Achieving Happiness – bringing calm to your crazy life!

Achieving Happiness – bringing calm to your crazy life!

Jane is drowning in the demands of her life. On the personal side, she’s a wife and a mother of two boys. All three rely on her to organize their lives regarding what they do, when they do it and how they get rewarded. On the professional side, she works full time managing a medical office, which means performing those same duties for the staff.

But Jane’s level of life satisfaction is slowly being ground down by stress. She’s often frustrated by what she sees as irresponsible and immature behavior. At least her kids have an excuse, she thinks to herself. She’s far less forgiving of her husband and coworkers, and finds herself dwelling on the perpetual problems they create for her.

The pace of Jane’s life seems to be moving faster. Unfortunately, that also means she’s quicker to anger, disappointment and unhappiness. She’s begun to wonder if this is all there is to life – feeling pressured and pushing people to get things done. Jane’s working hard to do everything that’s expected, but for what? All of the joy being sucked out of her life.

It used to be that she could get a few minutes to herself on the drive to and from work to sort out her priorities, but now her Blackberry is bombarding her with voice mails, e-mails and text messages. It’s gotten so bad she feels she’s lost touch with herself and is simply being swept along by a tidal wave of obligations.

Jane’s so caught up in the demands of taking care of everybody else she has trouble finding any time to take care of herself. She can feel her body becoming exhausted as she rushes through life. She can sense her mind becoming preoccupied by anxious thoughts regarding what’s going to go wrong next. Jane’s awareness of life is limited to whether or not she’ll be good enough to handle the pressing problems of the day.

Some people hold stress more in their body, while for others it’s more in their mind. To find out which you are, take the quiz. By giving yourself a point for each of the odd statements, you’ll see the extent to which your body’s reacting to stress. By totaling the number of even statements that apply, you’ll recognize the degree to which your mind is affected by stress.

To read more about managing stress and thereby boosting happiness – click here.