NO EGO NO STRESS

    Stress is your body’s response to increased tension. Stress is normal. You need stress to do many things, such as accepting challenges, concentrating on doing a difficult task, and making important daily and life decisions, among others. Indeed, stress can be even conducive to your health, such as stress from having sex, which increases both your pulse rate and heartbeat, as well as stimulates your brain cells to keep your brain younger and healthier for longer. In many ways, stress can be enjoyable, such as the mental and physical challenge in competitive sports and games.

After the initial stress-induced stimuli, your body should be able to relax, slow down, and return to its original state of balance and equilibrium. If that does not happen, you may become distressed or over-stressed. Too much stress can also increase your production of hormone epinephrine, and thus wearing out your hormonal glands. Dysfunctional hormone production may lead to many health issues: your blood sugar elevation to produce more energy; your breathing rate acceleration to get more oxygen for your lungs; your muscle tension; your pulse rate and blood pressure increase; and your excess sweating to cool down your body, among many other health issues. In that respect, stress can be damaging to your overall health and wellness.

It is okay to stay slightly stressed every now and then, but avoid distress—which is alienation, anxiety, fear, frustration, and even depression. When stress continues over long periods of time, it may become chronic stress, which is harmful and damaging to the body, the mind, and the soul over the long haul.

DAMAGE AND DEVASTATION OF STRESS

Chronic stress, which causes the body to maintain physiological reactions for long periods of time, especially with respect to the release of hormones, particularly DHEA (a hormone critical to anti-aging and longevity), can lead to depletion of vital nutrients in the body, vitamin C, and the B-complex vitamins.

During stress, the body overuses its DHEA supply, and thus impairing the normal functioning of its hormonal glands. According to scientific research, an individual’s DHEA levels decrease with age. Therefore, stress only adds insult to  injury in the aging process.

Another interesting study showed that men who meditate (an anti-stress mental strategy) regularly have significantly more DHEA than those who do not, and the difference is even much more significant in the case of women (maybe women do have more stress than men do).

Indeed, stress can accelerate the aging process. According to Robert Sapolsky, author of Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, people in general lose their capability to cope with stress as they continue to age, due to their tendency to have elevated blood pressure, which adversely affects hormone secretions. That is how stress can become a vicious circle.

If you wish to remain younger and healthier for longer, do not allow stress into your life.

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF STRESS

Are you stressed? Some typical signs and symptoms of a distressed body and mind may include: aggression and anger; breathing difficulties and problems; indigestion and eating disorders; excess sweating; chronic fatigue; frequent headache; memory loss; muscle tension; poor concentration and indecision, among others.

Remember, stress is one of the key factors contributing to aging. Anxiety and depression—often the byproducts of stress—are often the precursors to autoimmune diseases, such as diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, among others. By accelerating breathing, elevating blood pressure, and constricting blood flow, stress may also be the culprit of heart diseases. Even cancer can be affected by distressed emotions.

ORIGIN OF STRESS

Stress originates from the mind. It is all in the mind. The intensity of stress is a perception of the mind. Stress is no more than your own perceptions of it. That is to say, it is your own attitude or personal reaction to certain events and experiences in your life. In other words, what is stress to you may not be stress to another person.

William Shakespeare once said: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” John Milton, the famous English poet, also had this to say: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” Both spoke volumes of the perceptions of stress.

Therefore, subconscious energies of the mind play a pivotal role in stress management.

The bottom line: Learn how your TAO wisdom can take away your ego and then de-stress you.

     The book NO EGO NO STRESS is divided into four parts:

PART ONE The Introduction to Stress: How and where stress comes from; the damage and devastation of stress to human health.

PART TWO The Conventional Wisdom: The major life stressors come from career, money, relationship, adversity, and time. The conventional wisdom offers many strategies for stress relief, such as exercise, herbs, medications, meditation, and psychotherapies, among many others. The conventional wisdom may reduce stress levels, but it does not eradicate stress completely. The conventional wisdom only complements the ancient TAO wisdom for ultimate stress relief.

PART THREE The TAO Wisdom: This part not only explains what the TAO is all about, but also contains the complete translation in simple English of all the 81 short chapters of “Tao Te Ching.” Going through the whole script, interpreted and translated by the author, will enable you to understand the essentials of the TAO for stress-free contemporary living.

PART FOUR No Ego No Stress: Stress originates from the human mind: how it perceives and processes life experiences. What is stress to one individual may not be stress to another. This part explains in detail how having no ego can eradicate stress related to career, relationship, money, adversity, and time.

Go and get your copy: NO EGO NO STRESS