cup and says "my god this cup is so beautiful" and suddenly the cup starts talking to the man. The cup starts saying "O man, I am beautiful right now, but what was the state of my being before the pot-maker made me a beautiful pot?  Before I was sheer mud and the pot-maker pulled me out of the mud from the mother earth and I felt why that pot-maker is so cruel, he has separated me from mother earth. I felt a tremendous pain. And the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then he put me and churned me, when I was churned I felt so giddy, so painful, so stressful, I asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then he put me into a oven and heated me up, I felt completely burnt. There was tremendous pain and I asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" and the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then he poured hot paint on me and I felt the fume and the pain, I again asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" and the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then again he put me into an oven and heated it to make me more strong, I felt life is so painful hence pleaded the pot-maker and the pot-maker said, "Just wait." And after that the pot-maker took me to the mirror and said, "Now look at yourself". And surprisingly I found myself so beautiful. When god gives us lot of trouble, it appears god is very cruel but we need patience and we have to wait. When bad things happen to good people, they become better and not bitter. So, all difficulties are part of a cosmic design to make us really beautiful. We need patience, we need proper and well understanding, we need the commitment to go through in a very calm and wise way. So, all difficulties are not to tumble us but to humble us. With this understanding, let us not be against difficulty. Understand difficulty is a part of a purifying process. A purifying process at present which we cannot understand and hence we need faith and we need trust. Let us understand how to handle stress with this background. You can be affected by stress from two angles. There is an internal stress and there is an external stress. Nobody can avoid stress; one has to only handle it with smile. The internal stress is: your thoughts can create stress, your values can create stress, and your beliefs can create stress, meaning thereby your stress is coming from your mind more from the outer world. Many people suffer not from heart attack – they suffer from thought-attack.  For example, when somebody says you are an idiot, we get so hurt, we get so victimized. My boss has called me an idiot and I am feeling tremendous pain. Now where does this stress come from? If my boss has called me an idiot, I have to ask myself "am I an idiot"?  If I am an idiot nothing to be upset about; and if I am not an idiot, then also nothing to be upset about..! It is the perception of the boss. But why do we suffer from that stress? I suffer not because my boss has called me an idiot but because of the thought-attack.  I may say the boss has called me an idiot; therefore I am suffering? It is true that the words are unpleasant. But what hurts is the interpretation of the unpleasant word. The thought in me interprets. That is pain and therefore it becomes pain. Much of our stress is our mind interpreting it as pain. So we suffer from thought-attack more than heart attack ~Swami Sukhabodhananda -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Convesation between Shekhar Kapoor and Sadhguru Shekhar Kapoor : How to get rid of stress?” Is there a definition that we can assign to the idea of stress? Sadhguru: When I first went to the United States a few years ago, wherever I went, everybody was talking about “stress management.” I really didn’t get this because in my understanding, we manage things which are precious to us – our business, our family, our money, our wealth, our children. Why would anyone manage stress? It took me a while to understand that people have concluded that stress is a part of their lives. Manage yourself, not your stress Stress is not a part of your life. Stress is just your inability to manage your own system. Stress happens not because of the nature of your work. The Prime Minister is complaining of stress, the peon is also complaining of stress. In between, every other person is saying his job is stressful. And those who are unemployed also find their situation stressful. So you are suffering your job – if I get you fired, will you be joyful? Shekhar Kapur: No. Sadhguru: No. So stress is obviously not about your job, isn’t it? It is just that you do not know how to manage your body, your mind, your emotions, your energy, your chemistry – you do not know how to manage anything. You are functioning by accident, so everything is stressful. If you get into a car where if you turn the steering wheel one way, the car goes in the opposite direction, you’ll be stressed, isn’t it? Shekhar Kapur: Yeah. Sadhguru: Right now, that’s the kind of mechanism you are driving. Without understanding anything about it, just by chance, you are blundering through life – so you will be stressful. Stress is not because of the nature of the activity that you are performing or because of life situations. Stress is simply because you do not know how to manage your own system. What is stressful for one person, someone else breezes through – isn’t it so? Shekhar Kapur: Correct. Changing the context of your life Sadhguru: So stress is just an inability to manage the inner situation, not the outer situation. Essentially, the quality of our lives changes and transforms not because we change the content of our lives, but only because we change the context of our lives. If someone is living a beautiful life, it does not mean he is doing something different. When he wakes up in the morning, he also goes to the toilet. He also brushes his teeth. He also does the same things. But somehow, his life is magical and beautiful because of the context. This could have happened to people when they fall in love with someone. When they fell in love, and everything becomes different because the context of their life has changed. But then, once they fall out of love, again, the context of their life changes and they become miserable. Changing the content of your life as you wish may not be possible because you need permission from the situations in which you exist, but changing the context is something that you can do willfully. You don’t need anyone’s permission. It is not at all situational. On a certain day, three men were working in one place. Another man came by and asked the first man, “What are you doing here?” The man looked up and said, “Are you blind? Can’t you see I’m cutting stone?” This person moved on to the next man and asked, “What are youdoing here?” That man looked up and said, “Something to fill my belly. So I come here and do whatever they ask me to do. I just have to fill my belly, that’s all.” He went to the third man and asked, “What are you doing here?” That man stood up in great joy and said, “I’m building a beautiful temple here!” All of them were doing the same thing, but their experience of what they were doing was worlds apart. Every human being, every moment of his life could be doing whatever he is doing in any one of these three contexts – and that will determine the quality of his life, not what he is actually doing. How simple or complex an activity is doesn’t change the quality of your life. With what context you do it changes the quality of your life. If you look at your ability to handle various situations in your life, is it better when you are feeling very happy or unhappy? When you are joyful, you are willing to take up any number of things and do it. When you are stressed, you don’t want to do even the simplest things – it sets up a different kind of momentum within you. So the first and foremost thing we need to work at is to make a human being peaceful and joyful.