In a perfect world…our food supply would all be organic and natural. In a perfect world…no reason would exist to remember all the horrific tragedies that have occurred. In a perfect world …stress would be non-existent. That perfect world hasn’t arrived yet…but it will soon! So we trudge through the minefield of our food supply, we deal with tragedies, and we put up with the stress only to make it through to tomorrow. We live in a stress filled world, but how we handle all that stress says much about the character we’ve built.
While I’ve been detoxing, I’ve had my fair share of stress that I’ve had to deal with. Some of the stress weighs heavily on my mind and heart. But I know that it will all work out in the end. Going through a detox has it’s own stress associated with it. Having to deal with the healing crisis my body is going through is stressful enough but when you pile on deadlines, tests, and just the normal stress of living in this anxiety filled world the process is as fun as getting your teeth pulled.
This whole situation reminded me of a book I had to read for one of my college classes on stress. “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers”by Robert Sapolsky. In going through the book and my assignments for my Stress class I found an assignment that really helped me and is continuing to help me today get through the stress that I’m experiencing both from the detox and from life itself.
The assignment had six sections that all deal with how I can be an eraser of my own stress. Today I am only focusing on one tip in one section that still stands out in my life, even as I write this. In this assignment that I did three years ago, I wrote down how I love to color in a children’s coloring book, and how peaceful it made me feel because it took me back to simpler times. So yesterday I bought a new box of crayons (who doesn’t love that smell of a new box of crayons) and a coloring book and I colored a picture. While coloring I was remember how I used to color with my grandfather, and how I used to get so mad at him for coloring each leg of a horse a different color. I know he did this on purpose to teach me a really big life lesson, but when you’re eight you just know there’s no such things as rainbow horses. I also remembered how I used to come home from school as a teenager and if I had a bad day at school I would go in my bedroom and take out my secret stash of coloring books and crayons that I hid under my bed and color away my stress. Then after an hour of coloring I was calm and could talk about the feelings I had inside about what happened that day.
The simple act of coloring helps me remember happy times, times of abundance, times of simplicity when it didn’t matter how much money you had, or how many trinkets you accumulated. What mattered was that you were connecting with the people in your life, and making happy memories. Why not grab a coloring book and a new box of crayons, sit on the floor for 15 minutes and color away your stress. Remember the good times you had.
Color your stress away!
