***A Plague of Financial Stress

Unless you have a trust fund or you’ve won the lottery, I won’t even ask you if you’re feeling stress about money or work.

Nearly all of us are feeling the strain of these harsh financial times. And what’s hard to take is that the same people seem to have once again bamboozled us and walked away with a ton of money—without going to jail. Whereas, if you stole a Snickers bar in a CVS store, you’d probably be in a state prison.

Exaggerations aside, financial stress is tough, tough beyond its objective reality. It can conjure up our worst fantasies, and keep us up at night and worried through the day. Financial stress goes to the bone of our deepest worry–staying alive. Money represents survival.

Stress is Infectious

Stress is contagious and studies show that “second hand stress” can do a job on families and groups. In the same way that there can be a flu epidemic that infects large populations, financial stress can spread rapidly among many thousands and even millions of people.

Right now we are in the midst of an outbreak of serious financial stress, an epidemic of financial stress fueled by a combination of real and dangerous conditions and the never-ending bad news media hysteria. The news media no longer just reports news. It seeks profits, profits that depend on ratings and ratings go up with sensational news broadcasts.

Unfortunately this creates real problems for us.

Because if the financial crisis doesn’t damage us, our chronic stress over it will. You see a part of your brain called the hypothalamus cannot tell the difference between financial worry and financial disaster.

The Media Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

For example, one financial trend forecaster, Gerald Celente’s, did an interview recently. He’s predicting a total worldwide financial collapse, a collapse worse than anything ever known. And he’s predicting violence in America over it.

It’s a tricky situation because no one really knows whether the roof is going to fall in from this financial crisis or not. But at the level of runaway financial stress-it doesn’t matter. Because when large numbers of people are infected with stressful concerns, their minds can become enmeshed in a form of primitive and illogical thinking where it become impossible to distinguish fact from fiction.

Today many people are in this bind. They watch CNN blasting yet another financial collapse story, they read more of the same in the newspaper and on the internet, they go shopping to see prices rising again and then they go home and open their financial statements to see that they’ve lost even more money than they imagined. No wonder so many people are anxious, fearful and depressed.

It’s starting to feel like a meteor is heading to earth and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.

Whenever I feel myself getting caught in media stress, I do a little MESICS Free Release Breathing™ and then if need be I use another technique to enter into the Stress Free State™, a state of relaxed and aware calm and balance. When you move into the Stress Free State, stress hormones are flushed out of your blood and tissues.

I’ll show you how to do MESICS Free Release Breathing in just a few moments. But first, let me explain something important to you.

Your Fight or Flight Response prepares you to fight or flee from life threatening danger. It does so by releasing powerful chemicals, called stress hormones, into your system. But there’s a problem: The Fight or Flight Response is meant for short-term use only. If it’s on too often and too long it will damage your mind and body.

Studies show that when you’re stressed and stress hormones seep into your blood an tissues and linger there, you’re at risk for serious health problems as well as the misery of chronic anxiety and depression.

As Dr. Paul Rosch, President of the American Institute of Stress put it, Stress “…is a heavy contributor to heart disease, cancer, respiratory distress, lupus and many other life threatening illnesses.”

Stress hormones are indeed bad news. Drs. Lyle H. Miller and Alma Dell Smith, two Senior Stress researchers said it in a nutshell: “Chronic stress kills. People wear down. Stress is linked to the six leading causes of death….”

Do This: MESICS Free Release Breathing™

Take 3 deep “Free Release Breaths”. This strategy is drawn from a MESICS Training routine.

• Breathe deeply into your diaphragm-it’s just under your breastbone and above your upper abdomen
• Pause for a slight moment
• Breathe out from your diaphragm-but don’t walk your breath out-just freely release it. HHHAAAAA.
• Pause for a count of two-then repeat twice more

Notice that at the end of the out breath there’s a calm, relaxed state. Tune yourself to that and let your stressful thoughts go. Don’t go after them or spin them or feed them. Just let them be. They will go away. Yes, they will return. When they do, just do the same thing.

The 3 Free Release Breaths are a preliminary technique to help shut down your Fight or Flight response. Learn how to develop the “presence” of mind to not jump on every train of thought that pulls into your station.

Don’t Mistake Financial Worries for Facts

Stressful thoughts and feelings about money are often not accurate or true. But when you’re caught in contagious financial stress, they will present themselves to you as if they were absolute fact. Yes you may have money problems, even severe ones-but that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t survive.

Please don’t think I underestimate the hardship of serious financial trouble, I don’t. But even if you’re bearing a heavy burden -you’ll be a lot better off if stress hormones aren’t running around in your system.

If you’ve been foreclosed or close to it or if you’ve watched your life savings shrink along with the value of your home. All the more reason you need to safeguard your well-being so you can get on the other side of this hardship.

If you learn how to stand free from stressful financial worry, you won’t get poisoned by toxic stress hormones. Learning how to do this is a form of mindfulness and what we call “Inner Fitness”. Inner fitness will strengthen your ability to avoid identifying with your worries. If you do identify with your worries, you’ll mistake them for facts and pay a steep price.

Develop a Prejudice Toward Action-Act NOW

STOP listening to, watching or reading sensational news stories about financial doom. If you’re facing chronic financial stress, learn how to develop an action plan that will empower you to feel in control. Seek help doing that-from reliable sources.

Expect financial worries in the form of negative thoughts and feelings. Expect to feel fear, anxiety, depression, self-doubt and self-blame. These are natural. But learn how to stand free from them and not buy into them at levels that cause you hopeless despair and panic.

If You Pray, Pray for This

The more action you take, the more control you’ll feel and the more control you feel, the more action you’ll take. If you pray, don’t pray for money to drop out of the sky-pray for the patience, confidence and strength to get through this and to make the money you need.

Think positively, but positive thinking alone is not enough. You must marry it to decisive action. Or else you’ll be waiting for a bus that doesn’t come.

Get angry if you have too. But make it a healthy anger-let it become fuel for you to take charge and act. Healthy anger can free you up and push you into a new way and a new day.

Consider working with a capable stress expert and a financial advisor you can trust.

Take the Long View

See your financial woes as a temporary challenge not as a final defeat. Don’t just think short term-think up ahead. And take things one day at a time. Again, get expert help-don’t move off in an unknown direction on your own.

If you have a lot of debt, or are at risk for foreclosure, then consider contacting The National Foundation for Credit Counseling: www.nfcc.org

This Too Shall Pass

Keep in mind that “This Too Shall Pass”.

Be thankful for the little things and for any support you can count on from people who care about you. The philosopher Nietzsche said it well when he noted: “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”.

While that’s not always the case, it most often is. Necessity can be the mother of invention. By meeting the challenge of financial stress, you’ll master new learning and open up new possibilities in your life.

Your thoughts and feelings define your reality, so avoid news media that sensationalize the financial crisis by blasting you with it from every doom and gloom angle possible.

Manganiello/MESICS LLC ©--All Rights Reserved 2009