How to Relieve Stress - Adapting The Habit to Faking It Until You Can Make It

The wise ones or the older generation have a saying, fake it until you can make it, this statement could not be closer to the truth when dealing with stress. Stress is design to serve as a survival instinct; in the face of danger stress acts as an indication to take action in order to eliminate the problem. This is where it gets complicated because we cannot eliminate every problem in our lives, problems also serve a purpose, they are life vital learning lessons. Learning how to coexist with stress is a challenge we all face because life is an ongoing learning lesson. Sometimes life can knock the hope right out of us through devastating event in our lives, in extreme cases people experience nervous breakdowns and others commit suicide. The physiological effects of stress can be detrimental to our well-being, but in actuality it is our inability to coexist with stress that causes the physiological effects of stress. So how do we coexist with stress?  Well we can simply fake until we can make it in order to relieve stress.

Naturally we are beings of habits and one of the ways we are able to change habits is through adaptation, in turn, we can make and break habits if we so choose. I believe habits are adapted in two ways, through learning and thought traits. A habit can take 30 days to a life time to adapt depending on the source of the habits. With that said we can change our habits of letting stress defeat our bodies and minds by adapting a new habit; learning the habit of faking it until you make it. The reasoning is quite simple; you cannot go in the past or in the future and change anything, you can only live in the present or one day at a time. Keep in mind we never know how things will work out, but yet they always do. 

In order to fake it until we can make we simple fake it by acting; even if you are not feeling happy you should act happy by doing and thinking the things you would if you did feel happy. There many activities people can do to create the feeling of happiness, but I believe the best ways is to do something for someone else and to be grateful for what you already have. Doing a good deed is a win win situation because all parties involve benefit. Being grateful causes you to focus on the things you take for granted, such as waking up in the morning and being able to think, talk, walk, and see. The goal is to consciously generate the feeling of happiness every day until it becomes a habit.

Stress is a friend; it is our relationship with stress that creates the problem. With the right perspective, when looking back at the difficult times in life it is easier to recognize how much one has matured and grown. Without our past difficulties we may not recognize personal growth.  Adapting habits to change how we coexist with stress helps us learn how to relieve stress.  When generating happiness remember that it feels just as good to give as it does to receive and to be grateful for things we take for granted.  Consciously acting out how we wish to feel in my opinion is the easiest way to fake it until you can make.