I like to identify the people that are bringing me stress and bully them into submission... watching a jerk do destressing exercises before he comes to talk to me is really satisfying. I had to do that in the corporate world. I figured I could sit around and let jerks raise my bp or I could insult and threaten them and laugh at them when they got mad... meanwhile I was learning all the Martial Arts I could absorb just in case one of the cubicle-pissing-contest-bastard warriors actually wanted to go at it...
Stress and muscle tension are related, they feed off each other and cause a feedback cycle. Going to meditation to reduce muscle tension is stupid. Just tense and relax every muscle in your body. Start at the toes, work up to the eyes and scalp.. not too tight, just enough, just a few wiggles of the toes for example.. after you do that for the whole body the thoughts will have subsided substantially..
Learning not to react to people's games can make an overwhelming difference in life. Galpals TV broke so the other night I read a book out loud for both of us. It was about codependency, not my problem a lot but it pointed up how we react to shitty people and it doesn't serve our purposes.. so I woke up the next morning minus a shitpotload of reactions to people around me and I found I was motivated to get back to working on all the things that benefit me.. People load up our minds with boogey men essentially and we can dismantle the whole thing with great ease anytime we learn how...
