Redefining Stress
Redefining Stress
We’ve all experienced stress that can sometimes feel unmanageable and overwhelming. Much of this stress stems from outdated perceptions and attitudes regarding what life should look like and how it should progress.
Our brains typically have fixed ways of looking at life, and they tend to expect things to follow these fixed and often narrow viewpoints. When life doesn’t unfold according to our brain’s expectations, it will try to control things to ensure that it moves in a prescribed way.
This is where the stress comes in.
Most people believe that in order to be successful in life they need to go to college, have a great paying job, marry their soulmate, have happy and successful children, and live a relatively easy and fulfilling life. However, this definition of success is limiting and traps us into unrealistic expectations of how life should go. Because of this, many people will feel stressed and carry a sense of failure since this type of trajectory isn’t what life is all about.
We were all born on this planet to learn and grow and expand our awareness. Therefore, we all have a category in our life that presents challenges in order to help us become our best selves. This category may seem harder for us than others but it’s the muscle to push against to help us move into self-mastery. The areas of learning are as follows: intimate relationships, family, friendship, work, and health. Sometimes we pick more than one category that is more difficult for us. There are also subcategories such as addiction, mental health issues, financial issues, chronic illness, etc.
You can tell it’s your category of learning by the area in your life that is most problematic. For example, if you have issues in your intimate relationships, and you can’t seem to find a loving and compatible partner, this may be your category of learning. If your work life isn’t as successful as you’d like, personally and financially, this might be your area of growth.
Your category or subcategories of learning may not be directly connected to you. For example, you may be a person who lives a healthy lifestyle and has little to no addictions. However, addiction may be your issue if you have a lot of people around you who struggle with it. This pattern is likely in your ancestry and may cause you to have children with this issue or cause you to attract this in your intimate relationship or friendships. You may be someone who has come to work through co-dependence or over-responsibility, and addicted people are in your life to help you master this.
If you have many people in your life with addiction issues, you likely have a soul contract with them. This is so that each of you can work through your part of the issue. Attracting these difficult relationships is not an error since you agreed to do this work together to find some sort of resolution. It’s not about responding “perfectly,” or having a neat and tidy ending if the relationship doesn’t work out. Rather, it’s about doing the best you can, so you learn and grow through the process.
The categories that we haven’t chosen to work on may be easy for us since they’re not the areas we choose to learn from in this lifetime. It’s good to remember this since it can be easy to judge another person when they’re having issues in an area that is easy for you. Being human, we all have something to work on.
One of the best ways to heal and transform the difficult areas in our lives is recognize and be open to thinking differently about what these challenging areas are trying to teach us. Thinking and feeling differently about our life experiences is key to a happier, expansive you because it allows you to view life from a higher perspective.
Now, when life feels stressful, decide to act like you know nothing so you can experience something totally new. This helps considerably since letting go of fixed viewpoints allows your Higher Self’s ideas and solutions to come in. This is what moves you into a new world view thus a new life. This is what helps you master your category of learning.
Because we are all interconnected, each of us redefining our stress, with a viewpoint that we’re here to learn, grow, and expand in consciousness - helps shift the frequency and energy of the collective to a higher one more aligned with love and unity consciousness.
Many Blessings,
Maureen Higgins owns Wings of Freedom, an alternative counseling and coaching business. She helps people be their best selves and recognize they are part of the Divine. Maureen also founded School for Higher Consciousness. Maureen has developed numerous energetic healing systems you can learn through the school’s workshops. https://www.schoolforhigherconsciousness.com/class-schedule You can also experience them through her audios. https://www.schoolforhigherconsciousness.com/energetic-healing-audios