Posts Tagged ‘stress’

By Seamus Anthony

You may or may not have noticed that I have not written as much for Rebel Zen of late as I used to. There is a twofold explanation for this:

1) Lack of time – not a lot I can do about this at the moment; gotta put food on the table.

2) Negative frame of mind – basically, I am a musician who also writes personal development stuff, and over the years of I have noticed a roller-coaster shaped trend to my personal development content output based on my reoccurring and longish cycles of depression.

Basically when I am feeling groovy, I write lots of personal development stuff, but when I am going through a prolonged “dark night of the soul” my armchair-Zen-style blatherings tend to dry up (which is very inconvenient because it is quite a lucrative writing market for me when I have good momentum going).

Zen and the Art of Being Miserable?

When I am dark, I find it easy to keep writing music, because these are works of art that feel fully at home with states of mind of like depression, anxiety and paranoia. After all where would some of my favourite musicians like Nick Cave, Pink Floyd or Morrissey be without their “black dogs”?

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By Seamus Anthony

If you are anything like me then you are sometimes a messy blob of anxiety, stress and over-imaginative worry.

Between you and me, I think we should get over ourselves already and get on with enjoying our lives while we still have the chance. Easier said than done? Here are some unconventional ways to help you live a little:

Take Some Time Out To Really Imagine The Worst

There’s a lot of advice out there about setting aside some time to visualize all the good things that you’d like to come into your life – you know – the whole Law of Attraction thing.

Have you ever actually watched The Secret?

I mean – pluh-eeez … as IF!

I think far better advice is to throw out your superstitious hokey-pokey and get real. Spend some time conjuring up all the worst things that could happen. I do this sometimes and I find that by naming my fears I somehow strip them of their power.

I think ‘what if “that” happened?’ And ‘what if ‘THAT” happened’. After a little while of doing this I just get fear-fatigue and I realize there is nothing to do except A) take all reasonable precautions, B) hope for the best and C) relax and get on with enjoying the moment as best I can.

Oh yeah – and in case you are worried that by focussing on the worst you will magically attract the very scenarios you want to avoid – put that out of your mind – it’s woo-woo nonsense.

Seriously – that’s like worrying that airline safety teams are in fact inviting distaster by going over all the possible malfunctions that might beset an aircraft. If those guys didn’t do exactly that there is NO WAY I would get in a plane!

Just Do Things When and If You Feel Like It

One day you’ll be dead – and will it matter that you did or did not have the self-discipline to power through all those boring to-do list items that really sucked? Probably not.

Go Out and Get Pissed

Or go bungy jumping or whatever. My point is, you gotta just let it all hang out and be a hairy beast for a while every now and then.

I was at this (very nice) guy’s house the other day and he was proudly telling me how he never drinks very much and how he has a nice new white carpet and a nice new beige car . And I kid you not – his trousers were beige too.

Lovely guy mind you, I really like him – but for God’s sake – do you want to be like that? Are you already? ‘Cos being boring is fine some of the time – even most of the time – but for the love of Pete you gotta have some fun sometimes!

So get amongst it, I say. Hang out with the hairy people for a night. Live a little.

And beware of becoming one of the beige people, take it from Billy Connolly.

Dwell In The Angst

This is similar to focussing on the worst that can happen but this is more about focussing on the bad feelings that are messing with you.

I accidently came across this liberating technique way back when I was first experimenting with meditation. I was trying to establish a routine of meditating every day whether I felt like it or not. Well, on one particular day I certainly did not feel like it: I was so depressed and anxious that I could barely think (I was partying very hard at the time, even for me, and this was leaving me strapped out).

Nevertheless, I sat down to try and meditate anyway but I couldn’t get into it because I was squirming with an angst that was so acute it was manifesting itself physically: I literally felt like I was crawling out of my skin.

I felt like giving up and lighting a joint. Even though I knew that this wouldn’t really help much, I was just about to get up and do that when a “voice” said to me “Stay and dwell in the angst”.

Listen To The Voices In Your Head

Now I don’t know about you, but when I hear “voices” I listen up good. Maybe they lose their impact if they never stop, but thankfully my voices keep to themselves most of the time, so I just went with it and tried to “dwell in the angst”.

At first it was horrible. I focussed all my attention on how horribly stressed and anxious I felt, and for a few minutes it was almost more than I could bear. I  was in tears (and I usually find it very hard to cry properly).

But then all of a sudden the angst just lifted. It was gone and I felt quite calm and relaxed – quite fine.

Somehow by listening to the voices in my head and dwelling in the angst like I was told, I worked through the stress and anxiety that was knocking me around. Instead of pushing it down with more drugs or distraction, I acknowledged and paid attention to how I felt. To my surprise, that was pretty much all that was actually required to quell the bad feelings.

