With so many responsibilities, pressures, and goals, the weight of the world can easily come crashing down sometimes. Not only does it affect our sense of selves, it also affects others around you. Many of us have experienced heightened, stressful situations before, whether it be a family issue, school, sports or the workplace. There are just too many situations out there to cover them all!

Stress literally means “too much.” When you have experienced a long day, and things just keep piling on, you begin to experience “too much.”

Before you think all stress is bad consider that there are different levels of stress, even good stress!

• Good stress: When you are presented with a challenge, you rise to that challenge, generally have a good outcome, and you feel exhilarated
• Tolerable stress: Occurs when something bad happens, such as a job loss, but you have the inner resources as well as people you can turn to who help you get through it.
• Toxic stress: When bad things happen,  and they may be really bad, or you don’t have the financial or internal resources to handle them. This type of stress causes emotional and physical problems.

It is incredibly easy to get wrapped up, caught up, and left stressed out and eventually burned out in most of these situations. The first thing you need to realize is that you are definitely not alone. We are all human beings experiencing, well, life. Each and every one of us has a story, has a good story, has a sad story, has experienced something beautiful and something sad. Everyone has experienced something stressful in their lives, whether its emotional or something else.

Take a DEEP breath. Really. Something as simple as calming and relaxing your breath can physically reduce tension found within your body. Think about where you are and how lucky you are. You are alive, you are able to give, to share, to smile, to love. That in itself is the most special thing within all of us humans. Getting rid of the built up tension and all the small things will create more room to breathe easy!

Think of it this way:

You have a glass jar, some rocks, pebbles, and sand. The rocks represent the really important things in your life such as your family, friends,  health and your passion. The pebbles represent the secondary things in your life that give it meaning, but are perhaps not your life’s work. The sand represents the small, materialistic, time consuming things such as tv, video games, facebook, ect.

If you start by putting all of the sand in the jar first, the pebbles second, and the rocks on top you’ll see that not everything will fit in the jar.

If you put the rocks in first, the pebbles in second, and the sand on top, you’ll see that everything will fit inside the jar.

If you start with the big goals, the most important things first, then the smaller things will move around to fill the space.  The reverse, however, is not true.

The next time you start to become stressed out just remind yourself about the important things, and that the important things come first, so don’t sweat the small stuff : )

Remember, keep your head up high, be grateful for everything you have, focus on the important things, and you will begin to live a happier, healthier, stress free life!