The person who has satisfactorily applied his skills and intelligence to the art of living is surely the most successful person of all. Someone who has developed mental fitness and achieved a relaxed and confident mental attitude to life in all its avenues is likely to have found some of the secrets of a healthy, simple stress-free lifestyle.
Material success in regard to career, wealth and financial affluence is certainly a part of our modern culture. Although it is the type of success most accented in our materialistic world, it is also most likely to cause major stress in our lives. This is surely not the success we are seeking. Most of us would rate the deeper issues of emotional and spiritual satisfaction as important. And after all, our real success is experienced only by our degree of happiness.
The value of what we are doing must always be tested by whether we feel inwardly successful and at ease and whether success has brought us lasting joy. We can judge our lack of success as a society by the number of stressed, depressed and unhappy people around us today.
It the material ambitions and desire for success motivates us to require the artificial stimulus of drugs or alcohol sometimes a desperate need to escape the life we have created, then something is wrong. Holidays are an accepted part of modern lifestyle. But if we are not happy to also get back to work and enjoy the opportunities we have for creativity, we need consider whether we are deluding ourselves in thinking that the personal sacrifices we have made are worthwhile.
For instance, the stress we undergo in earning a livelihood to support the family may be warranted for a time. The strain we may experience while studying to satisfy our desire for knowledge or to qualify for a preferred employment in addition to coping with family life may or may not seem a worthwhile sacrifice. Certainly if our efforts are appreciated by our loved ones, it helps.
But we must be relaxed and happy whilst working towards our goals, whatever they may be, if we are to experience mental fitness. We must incorporate a degree of the wisdom into the mix. We need time to feel integrated with all natural life; to observe the joy in sunrises and sunsets and things of peace and beauty. Then we will be more likely to feel we have truly succeeded in life without neglect of the most important opportunities to enjoy the most important, natural and enduring of life’s pleasure.
So we should learn the simply value of stillness and contemplation, and for our mental fitness, practise meditation as means to dissolve or prevent inner stress.
Sally Janssen’s wonderful book Mental health and Fitness: A Simple Self-help Guide, offers simple and timely solutions. Read more…
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