Stress and anxiety begin in that Alpha or hypnotic state in your subconscious mind.  What happens in reality is that an event occurs (probably some change in your environment or to your routine that you didn’t choose or anticipate and of which you wouldn’t approve).  You respond emotionally to this event – which is perfectly normal, of course.  Because you’re in the Alpha or hypnotic state, however, your subconscious conflates the triggering event with your emotional response to it.  To your subconscious mind, they seem to be the same thing.  Event and response become one.  Therefore, it seems as if, as long as that event is true, you have no choice but to be stressed or anxious about it. 

Unfortunately, you usually can’t control everything that happens in the environment around you.  Sometimes really unpleasant things will occur.  It’s simply a fact of life.  Fortunately, however, you can be more in charge of how to respond to these situations.  That is at the very heart and soul of reducing or eliminating the stress you’re experiencing. 

Once you acknowledge consciously that the event and your emotional response to it are two disparate things, you can decide to use one or more of the techniques mentioned herein.  The knowledge empowers you to choose how you want to proceed.

Most of the techniques in this book only take a few seconds to do and can be done anywhere you happen to be.  Some of them are a little more time-intensive, and those will be obvious but equally effective.  You can pick and choose which ones you do and don’t do.  Any of them will help you to begin to live a less stressful life.

There is a proviso, however.  Putting at least one technique to use is imperative for relieving stress.  Your subconscious mind will do its best to keep you from utilizing any of them.  Remember, it doesn’t want change, even if the change is an improvement.  You don’t have to use all of these techniques to experience relief from stress or anxiety.  Most people won’t.  But you do have to use at least one.  Reading about them, thinking about them, or talking about them isn’t very likely, unfortunately, to get you to where you want to be.  You must implement at least one technique against the consistent efforts of your subconscious mind to keep you from doing so.

Again, your subconscious, primitive mind wants you to cling to your stressors, because at least it knows what they are, and it knows you’re surviving them.  It will try to keep you from changing, because it fears you’ll then have to return to scanning the horizon all day, every day looking for other threats, and something much worse will come along.  It may attempt to convince you that you’re stronger and more admirable if you live your life with stress.  It might tell you you’ll look silly or you don’t have the time or money to use the techniques.  If you use a technique and the thing that triggered the stress still exists, it will try to get you to believe the technique didn’t work.

Please give yourself the gift of using one or more of these techniques.  They really do work.  You may not experience relief immediately, but please trust in the process.  You will, at least gradually, begin to feel calmer and more relaxed.  If you’re reading this book, likely you have already experienced quite a bit of stress.  You deserve to enjoy your life more now.