Release the Pressure
Much of the pressure you’re under is of your own making. This makes it hard to release the pressure.
In a lot of us, there is an instilled need to be constantly doing. Striving. Working to gain, advance, achieve, or what-have-you. The need tends to create pressure – which then leads to stress.
While stress in small amounts can be an impetus for creation and a lot of amazingness – too much stress leads to depression, anxiety, and mental/emotional issues. Unchecked, unrelieved, that can lead to physical illness, heart attack, stroke, and other nasty, even potentially fatal physical matters.
Because, as a society, we tend to believe that constant pressure is a necessity of achievement, we don’t make much effort to relieve it. Instead, we seek escapes from it. These include smoking, alcohol, harder drugs. Even outlets like sex, exercise, and diet – which can be employed to not just escape but relieve the pressure – get used mindlessly for escapism.
Most of us first turn to the outside sources of pressure. Work, expectations from friends and family, overarching societal pressures to have/be/do certain things, and so on. We point to these as the problem and work to alleviate it by turning our attention fully without and ignoring what’s happening within.
Everything in life – good, bad, even indifferent – begins within. Hence why much of the pressure you feel you’re under is of your own making.
Expecting too much of ourselves
There is an excellent quote from writer Brianna Wiest that speaks to this:
“Nobody expects of you as much as you do of yourself.”
I don’t know about you – but I feel rather strongly that this is speaking right to me.
I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself. For example, now that I write/edit full time, I sometimes find I have issues balancing work/not work. Sunday tends to be the worst. Most Sundays I allow for nothing on my schedule. In fact, the spreadsheet I keep of activities for the week (I check them off to track them and make myself accountable for them) is non-existent on Sundays.
Reading and meditating are non-negotiable, everyday activities. I get out of bed and read every morning and make 20 minutes every day to meditate. This is part of my spreadsheet.
Still, I feel every Sunday like I should be writing or doing more than I am doing. It feels like taking downtime is a mistake, and wasteful. Like I should be doing something that I am not doing.
What is that something? There IS no something. This is a result of the pressure and expectations I put on myself.
I would imagine that you have had (or presently have) a similar experience.
We internalize those outside messages and develop overwrought expectations for ourselves. A constant state of go go go without pause. But that’s super unhealthy.
Why? Because the pressure that we exert, over time, becomes overwhelming. That can, in turn, lead to all sorts of bad places mentally, emotionally, and physically.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
When we grow up being told that it takes a tremendous amount of work, focus, and energy to succeed, we begin to feel the pressure.
How many jobs have metrics for performance? What about schools? How many ways do the potential consequences of not meeting the expectations become stressors?
The answer is variable from person to person. But the pressure from without tends to become massively internalized, and we inevitably start pressuring ourselves.
Do any of these look familiar to you? I need to lose ten pounds. I must clean my house once a week. If I don’t practice ‘X’ every day I won’t improve at all. I know I can give more than I am.
While it’s important to apply SOME energy to being proactive and doing stuff, it’s a separate challenge to not ramp-up the pressure too far. Finding that balance between encouraging and motivating yourself to do something – and stressing yourself out about it with too much pressure – is important.
How do you find that balance? Mindfulness.
Mindfulness to lessen the pressure
When you actively practice mindfulness, you become more aware of your self. Specifically, your mindset/headspace/psyche inner-being self. That mindfulness tells you what you are thinking, what and how you are feeling, and your overall perception of thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions.
You can, as such, keep yourself from overdoing it in the first place. By being more mindful overall, you consciously recognize when the pressure is on – whether internal OR external.
Then, you have a better ability to choose to keep from getting to the point where you need to release the pressure to prevent an ill effect.
When you are more aware of yourself, you can tell how, where, and when you’re applying too much pressure. It becomes abundantly clear what stressors you put yourself under.
When you do that, you open yourself to find healthy ways to release the pressure.
Release the pressure mindfully
The following are some ideas for releasing pressure when it is too much.
- Take a walk. Get some exercise. Don’t go crazy, just move. You’d be amazed how a little movement goes a long way.
- Breathe. Take 2 minutes to pause and just breathe in and out, deeply, doing nothing else. It’s surprising just how calming that can be.
- Eat healthily. When we’re rushed and stressed, we tend to eat crap. That, in turn, turns up the pressure unnecessarily. Healthy eating is like releasing steam on a pressure cooker.
- Take a break. It’s easy to push without a break. Been there, done that. It tends to go poorly and you’re worse for wear when all is said and done.
- Get offline. We spend a LOT of time on our screens. And this has some nasty impacts on us physiologically that we still are learning. Take time away from looking at screens.
- Prioritize. Ever notice how we treat so many things as urgent? Prioritizing helps you recognize this and better categorizing what needs to be done now, later, or much later.
There are other options to help release pressure, of course. These are just a few – and all of them are readily available to everyone.
It’s easy to recognize pressure from without. But often it’s the pressure we put on ourselves that’s most damaging and most prominent. When you practice mindfulness, you gain a much clearer sense of how you pressure yourself.
Then, you can better choose how to both stress yourself less and release the pressure when you recognize it as being too much.
Finally – remember that SOME pressure is good. It motivates and encourages action and change. The line between good and too much varies for everyone – and mindfulness is where you will discover yours.
It isn’t hard to release the pressure
It begins with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions.
Knowing that much of the stress you feel is as much, if not more, from within than without – you can better work with, lessen, and release the pressure. When you work with mindfulness, you become consciously aware of how much stress and pressure you are under, and when it becomes too much – and needs to be released. Actively releasing pressure ultimately empowers you.
When you feel empowered, your mindfulness increases, you become more aware overall, and that gets reflected and spreads to people around you. This creates a feedback loop of awareness and positivity.
You build more positive feelings and discover further reasons to feel positivity and gratitude. That can be the impetus to improve numerous aspects of your life for the better, help overcome the overwhelming negativity of any current situation, and generate yet more positivity and gratitude.
You are worthy and deserving of all the good you desire.
An attitude of gratitude is an attitude of pure positivity. That positivity can generate even greater positive energies – and that, like you, is always worthwhile.
This is the three-hundred and seventy-second entry of my Positivity series. It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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