Over the past weeks, I have offered you ways to create more self-awareness and seize the power to use this time at home to search deep within to discover who you are and what you want create in your life. I’ve also offered you the opportunity to continue to distract yourself through T.V., alcohol, food, social media or fear.

The choice is yours if you want to use this time to wake up or not. I am not attached and not here to judge your choice, but I am here to guide and provide some insights that can lead you to more self-power, love and awareness.

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Stress is often not caused due to an event or situation but rather due to our reaction towards it.

You may ask how you can separate the two. ‘How can I look at the way in which I am reacting to a situation?’

One easy way to do so is to start letting go of things you can’t control. It may sound difficult but can be achieved with mind training and this is where mindfulness comes into play.

Mindfulness is the skill of being present and fully aware. This means you are not attempting to or fighting the circumstance, you’re simply aware of what is. You’re aware of the situation. Whether you are watching a movie, making a presentation or running a marathon, you can be mindful.

Modern urban lifestyle is all about multi-tasking and that has made us compromise on concentration and mindfulness. Technology, that we rely on so much these days, has not really helped us here. Why? Because mostly it is the technology using us rather than us using the technology.

Another important factor in mindfulness is clarity of thought. It gives you the ability to really see things for what they are without letting our judgment clouds it. The more mindful we become, the greater is the clarity.

Another important piece of the puzzle is accepting things for what they are, especially when you have no control over them.

Concentration, clarity and acceptance keep you in the present moment, without the past or the anxiety of the future affecting you. Imagine you are making a presentation, fully focused and open to accept whatever the outcome. Will you be able to worry about how your presentations went in the past or how the audience would react to this one? No. Because there is no space left for those things.

When you practice mindfulness, you automatically feel calmer. The mind gets agitated by distraction. You keep it focused and eventually, you are able to rewires it. And the best part is all you need is practice – no tools, no equipment, just being in the moment and practice. Anytime you realize your mind is wandering, take a deep breath and come back to the present.

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle and the life of the candle will not be shortened.”

The Buddhist poster emblazoning this quote on my office wall is a simple decoration from Ross. But it lights a flame inside me every time that I read it.

It reminds me to shine bright in the face of fear. It reminds me to accept the good and the bad.

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Choice. It is a powerful word, one that places its commander at the helm of the ship.

We often hear people say: “I do not have a choice.” “I have to do this.” “I have to do that.”

These statements are dangerous. They plant the seeds for so much stress in our world.

I already can hear how you are responding: “But I have to do certain things. I have to work, and there is no way around it.”

Is that true?

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 As I sit here on the beach in Costa Rica, one word keeps gently crashing into my mind: patience.

What I see and feel is that patience has become a lost art. We are told, especially in the West, that we deserve and should receive everything we want – now. But this is a lie and a major source of stress.

The art of cultivating patience is multifaceted. It involves patience for one’s body, mind, spirit and, ultimately, one’s life. This same encompassing view of patience also applies to everyone and everything that we encounter in life – regardless of whether we agree with them.

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More so than ever, many of us are experiencing constant stress. It’s a hot topic these days, as the research has shown that stress is literally killing us. Students are constantly coming to me asking for tips, techniques and ways to be unstressed, “just like myself.”

Firstly, the assumption that yoga teachers or experienced meditators don’t experience stress could not be farther from the truth.

I personally experience stress daily- from deadlines, to getting upset in traffic, to disagreeing with my roommate (I originally came to yoga to help with the stress I was experiencing from corporate sales). The main difference between a student and a teacher is that the teacher has learned how to manage stress and learned to notice when they are experiencing stress. It’s not like the tension isn’t there, it’s just seen and then regulated appropriately- and don’t forget, it’s is the teacher’s job to model how to be on the outside in order to help others create calmness on the inside. So do your best and try to not to compare yourself to how someone else “appears” to be on the outside. Let’s spend some time looking at what stress is, what causes it and how to help manage it.

Remember, learning to manage stress is a process which takes mental and physical training, and won’t “just happen.”

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