Name: The End of Stress
Rating: 4.2 (223 reviews)
Author: Don Joseph Goewey

Introduction

What’s in it for me? Find out how stress is killing you, and fight back.

There’s a new epidemic sweeping the world, and it’s not a virus. It’s stress. Almost everyone has experienced stress at work or at home. But without knowing how to deal with it, it’s a lethal affliction, one of the leading causes of death!

Maybe most damaging, though, is that stress keeps us from reaching our potential. You worry about a presentation so much that you make mistakes, instead of being the charming speaker you normally are. Or you’re so fed up with the traffic that you don’t go out and it affects your relationships with your friends.

The End of Stress includes numerous ways to deal with stress. Then the best part is that once you know how to handle your stress, you can focus on getting the most out of your brain. That means getting back to your creative, intelligent, kind and high-performing self!

In these blinks, you’ll find out

why stress is lethal;
how research indicates your worries are probably groundless; and
how loneliness is as bad as cigarettes.

Key idea 1 of 9

Stress can be life-threatening.

Ask yourself, am I among the three out of four workers who is stressed out by something each workweek?

Indeed, stress is everywhere. It’s become so ubiquitous that most of us consider it to be both normal and harmless. In reality, stress is serious, so serious that it has major health consequences.

When we’re stressed, our brain releases toxic hormones that damage our higher brain functions and consequently hamper our mental performance.

Our higher brain, or the prefrontal cortex, is where we derive our human intelligence. Think of it as the executive office of the brain, where the big decisions are made.

It’s responsible for the invention of airplanes and the Mona Lisa. It’s also where the plans are drawn for achieving our goals.

Furthermore, the prefrontal cortex enables social intelligence, helping you to discern other people’s emotions and evoking compassion.

Your stress hormones, however, disable these high-order functions. As a consequence, your brain functionality is dumbed down, thus making you predisposed to making poor decisions or mental missteps.

Furthermore, stress hormones sever the connections between your brain cells and shrink your brain’s neural networks. As a consequence, stress prevents your brain from making the new connections that are necessary for learning and creativity.

But stress doesn’t just harm your mental performance; it also harms your physical health. In fact, research shows that stress hormones weaken your immune system as well as damage your heart and even the chromosomes within your cells’ nuclei!

Consequently, we find that a myriad of illnesses are directly related to stress, such as heart diseases, strokes, cancer and diabetes, to name only a few of the thousands that exist. In fact, once you tally up all the stress-related diseases, you could consider stress to be the number one cause of death in the United States!

It’s clear that stress is severely damaging for both your body and mind. Luckily, as you’ll find out in our following blinks, reducing stress is as simple as tweaking your attitude.

Key idea 2 of 9

Rewire your brain by changing your attitude and letting fear go.

When it comes to handling stress, most people feel hopeless. In fact, 83 percent of Americans admit that they’ve given up doing anything about it at all.

Yet, you can do something about it!

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Key idea 3 of 9

Ditch the thoughts that provoke stress.

We all experience stress. Maybe it manifests itself as fear or anxiety, but we all experience it. And Usually, we blame these negative feelings on external factors: our circumstances or environment.

But once you’ve cultivated a greater awareness of your stress, you realize that you create most of it yourself.

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Key idea 4 of 9

Good decisions help you deal with impossible situations.

Sometimes we’re met by horrible yet unavoidable situations. So what do we do in instances where, for example, we lose our job because of an economic downturn or the company we work for cheats us out of our retirement fund? What then?

In any difficult stressful situation, you face three choices:

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Key idea 5 of 9

A peaceful mindset comes with practice.

Developing a peaceful mindset isn’t something that happens overnight. You’ll have to practice, but luckily there are some exercises that help:

First, start your day off quietly. By beginning your day with peace and quiet rather than frantically rushing out the door, you can ensure that you have the calm mindset necessary to manage the day's challenges.

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Key idea 6 of 9

Your new-found inner peace will spark your creativity.

Having tamed your stress, you can now get the most out of your brain’s amazing capabilities, starting with increased creativity. Everyone’s brain is capable of magnificent creativity, as long as they know how to trigger it.

These creative insights require both time and a calm atmosphere. Knowing this, make sure that you stop what you’re doing and go on a walk every once in a while.

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Key idea 7 of 9

Transcend shame and let go of your ideal self.

Think back on a time when you made a big mistake in front of others. Remember the heat in your cheeks, as well as the panic and shame you felt.

This feeling of shame is another path to stress.

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Key idea 8 of 9

Long, harmonious relationships benefit your health.

For many, their relationships with other people can be a great source of stress, and as you’ve learned, stress harms our health. Simply put, the better your relationships are with other people, the better your health and the longer you will live.

In part, this is because the love you experience in strong relationships slows down the production of toxic stress hormones. In fact, numerous studies have demonstrated that people who have strong relationships are 50 percent more likely to live for longer.

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Key idea 9 of 9

Harness the power of suggestion to improve your health.

Have you ever wished upon a star, or crossed your fingers and hoped or prayed that your dreams would come true? Although it might sound surprising, these superstitious beliefs actually influence whether your dreams come to fruition!

Indeed, science shows that the mere thought of a desirable outcome can set into motion the inner resources and actions that will ultimately fulfill your desire.

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The End of Stress summary