One of the best ways you can keep healthy is by reducing your stress load, flowing like water over your problems instead of keeping every little worry all bottled up inside of you. This blog is chock full of ways to cope with stress and take a mental load off. To promote feelings of well-being, make yourself a sanctuary (real or in your mind’s eye) where you can surround yourself with beauty.
Associations And Conditioning
Remember Pavlov’s Dog? Every time the dog was about to be fed, Pavlov rang a bell. Eventually, all it took to get the dog drooling was the sound of a bell. The dog had made the association that bell sounds equalled snack time. Living amongst something beautiful to you will also, over time, give you a conditioned response to relax.
Beautiful scenes, art, flowers, photographs, a cup of tea — all contribute to arrest our constantly wandering attention, to snap us out of our usual world of problems to remind us that good things still happen. Over time, just the sight of a familiar beautiful object or scene will unconsciuosly trigger feelings of serenity. This can act as a point of refuge within our emotional storms.
This conditioning is one of the reasons why wearing jewelry and crystal healing is so popular — just the sight of a bright shiney object can involuntarity make us smile, even when the darkness about you is very complex.
A Place Of Your Own
Granted, there are many things you can’t do to change your surroundings, depending on your circumstance. But you can clean and beautify your personal space, even if it’s just your bedroom or your thoughts.
Buying a bunch of stuff that others declare "pretty" is NOT what you need to do. You don’t need to add anything, but you may need to take some stuff away. Take out the trash, get rid of any clutter you don’t need, organize piles, and get rid of any mold or dirt.
Cleaning is a source of instant self-esteem, because you can see the results of your actions right away. You don;t need to eat off of the floor, just have something to look at that makes you breathe deeply and relax.
Ding Ding
Sometimes, in the years I was homeless in England, I didn’t have any place. I could only keep myself and my rucksack neat. Washing my hands and face became a source of comfort when I had nothing else. Just the familiar act of washing my hands in a public restroom gave my fight or flight instinct time off for a couple of minutes. Then, I’d usually wipe the sink dry just to prolong the experience.
For a few minites, a random public restroom sink was my place of beauty. It rang the bell.
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