Amy Allcock

My friend Dan passed this little tidbit along to me and I thought that it was a rather novel and enlightening perspective on how to deal with stress.

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, “How heavy is this glass of water?” Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g. The lecturer replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.” He continued, “And that’s the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won’t be able to carry on. As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we’re refreshed, we can carry on with the burden. So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don’t carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you’re carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can.”

In my yoga practice, we spend a lot of time trying to ?��Ǩ?�let things go?��Ǩ��, which I am able to do with varying results depending on the day and what it is that I am holding on to. Although I am getting better at letting go, this piece really shed some light on to why certain things seem heavier than others. The reason we sweat the small stuff is because we hold onto it so tightly ?��Ǩ��� it?��Ǩ�Ѣs not the burdens that are weighty, it?��Ǩ�Ѣs how we carry them that makes them heavy. Definitely a timely insight - knowing why they feel so heavy will definitely help to lighten the load.