Most people don't consider themselves to be stressed until their head is so filled with thoughts that they are overwhelmed and completely incapable of any clear thought. I know myself that there are times when I'm taking in so much information and I don't have the ability to process the information, so it's all still going around in my head and I have deadlines that I'm working towards driving me on. And in those times I can walk from my computer to the kitchen and forget what I am going for when I get to the kitchen.

Evolution is about becoming ever more sensitive, refined and precise. There's a scale of stress. From where stress starts, with a conscious thought, to where it causes a mental breakdown. The more evolved and refined you become, the sooner you recognise stress and so the easier it becomes to deal with it.

If you practice being aware of feeling stressed and process thoughts quickly, you'll have more brainpower and clarity to deal with these thoughts and there is less likelihood of fear taking too strong a hold on you and so distorting your thought processes.

Once you reach the point where most people define stress, your brain is dashing in so many directions that it can't work effectively. Imagine you had six different people wanting you to be in six different places. You started to go to the one, then another called you and you started in that direction, then in another direction and so on.

Well that is exactly what the feeling of being stressed and overwhelmed is. It's starting to process one aspect, but getting distracted in another and then another until you end up getting worn out, but not getting anywhere.

If you could only ever focus on one thought, you'd have your full brainpower to deal with it and so could process it quicker.

The perfect analogy to stress is housekeeping. If you want to keep your house tidy, you have to clear anything that is no longer in use away immediately you stop using it.

If you leave the kid's toys out because they'll play with them tomorrow, if you leave the school bags out for the morning, if you leave the clothes to be ironed later, if you leave the sauce bottles from dinner out, if you leave a magazine or paper to read later, if you don't wash the dishes, then pretty soon your house becomes a mess. You have a long list of chores. And then it looks and feels daunting and overwhelming to tackle.

The key is to process stuff as soon as you stop using it. This way everything goes where it belongs and there is no backlog.

In a house, there are always more leaflets and letters coming in the door. If something comes in, and you don't know where to put it, you've started the avalanche of your house getting out of control. Usually people have a dumping ground. On top of a cupboard, in a cupboard, a closet, a drawer. Once that starts getting out of control, it's like a dam bursting, and the house starts to flood.

This is equally true of your mind. We are always encountering problems and conflicts. Now eventually these will almost always be resolved. But when one adds to another, to another, eventually your brain can't split itself in that many directions.

We're in danger here of being too theoretical, so let's use a real life example.

Thursday 14th June

Tom's relationship with Kate isn't going so well, hasn't been for a while. He wonders if she's going off him and today for the first time he starts to worry that it's the beginning of the end. But he can't get a straight answer from her. So he's wracked with constant doubt and indecision. This is a thought that he hasn't yet processed, doesn't know what it means, where it's going, how it will end up or even how he wants it to end up. So he can't mentally file it away, because he doesn't know where to put it.

As a result, part of his mental capacity is being drained away everytime that thought nags at him. If this is powerful enough emotionally, it could to some people on it's own lower his ability to function.

Yet regardless life will inevitably bring other conflicts and problems.

Tuesday 19th June

The the company Tom works for is in talks about being taken over. The acquiring company is known for cutting costs and employees. So now he's worried about both his relationship and his job.

He's still got the day to day hassles of life, but he's also got two very strong emotional fears, pretty much constantly on his mind.

Friday 29th June

The relationship isn't any better or any clearer. The work situation is still going on. All his colleagues are worried, the atmosphere is tense and snappy and people are competing and getting involved in all sorts of political intrigues to try to secure their positions.

Added to this Tom's Father has been taken ill. He's looking very frail and the family are seriously concerned for his health.

Now Tom has three serious, almost constant drains on his attention. Because of this, his ability and capacity to deal with what is thrown at him will reduce and so it's likely that he'll make mistakes at work, become more irritable with Friends and Family and possibly drink more and perhaps become run down.

Now these are all serious situations and tough to deal with. But that's what life is about. We're here to deal with tough situations, not to lie in a hammock all day.

Had Tom resolved the girlfriend issue within 5 days, in his own mind, he would have had a clear mind to focus on the work situation. Had he then cleared that in 10 days his mind would have been free to fully focus on his Father's health.

But when they stay unresolved, they mount one on another and the effect is so much more powerful.

Imagine another country is invading yours. If troops, just march across the border, it's fairly straightforward to deal with. But if at the same time, the Air Force is bombing and the Navy is landing on the other side, you are now split fighting in three different directions.

It's exactly the same with stress. It isn't that you don't have the capacity to deal with things. It's that you don't have the capacity to deal with twenty different things at one time.

Focused attention is so much more powerful than difused attention. Don't you just love it when someone is intently listening to you, giving you their full attention? And don't you hate it when someone listens and talks or, worse still, gestures to you while doing emails or talking on the phone? Doesn't it seem rude? As if you're unimportant?

It's because you notice the difference in power and intensity in the two states. And your mind will only let go of it's fears and doubts when it knows you have given enough powerful and intense attention to resolve all the intricacies related to the thought.

It's important to process and clear issues from your mind so that you are fully able to respond to new situations. People often talk about the need to be in the present. Well this is why people aren't in the present, because they are still catching up with processing thoughts from the past.

It's a raging certainty that there will be new problems and situations to deal with. So you want to clear your mind as quickly as you can so that you are ready for them.

When somewhere looks pristine, and you make a mess, it stands out. Psychologically, no one wants to be responsible for making the mess. But when there's already a mess people assume that's what others have done and so they might as well too.

Much research has been done on the links between graffiti, vandalism and crime. An area that is free of graffiti and vandalism is likely to have a lower crime rate because the perception is that people take care of that area and so care and will act to keep it clear.

Whereas in an area that has many signs of graffiti and vandalism the perception is that one more act won't be noticed and so the likelihood of being caught and punished is vastly reduced.

You have to start looking at fear, doubt, worry, frustration and anger as your mental graffiti and vandalism. We will in a later post look at the effect of these thoughts on your body and see that the impact on you is literally a vandalism of your body.

So what do you do about it?

You start by making the abstract concrete. A thought is intangible. So it's very hard to see all sides of it. To look at it without a biased view. By writing it down or drawing it, you make it more solid and tangible, you can look more dispassionately at it and so move past all the emotion that clouds the issue and process it.

Stage 1 of processing your thoughts is to list them, mindmap them or whatever works for you. Capture every thought or word that crops up without any judgement or analysis.

If you have a thought or a feeling, it is there for a good reason. And if you fail to recognise that reason it will recur and increase in intensity until you do and act on it.

So you want to grab a pen and paper or whatever equivalent you want to use. And write every random thought that crosses your mind without any judgement. If it's on your mind it's important. It might not seem important, but there is some reason that your brain is holding onto it. So go with it and list it down.

Do this for five minutes or so until your mind quiets. When you have completed this you will feel a sense of relief. Many of the thoughts you have are just attention seeking. So the fact that they have been paid attention to, will let them know you're aware of them. Some others are mental fidgeting. But you've taken them away from sucking so much of your brainpower. And now you're starting to process them. In the next post we'll talk more about processing them.