So there you have it – no doubt the sanest advice you’ve ever read: Imagine the worst, get pissed, be irresponsible, listen to voices in your head and meditate on feeling really crap. Regulation stuff really.

Photo by StuartPilbrow

By Steve Mills

This is part one of a series about “Going With the Flow”

There is a lot written on personal development blogs about the concept of “going with the flow.” I am sure most Rebel Zen readers have encountered this term many times during their internet wanderings, and that you have heard many different takes on what it means. Here at Rebel Zen, we aren’t ones to get too hung up on definitions. What I am more interested on is different perspectives on the one idea. So in that spirit, here is one take on the idea of “Going with the Flow”

BIG FLOW : Life Flow

We quite often get to a point in our lives where things get out of control. This can be a major source of anxiety and stress for a lot of people, as they feel that they are constantly fighting against the world for control of their situation in life and circumstances.

Others however, learn to “go with the flow.” They realise that you can NEVER have 100% control of your life circumstances, and anything could happen in the next 5 years, weeks, days or minutes which could completely change things.

The metaphor for this is of sitting in a canoe on a raging river. The river is your life, and the direction it flows is the combination of all of the forces and factors of your everyday existence. All is not lost to the hands of fate, because in your hand  you have a paddle. This paddle is your own goals, intentions and actions.

While I cannot, no matter how hard I try, change the way that the water is flowing, I can paddle myself away from obstacles, or learn to turn my canoe in just the right way to avoid capsizing when things get rough.
Along the stream of life there are parts of the river that you want to visit, and parts full of dangers that you want to avoid at all cost.  I have found one of the ways to get a big, powerful paddle is by having a super clear, laser focused direction. Good Old Curlys Law in practice

In order to know which way to paddle, you need to have Awareness of the direction of the stream. Meditation, or taking some time out from the day to day routine is important, as it allows you to detach slightly from the flow of the River of Life,  and stand on the safe river bank.

From there you can look at things in perspective of the greater picture. Step beyond yourself and see how the actions you make today affect tomorrow.

All three parts of my meditation series are now online over at PickTheBrain.com. The articles are called “How Meditation Improves Your Health”.

Meditation Article Part One

• How mainstream society (and in particular the medical community) has accepted the evidence that meditation is effective in assisting healing.
• The dark side of our connectivity culture – stress.

Meditation Article Part Two

• How your body reacts to stress
• Why you are probably more stressed than you need to be
• Why stress is bad for our bodies

Meditation Article Part Three

• What is the Relaxation Response
• How to achieve Biological Balance (and why it’s good for you)
• The many benefits of meditation

Also don’t forget to go check out my new eBook “Psychedelic Meditation: How to Get an Awesome Cosmic High Without Drugs” and learn how you can not only enjoy the health benefits of meditation but also the recreational possibilities of meditation too!

Peace out dudes. Have, like, a totally tubular weekend…

Seamus Anthony

By Steve Mills

When I was a younger man I was fascinated with ancient history. I would spend entire days reading about past discoveries, ancient civilizations, the rise and fall of empires. I was thinking about this today and the image of a medieval nautical map came to mind. People of centuries ago had some pretty detailed maps of the areas that they frequently travelled, especially when you take into consideration the tools and mathematics that they used to draw them.

The one feature that really stood out for me on those maps however were the areas that weren’t quite as well mapped, or were completely unexplored. In these areas, they had pictures of huge grotesque creatures, and dire warnings of what would happen to people if they crossed those waters. Large, foreboding font labelled these areas with such titles as “Here there be monsters” or “Death for those who enter”.

The bravery and skill of people of bygone ages to push on and explore the unknown is often underestimated by people in modern times.

The unknown always has an element of fear, and doing something new, or that means a lot to you is an intense experience. We are so used to the everyday monotony of work routine, of being on a schedule and being told what to do that we don’t quite know how to deal with the idea of new experiences. When we start something new, the voices of doubt and dismay are never far away. There is something inside us that says “This is new, scary and different. I am going to come up with 50 reasons why you should stop”. It sometimes can be the voice of reason, but more often the not it is self doubt and needless worry.

SETTING IN A NEW DIRECTION

A past manager of mine had a good statement on the wall of his workstation. It read something like ” As soon as a new way of doing things starts, the pull of the old ways of doing things begin. In the beginning, enthusiasm is enough to override this force, but in the longer term, a more sustainable source of motivation must be found”

We think that all great adventures are fun, are glamorous and exciting and should “feel good” the whole time. But while I agree that adventures should be REWARDING, I also see that the greatest adventures have their scary times, the boring times, the patience trying frustrating times. They have times where you don’t know what you are going to step in next as you progress towards your goal.

The monsters will always be there in uncharted waters, you just need to stop looking for them, and keep the ship sailing on course towards new land.

Once you get there, the realisation often comes that a) There really weren’t any monsters and b) The journey was well worth it.