Give Yourself The Gift of Seeing More Clearly

I like pursuing a simple and joyful life. So why do I find myself essentially creating reasons to be stressed on a regular basis?

Ultimately, it makes absolutely no sense. There is no rhyme or reason to it, but I believe that all of us are guilty of it to some extent.

Surely you've met one of those folks who has this habit of creating stress so deeply ingrained in their psyche and emotional makeup that it impacts literally every situation they encounter. Everything has the potential to be an instant crisis that will send their emotional state through the stratosphere.

Unfortunately, they can't even begin to see the reality of that habit and how it is negatively shaping their lives each moment, robbing them of a joy that is always right at their fingertips.

Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

Honestly, I feel more compassion for these folks than just about anybody else I come in contact with. But that doesn't mean I want to stick around. I usually exit stage left ASAP before it pulls me in.

As I've spent the past few years noticing my own habit of creating stress out of thin air, the tendency has definitely diminished. And yet I still fail to recognize it and change course on a daily basis. I only see clearly in hindsight. It is that pervasive in our human experience.

I've been asking the question for years, "What is it in me that feels the need to create this stress?"

And I always come back to the same answer: Ego. My false self.

Left unchecked, our ego will find a way to put ourselves at the center of our universe without fail. And stress is the most handy excuse for being fully focused on ourselves.

That is the path of a human set to autopilot.

If we accomplish nothing else in this life, developing the new habit of disrupting our human tendency toward creating stress will have a monumental impact on our path, on those around us, on our joy and peace and sanity.

Watson Falls in Umpqua National Forest, Oregon

So today, give this a try: Instead of allowing yourself to create stress that feeds your false self, try creating compassion by seeing that tendency in yourself, working to understand it and question it, and slowly beginning to disrupt that destructive flow.

I know of no better gift we can give to ourselves in this season of hope.