A problem with being unable to deal with stress and an irritated mind is unexpressed thought. Also, you may find that your decision making skills fail you because the tempting devil against the wise angel sitting upon your shoulders are becoming more and more intrusive, swaying you from one dilemma to the next and as a result, you cannot process any thought or idea constructively. So how do you deal with it? I discovered the key is to simply learn how to express what’s on your mind in a way that can be read back to you.  I wrote something similar to this on my post on depression but I have recently found that it helps during other times of stress too.

On my travels I had met many different types of people and I was always fond of the artistic folk I came across, because I found they had the most balanced of minds and even though most of them were struggling, they came across very much at ease: musicians, painters, photographers, actors, writer’s, dancers and so on. One common trait among them all was that they persistently externalised thought and their stresses would be drawn out through means of their own interpretation; I was surrounded by amazing talents but I was more in awe of the self actualised personalities I came across. It was because they all had a process to explore what was going on in their minds.

They had ideas and they played with them, they had thoughts and extracted them, each time paying close attention to themselves to construct pieces of work. To keep that locked up and unexpressed would clearly cause stress and inner conflict. It seems so obvious and yet many of us keep bottled up every single day. Imagine a painter being unable to paint; he’ll get buried under stress over the ideas and thoughts floating in his mind to which he cannot express.

Parents, professionals and students alike are pressured by the build up of stress – hundreds of you can simply relieve a lot of tension by practising the art of letting out thought in a personal and perhaps creative way. It can alter your state of mind! Simply place thoughts into a sensory receptive format and offer your tired mind a helping hand – start by putting pen to paper until you find a more fulfilling way of processing.

Furthermore you’ll find artistic people are always creating and would continue to create work and will often start again until their egos were satisfied. Like how therapy works, you continue to open up and let your thoughts spill out until you reach a breakthrough. Why spend hundreds of dollars on a shrink when you can take small steps like journaling first.

This is also another reason why building an identity and knowing who you are, is crucial to your success, as it gives you the freedom to externalise thought with confidence and ease. My mind and my focus have become much stronger ever since I started writing and being able to share and discuss my words openly and honestly, its apart of who I am – its freedom of thought and freedom from thought – it took a while to wrap my head around that but as I continue to write I understand what that concept means more and more.