THREE WAYS TO CHILL WHEN YOU'RE STRESSED
I was stressed - and God helped me to chill. Here's how.
If you talked to me a month ago you would have discovered quite quickly that I was stressed.
My mum was in hospital, soon to move to nursing care. We were selling her house. Work involved more projects with fewer staff. This year's pay round left a lot of us frustrated. The house needed attention. My kids were stressed with dissertation deadlines. My dog is 15 and showing signs of decline. I've put on far too much weight. I think I've developed RSI in my mouse arm.
What can I do?
Psalm 131 gives me a three step plan.
1. KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS
Verse 1: My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.
2. STOP AND CHILL
Verse 2: But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content.
3. PLACE YOUR TRUST IN GOD
Verse 3: Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore.
Join me while we face this together.
BUSY, OR EXISTENTIALLY BORED?
I love living in London, but its busyness can sometimes betray an underlying sense of boredom that speaks of a deeper need.
I love living in London.
One of the advantages of living in London is that something is always happening.
Life here is fast-paced and full of activity.
But I find that the constant busyness leads to a temptation to try and create busyness when things are slowing down a bit. Of course, I put it down to me liking activity, but it's probably fair to admit that sometimes I fill my time because I'm scared of the boredom that might come with slowing down.
I read a blog post the other day that captured this so well. It's only short, so I'd encourage you to read the whole thing, but here's a quote to whet your appetite:
Our culture now equates busyness with importance, hard work with ability. We like representing ourselves as capable, so our egos swell approvingly with each overtime hour logged. Our work has thus become our identity—when meeting new people, I’m likely to be asked ‘what I do’ before I’m asked my name. Even 2,000 years before Headspace offered free 10-day trials and lifestyle magazines wrote about mindfulness, Roman Stoic Seneca noted this human tendency with enough scathing accuracy to elicit a collective 21st-century cringe: ‘It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously... New preoccupations take the place of the old, hope excites more hope and ambition more ambition. They do not look for an end to their misery, but simply change the reason for it.’
So read the entire post on the Salt London blog, and why not put this into practice by ceasing your busyness this August, by enjoying our Holy Smokes Barbecues every Sunday.