Feelings Of Comfort And Stress Reduction

Feelings of comfort come from one or more of our five senses. Whether it is a song we hear, the taste of a favorite food, the feeling of our favorite clothes, the sight of a loved one, or the smell of garden after a spring rain, comfort stirs our hearts and emotions into a sense of safety and security. We run to special moments in our lives when we encounter any of our 5 senses of comfort memories. This is our hearts safety net for difficult times.

Comfort is defined by the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary, 2005) a feeling of relief or encouragement, contented well-being, or a satisfying or enjoyable experience. So how can we begin to experience feelings of comfort in our hectic and stressful day.

As a personal and business coach, I teach my clients to begin to recreate their experiences on paper to have an opportunity to relive them during hectic moments. Some would call this journaling but I like to keep it simple with a few sentences known as memory joggers. Start by listing all five of the senses and begin writing quick notes as you experience comfort in each sense. As an example, the smell of someone smoking a pipe reminds me of my father who passed away. The sound of a clothes dryer running at night (no this is not odd) reminds me of safety and security in my childhood home. The feeling of clean sheets on a bed just gives me an overall comfort of well being. See it’s simple. Now you try it.

How can we use the comfort list when our life get hectic? We can pull out the list and remind ourselves that what we are going through will pass. In our past were moments of quite, safety, security and good times. As we go through difficult periods, these memory joggers become our safety net to see us through. Stress is a part of the daily life of every living creature. Fortunately, we as humans have ways to manage this stress level as we can control our response, actions and behaviors. Here are three ways to help reduce your stress and help you manage around your critical life moments.

Keep in check your expectation level. You may be surprised at what you think is important to other people. Make sure you are not masking your own level of expectation onto another person or situation.
Christmas is a time where we want to give our families a “Martha Stewart” kind of experience with all the trimmings, gourmet food choices and decorations beyond our wildest dreams. This can come with a price as our stress level is heightened to prepare everything to perfection. If you sat down with your family, is this what really matters to them or would they be satisfied with little more than a perfect Christmas but being able to enjoy the entire holiday season with you.

Identify what drains and replenishes you emotionally and find the middle ground between the two.
When our emotional reserves are depleted our perspective is weakened and our energy is zapped. When our emotional bank is depleted, we need to begin to make more deposits to gain our perspective back to a healthy level. We need to understand exactly what people or events withdraw energy from us and which deposit or recharge our emotions. Once we have identified this list, we can break it down into what we can and cannot control. The things we cannot control, we need to find ways to help us manage through these issues. Finding the middle ground between these issues will help us not to go into an extreme imbalance on one end or the other but stay consistent.

Balance the different types of people in our life.
There are three types of people in our lives. Those that refresh us and those that drain us and those that are neutral. We need to balance these relationships so we do not have extremes in any one place. The trick is not to have more drainers than replenishers in our life. The other trick is to be careful how we choose to spend time with these different type so people. We need to spend a large portion of our time with those who refresh, listen and invest time in our relationship. Don’t dump your friends. Learn to identify where each of them fit in and begin to manage around them.

When stressful people, situations or life challenges happen, pull our your comfort list. Be taken back to a time where is was safe and begin to dig out of your situation from this secure place. In the end, this helps to clear our mind of the negative and helps you see clearly a new direction, or twist on an old problem.


Sandra Larkin
http://www.lostandfoundlifecoach.com/