Stress: Even the Illusion is Real

The Baietto Brothers – Guest Bloggers Extraordinaire!

I’m a big fan of magic… and I especially love the tricks or illusions that involve reading other people’s minds… for example right now think of a number between 1 and 10… the first one that comes to mind… write it down…let me guess… you picked…

(answer at the end of the article )

Here’s another one… In one word how would you describe your life in the last couple weeks? Let me guess… “BUSY” (amazing you say, not so much, seeing that almost everyone in our country feels that their lives are always “really busy.” Try it out… ask the next 10 people the above question and see how consistent the answer is. And that doesn’t mean it’s not true. On the contrary, in our fast paced world, it is simply a fact that most of us have so much on our plate, so many balls in the air, so many responsibilities, so much information to continually process, that we are often playing catch up from the moment we wake up in the morning.

Now, we would love to snap our fingers and relieve you from all your earthly duties for the next 30 days so that you could viscerally experience how it feels to be truly relaxed and worry free… but that really would be “magic”… so instead, by the powers invested in us, we aim to at least give you a glimpse of what that feeling is, even if it’s just a momentary daily reminder.

But before we do that, let’s look at how most of us compound the problem. Science has long known that the mind cannot distinguish from what is really happening and that which is vividly imagined. The simplest example is when we dream. Have you ever had a scary dream and woke up sweating with your heart racing. When you woke up you realized it clearly wasn’t happening in reality, but your body was reacting as if it was completely true. Now when we are awake, most of us are continually thinking (imagining) all of the things we have to do today and usually we are worrying about them in one way or another. And whether we are just continually going over them in our mind, which is technically the same as actually doing them over and over… or worrying about whether we did them right, whether we’ll get them all done, or why no one is helping us, our bodies are experiencing the stress of many times what is actually happening.

Believe us, your day is plenty full without your mind adding to it and yet that is exactly what is happening. You are getting the stress of your real day plus the illusionary stress of your mind’s continual repetition of what you’ve done, are doing, and still need to do.

This is the problem with an overactive imagination that has gone untrained and unmonitored. The old saying, “the mind is a terrific servant, but a terrible master,” speaks to this. And many of the eastern philosophies focus a great deal of training on simply quieting the mind. This is the whole premise of meditation.

In our INNERGIZER program, we share a couple short but extremely powerful guided meditation techniques that are designed to have you experience the well of energy you free up when you quiet the mind. Even, if only for a few minutes.

Try this right now… close your eyes and take 10 slow, long breathes. And simply focus on the flow of air in and out of your lungs.

Could you make it to 10 without your mind wondering… don’t worry most people can’t get past 7 the first time. (which, by the way, was the number you picked at the beginning of this article J

For more magic on releasing stress and freeing up tons of energy please go to www.completebalance.com.

Abracadabra,

The Baietto Brothers.