4 Tips for Managing Stress from a Combat Veteran

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tinybuddha/~3/t3zt-4KoPV8/

Meditating

“Buddha was asked, ‘What have you gained from meditation?’ He replied, ‘Nothing.’ ‘However,’ Buddha said, ‘let me tell you what I lost: anger, anxiety, depression, insecurity, fear of old age, and death.’”

“I never get stressed.”

I used to say and think this all the time when I saw someone freaking out about an upcoming test, a bad grade, relationship problems, or a boss or coworker.

I had a false sense of being “carefree” because I wouldn’t get stressed over the trivial things that most people did.

I was a “battle hardened” soldier recently back from a deployment in Afghanistan. When I saw people worry about those inconsequential things, I would think to myself, “Please, you have no idea what it means to be stressed.”

As it turns out, my understanding of stress was wrong. It’s also wrong for a lot of people who believe they aren’t stressed.

It wasn’t until I started meditating three years after my deployment that I started to realize that I was stressed—just in a different way and from different things than most people.

After meditating every day for a couple months, my “ah-ha” moment finally hit me.

I was sitting in traffic, late for an appointment (I hate being late), watching all the pe…

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