As we all realize stress is inevitable, what makes the
difference is how we manage and cope up with it. Stress can range from short
term to long term depending on the cause, such as personal, professional,
social etc.

The easiest and the most common coping mechanism used by
most of us is Avoidance, where we tend to distance ourselves from stressful
situations like making decisions or taking responsibilities.

While avoidance gives us a temporary relief from stressful
situations, it ends up lowering our Self-esteem and confidence and make us overly
self-critical. Not just stressful situations, sometimes we tend to avoid
certain people as well, which hampers our interpersonal relationships and
social life.

Avoidance restricts you to your comfort zone which in turn
inhibits you from exploring your skills and developing resilience. It can be
tackled only by spearheading through it.  Fear and Anticipatory thoughts
are the major reasons for avoidance. Challenging such thoughts is the first
step towards coping with stress, rather than letting the fear and anticipatory
thoughts control you.

In the process of meeting our professional and personal
needs we end up spending our lives jumping from task to task and we fail to
acknowledge our being. We are unable to experience our lives completely instead
we are just focusing on completing different task.

When was the last time you took a pause and experienced your
surrounding and yourself?

It is equally important for us to experience life as it is
than just restricting it to goals or tasks. Mindfulness is a way to experience
life efficiently, to be mindful is to be completely aware of our feelings,
thoughts, physical sensations, and surroundings, from one moment to the next.
It requires us to switch off our default auto-pilot mode and pay close
attention to our present moment. Being mindful involves observing our thoughts
and feelings as impartial witnesses without judgement, belief or disbelief,
and without letting them take over.   Solutions that ask us to change
who we are or become something we’re not have failed us over and over again.
Mindfulness recognizes and cultivates the best of who we are. We already have
the capacity to be present, and it doesn’t require us to change who we are. But
we can cultivate these innate qualities with simple practices that are
scientifically demonstrated to benefit ourselves.