How Caring Less Reduces Your Stress and Improves Health

Living with stress can lead to poor health and is a large contributing factor in heart disease, asthma, obesity, gastrointestinal problems, and other physical health problems. In addition, stress increases your chance of experiencing depression, anxiety, and even Alzheimer's disease – not to mention premature death.

Training yourself to care less and stop seeking approval for your life will help reduce these problems exponentially.

If you often feel stressed out or worried about what others think or believe when you differ from them, it may be due to having low self-esteem, or it may simply be due to not developing the knowledge or confidence to speak with authority about your goals and objectives without second-guessing yourself or hiding from those who disagree with you like your mom, mother-in-law, boss, or community leader.

Stress Is a Biological Response

Many people think of stress as being "just a feeling," but the truth is, the feeling is a symptom of a bigger response your body produces in the form of hormone releases like cortisol and adrenaline. When your body releases these chemicals, your entire body responds physically, not just mentally.

Your blood pressure rises, your heart beats harder and faster, and even your breath may come in smaller, more rapid gasps. Unfortunately, these physiological changes can lead to, over time, many serious health problems. For this reason, learning how to care less to the point your body also cares less will improve your health.

Manage Stress with The Right Tools

Now that you realize that stress is more than a feeling, you can manage your stress with the right tools. For example, learning to focus your breathing, using guided imagery, journaling, and meditating mindfully helps you find the root cause of your stress, which is often simply caring too much about what other people think.

Using these tools can help you focus on what matters most while putting in perspective your own thoughts and feelings on the subject instead of just someone else's. When you learn to mind your own business while desensitizing yourself from the triggers that make you feel stressed, you'll amazingly stop overthinking and make better choices based on your own life goals and your personal principles, morals, and values.

If decision-making gives you stress due to your worry about what others think or believing that others are mad at you all the time, or generally not considering what you yourself think about a situation – the added stress can literally make you sick in a physical way.

Identify the cause of your stress and mitigate for it by educating yourself enough to give you confidence about your ideas and opinions, so much so that you'll stop second-guessing yourself when you find out what they think. Learn how to focus on the moment more so that you're mindful at all times of what you really think and feel instead of what others think and feel. After all, your honesty cannot read anyone else's mind, so most of what you think about how they feel is likely wrong anyway -- worry about yourself, and mind your business, as they say, and you'll be a lot less stressed.

3 Ways to Get Clear on Why You Care So Much

One way to learn to stop caring so much about irrelevant issues and thoughts of others is to dig in deep and study yourself in a new way to get to the bottom of the reasons you care so much.

Three ways help you get clear on why you care so much that you can use.

Journaling

You can use your computer, buy a specialized journal, or you can simply use a notebook you have created to journal. It's up to you what type of system you use and whether it's modern or analog.

The important part is that you try to use your journal to express your thoughts, emotions, and stream of consciousness about a problem you're trying to solve or a feeling you're trying to explore without judgment or censoring.

Write in your journal every day when you're trying to understand why you care so much. You may end up discovering your life purpose or a new reason for getting up each day that you had not realized before.

Meditation

Before you use your journal, it can help to clear your mind using meditation. Meditation practice is all about not thinking and not judging your thoughts or feelings even as they still happen during the meditation.

Each time you meditate, you can have a purpose of self-discovery or have a goal to clear your mind and relax. To practice this type of meditation, you'll want to find a quiet, comfortable place to sit or lay down. Then concentrate on your goals for the meditation, close your eyes, and start focusing on your breathing.

Think about the situation you're trying to understand for a moment, then clear your mind. If any intrusive thoughts come in, brush them aside by refocusing on your breathing. You mustn't allow any outside information or sensation to distract you during this time.

Therapy

These days you're so fortunate because you can get psychological therapy from the comfort of your home using your computer or smartphone. Numerous companies offer this service and varying price points, but you can expect to pay $60 or more per hour to get therapy. In addition, many insurance companies include several sessions as part of your benefits.

If you seek therapy, make sure you find someone experienced working with you on overcoming people-pleasing and putting yourself last in life. Remember, your wants and needs matter too. Most therapists can guide you through the self-discovery process to finally know what you want and feel good about it regardless of the reactions from other people.

Any or all three of these methods help you become crystal clear regarding your motivations to seek approval from others and even help you stop doing it. Remember, what you want from life is important too, and following someone else's dreams will never get you what you want and need to feel successful and, more importantly, satisfied and content in your life.

Decision-Making: 9 Causes of Indecisiveness

If you have trouble coming to final decisions, you may want to explore a few causes of your indecisiveness. Then, if you discover you're doing these things, you can eliminate them and start making decisions much faster.

• Thinking Too Much – If you allow yourself unlimited time to make a choice, you may never make one. Sometimes that can lead to choices being made for you by default. This can make you feel a little out of control. Instead, set time limits on research and decision-making.

• Too Many Options – For some choices, there are simply too many options for you to choose from. If you keep looking at all the possibilities without narrowing them down, you need to create better criteria for yourself to finalize your decisions.

• Listening to Others – While it's fine to get opinions occasionally for some things, especially if the opinion is an expert one, such as contracting CPA services, for example, for the most part, if the choice only affects you listen to yourself more.

• You're Allowing Guilt to Control you – When you first begin to live for yourself to reach your personal goals in life, some people will push back against you. This action can cause guilt on your part. The problem is guilt never helps you make good choices -- only facts do.

• Not Listening to Yourself – You know a lot more than you give yourself credit for. Therefore, you need to listen to your internal thoughts based on the knowledge you already have.

• Seeking Perfection – Perfection simply does not exist. Therefore, it's a fool's game to keep trying to produce it. In fact, perfection-seeking can just end up in no action being taken at all on your goals because it's impossible.

• Lack of Self Confidence – If you lack confidence in your choices, sometimes it's due to a lack of education on the topic. In that case, educate yourself to make sound decisions, and as you make good choices, your confidence level will grow.

• Fear Of Making the Wrong Choice – If you fear making the wrong choice about something, step back and ask yourself whether this will matter to anyone in 100 years. If you're not changing the fabric of society with your choice, it probably isn't going to change much. However, if it does matter that much, seeking expert advice may be necessary.

• You Forgot Your Overarching Goals – Each decision you make in life either keeps you the same, takes you backward or advances you toward achieving your goals. If you aren't sure about your main goals, it can be hard to match current choices with the right actions. Get clear on your goals, and your choices will become easier.

To overcome any of these decision-making blockers, train your mind to think differently. Instead of thinking of any of these issues, think about what your goals are and whether this decision affects those goals at all or not. If they do, ensure they take you closer to achievement, but if they don't consider that your choice for this one thing may not even matter in the scheme of your life.



Related Reading: How To Manage Stress

"Power Tips" magazine is back!
You Get A Free Complete Self Help Report delivered to your email box every edition, plus you get a free PLR article and other great gifts!

SUBSCRIBE BELOW ...  I promise you will want to USE what you learn!

I really want to know what you think of this site, this page, and to hear your tips or suggestions about it.

So please share your story or simply add a Comment in the comment box.

If you feel that the information on this page has been useful to you please give it a Like or share it with your friends - thanks!!

"You are a life Saver!!

I recently discovered this site and I can tell you that my life has not been the same. I now come here EVERYDAY and spend at least 1 hour.

I used to spend that time browsing online fashion and beauty magazine which just means that I spend more. Now I have replaced that habit with coming here.

In future I will think about contributing articles as well. Thank you! Thank you!! Thank you!!! and God bless"

Contact Us | About Us | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | FAQ | Testimonials

Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.