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I’ve traditionally been an expert at creating my own stress. Simply said, self-created stress is making things worse than they have to be. Blowing things out of proportion, jumping to conclusions, imagining worse case scenarios, overanalyzing, and wasting energy on things that are counterproductive are just a few examples of self-created stress. I’m not saying that there aren’t big things and real problems in life to stress over. Coping with a tragedy, suffering a loss, having a sick family member or experiencing a financial crisis are all things that rightfully deserve our concern. But do you ever notice that with the major events, or the life altering experiences, we show amazing courage and grace? We ask for help and reach out to our support systems, and most of the time we get that support and we persevere. But what makes our day-to-day lives less fulfilling than they can be, and eats away at us and the quality of our lives is making big things out of things that really are small and creating stress out of ordinary life events. If you could just eliminate this self-created stress, wouldn’t that increase the quality of your life tremendously?   more »