Most of us know that stress is very harmful to our body. It can lead to hypertension, diabetes, cancer and many other life threatening diseases.

It is also harmful to the Intellect as it disturbs it, preventing it from clear thinking and good decision making, resulting in actions detrimental to our own self and others too! Chronic Stress can also lead our Ego into a severe depression and sometimes force it to attempt or commit suicide, which is destruction of it’s own body!

What causes Stress?

Based on inputs form others and the external environment, our Intellect conditions and programs itself to have many desires and expectations from our own self, others as well as the environment. This conditioning or programming can be called as our ‘Ego’.

The very existence of desires and expectations causes stress in our Intellect as our Ego is afraid that the desires and expectations may not be fulfilled in the future! When desires and expectations are not fulfilled, then even more stressful situation arises within us which at times lead us into severe depression and infrequently into committing suicide.

Because of our desires and expectations our Intellect is unable to accept our own Ego as it is now. It also does not accept other people, objects and situations as they are now. This lack of acceptance causes constant stress in our Intellect disrupting its capabilities.

So, when someone says that he/she is not stressed at all, it is not true; as the very existence of desires and expectations, which is our Ego, causes stress.

Only when we are abiding in our ‘True Self’, when we are complete and free from desires and expectations, that we are totally stress free!

Obviously, to have good health we need to be stress free and that can be done by moving from our ‘Ego’ state to a state of ‘True Self’ as often as possible!

There is an intermediate state too that considerably reduces stress, which is the state of ‘Pure Awareness and Full Acceptance’ of the present moment. In this state we become aware of our desires, expectations and our stressful condition. This Awareness alone reduces the poison of the Stress automatically and so our body and Intellect can remain healthy and as fit and calm as possible!

Awareness and Acceptance can be easily done while at work or indulging in sports or any other activities throughout the day! This will help considerably in lowering our Stress levels and help us in living our life fully and peacefully!

Keeping secrets also increases our Stress levels. Ideally, it is best to be transparent, when we have nothing to hide – Gul Malani *