Extreme Stress

   Yesterday I was giving a talk at a corporation on stress. And I do a lot of these corporate wellness talks, especially this topic stress. But when I got to the slide on the 2011 American Psychological Association stress survey, it hit me for the first time. I had read this slide a hundred times. In the survery they polled a large number of Americans and 1/4 of them measured their stress as an 8, 9, or 10 an a daily basis. That is defined as extreme stress. It hit me for the first time just how stressed out we are as Americans. I have blogged about stress before, I have blogged about meditation, and I have blogged about other tips to reducing stress. I have an hour long radio show on it that you can listen to here /media.html. But I want you to read today's blog and just take a breath. Life is too short to be living under extreme stress on a daily basis. When I feel stress creeping up on me i have to remind myself, whats the worse that can happen? I lose my house? My job or business? My car? What can anyone really take from you? Invest in relationships, in people, that is the measure of true wealth, and guess what no one can take that from you. Too often we neglect our relationships in order to keep these possessions or to acquire new ones. I have owned multiple Mercedes, and guess what they are pieces of crap, and are expensive to work on. I have had an expensive dive watch, that broke after getting water in it in a swimming pool! These things really don't mean anything or have any real value, money is in fact just paper, the only real value there is is what we give it. So what is valuable in your life? What's your most valuable possession? I it a car? A watch? A house? I learned real quick after the birth of my daughter what mine was. I had a new patient yesterday, who let me set this up, was on her iphone for the first 5 minutes of her consultation and didn't put it away until I completely stopped talking to her and asking her questions and just starred at her until she got the hint. She said to me when we were finishing up with her xrays, it's just too bad you aren't open on weekends. But she said it in a tone that mean't your not going to get my business or a lot of other's with my current schedule. And I said to her "Bad for who?" She looked at me really funny, and I said "I don't want to work weekends". You see I could care less if i saw more people by being open on weekends. When would I take my daughter to the zoo? or to the park? 
   Life is too short to be stressed, and it's too short to be wasted. Invest in your health, invest in your family even if that requires a pay cut. Because in the end nothing else matters.

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