Is the time bomb in your head killing you?

Tim Connor

Everyone has this time bomb in their head – it’s ticking – for some folks it’s ticking so fast they are heading for the grave before they know it.  For others – it’s ticking but it’s just slowly ticking and stealing the value of life from their life.

Are you slowly killing yourself?

If you have never read an article about “stress” you have probably just landed here from some distant planet.

I will also wager that if you are an employee, employer, parent or spouse you know some of the symptoms and causes of stress. It is not my objective to lecture you on life’s do’s and don’ts and right’s or wrong’s but to simply ask you if you realize the negative long-term consequences of your stressors and the benefit of managing them better before it is too late.

Let me summarize my all-day seminar on stress with one sentence.  Stress is your inside-out reaction to outside-in circumstances, events or people. Sound simple?  Well, if it is why do so many people die every year from stress-related illnesses?

The number one contributor to death (I didn’t say cause) is stress.  Know the number one contributor to stress?  It’s impatience and/or the need for control.  Know a control freak?  Know someone who is impatient, in a hurry or have just “lost it” when it comes to letting life be as it is and not how they feel or believe it should always be?

Keep in mind failure causes stress. Winning the lottery causes stress. Losing a job causes stress.  Getting a promotion causes stress.  Get it? There are negative and positive stressors, but the body doesn’t distinguish between them – to your body they are all just “stressors”. So, the real key here is not what stressors are in your life but how you are reacting to them and/or handling them.

Each of us daily, even hourly must confront people and issues that bring with them great potential for stress.  We can’t stick our heads in the sand and ask the world to go away.  We must deal in the evolving, often hectic, fast paced and ever-changing world of business, finances, technology and relationships.  And we must survive as we go about these daily routines.  It’s a fact that most of us create our own stress and/or our stressors.  We do so in a variety of ways.  Here are just a few;

1. We create deadlines and expectations.  2. We set ourselves up for frustration and disappointment.  3. We have unrealistic attitudes and goals.  4. We live out of balance. 5. We carry around blame and resentment.  6. We suppress feelings and emotions.  7. But most of all we fail to keep all of this in perspective as we move through the hours, days and years of our life. 

So why do we do this to ourselves? And we do - do it to ourselves.  No one does it to us. We do it in the name of success, financial gain, profit, competition, winning, perceived happiness, security, ego needs or arrogance and more and more and more.  And in the long run, we end up with less.  Less satisfying relationships, poor health, less fun, less happiness and less pure joy of living.   Stress keeps you stuck in the future or the past and out of the joy of the present. 

Stress, in my opinion, is the single greatest threat to happiness, joy and a truly rewarding life. It ruins relationships. It causes health issues. It destroys careers.

I hope I have your attention. If you are under stress you don't need me to tell you.  Your body is doing an excellent job of telling you this very minute.  You are either ignoring the signals or overriding them with drugs, denial, pills, projection or stimulants of some kind.

There is something you can do to alleviate all of this stress in your life.  You will not find my suggestions very profound or enlightening.  But they will help you live longer.

1.   Lighten up.  2. Accept that life and business is a game.  You win some and you

lose some.  You will never win them all and you won't lose them all.  3. Relax.  You can’t keep draining your battery without recharging it from time to time.  4. Slow down.  You are not in a race.  If you think you are, trust me you will never win.  Your only hope is to just try and finish, alive.  5. Stay in the present.  Your mad dash into your future is all in vain.  The time you miss now, the fun you miss now, the relationships you miss now and the simple pleasures you miss now can’t be found in the future.  They can’t be enjoyed from a hospital bed or from the grave.  6. Laugh a lot.  Laughter is nourishment for the soul.  7. Take time to play.  7. Accept people and life as it is. You can’t change anyone.  People are who they are and act the way they act. Period.  Life is.  You can’t manipulate the rules of the universe and life to your liking.  8. Rest.  It is not a sin to do nothing.  It is not a crime to spend time in an aimless pursuit of nothingness.

It's a choice – live longer or die sooner – this my friend is a simple fact of life – manage your stressors or let them kill you.

Is the grass really greener on the other side of the street?

Is the grass really greener over there?

Tim Connor

Is the grass really greener on the other side of the street?  Do the people over there that you observe day in and day out; have more fun, better relationships, more rewarding careers, fewer problems or just have better lives in general?  Are they content or are they looking at your side of the street wondering the same things about you?  If you switched sides would both of you be any happier? Have less stress? Find your life’s dream in the front yard?

Consider for a moment – maybe the grass is greener on the other side of the street because they are using better fertilizer, weeding more often and watering regularly.  Maybe they are just taking better care of their lawn (life) than you are.  I’m sure I don’t need to give you hundreds of words and unlimited illustrations for you to get this simple analogy.

Most people are searching for only a few fundamental things in life.  I believe the significant ones are to be loved and to give love, acceptance for who they are and who they are becoming, appreciation, validation, respect and the opportunity to be happy, successful, safe and content. All of the other stuff you and I say we want - and the list is far too long to share here - is often just an elusive dream.

It could be time to start doing a better job of nurturing your own lawn, garden (life) than the people you seem to envy are doing.

Having been in front of over a million people in my global audiences over the years I can tell you that after hundreds if not thousands of discussions everyone wishes they had something better or different in their life, career, finances, business or relationships.  And yet – they keep searching outside themselves for the answers, solutions or results. 

Suffice it to say that you will never get everything you want “out there” until you do a better job of fertilizing, growing and nurturing your “in there.”  What are you searching for now or have you been looking for, hoping for or dreaming about for years that is still evading you or that is missing in your life?  Let’s take a brief look at just a few of these: 

Love: Everyone wants to love someone and be loved by someone.  It is a deep yearning in every heart, the desire for real and lasting love.  Not just romantic love, not egotistical love, not superficial love, not manipulative love just real unconditional love from the heart.

Acceptance: I believe everyone wants to feel like they are o.k. just the way they are, that they don’t need to change anything, according to your expectations, to be accepted by you. I can be me and it's o.k.  You don't have to like it, but you can learn to accept it or live with it. No one was put on this earth for the approval of others.  Yes, we all can grow and be better, wiser, smarter, nicer, etc. but that’s up to us and not those in our lives.

Appreciation:  Real appreciation, given from the heart with no agendas or expectations is one of the real needs of the human spirit. Appreciation says you care, are aware of what other's do, are interested in showing them that they matter.  Everyone does something every day for others and I guarantee that they feel they should be appreciated for it.  I am not saying here that you should spend every waking minute giving appreciation to someone who is insecure, needy or egotistical.  No matter how much you give them it will never be enough.

Validation:  There are so many ways we invalidate people.  We interrupt them, we forget to do things for them that we promised we would, we don’t listen to them, we do all of the talking when we are with them, we don’t give them credit for having anything worthwhile to say, feel and we take credit for their ideas.  We constantly say to them: you should, why don't you, you need to - this list my friends is endless.  One way to know if you are with an invalidator is: how do you feel when you are around them?  Do you like yourself more or less when in their presence?  When we invalidate others, we say to them - you don’t matter.

Respect: Not everyone will go to the moon, invent a cure for cancer or become a billionaire but we all deserve the respect of others regardless of our race, education, religion, age, looks, etc.  This doesn’t mean we agree with them or even like them, but respect is not about liking or loving.  When you judge another person that doesn’t define them – it defines you.

So, let me ask you – is it time to buy some more or better-quality fertilizer for your lawn?