You know well the feeling of your blood pressure rising, your fists clenching, your jaw tightening and your voice rising in anger.  It doesn’t feel good, does it? Anger is a reaction to a stressful situation.  

What if you could learn to respond in a different way?  A way that would leave you reigning in life, with your dignity intact and hope that the situation will work out for good. A way that will honor God and not invoke more stress on yourself and those around you, or make you later regret what you said or did.  

Here are 9 ways to control your anger and feel calmer:

1. When you get angry, you are poised for a fight.  You can instantly take steps to diffuse your feelings by intentionally forcing yourself to stretch out your fingers, reduce the tone of your voice, open your arms wide or slump in a chair.  Do the opposite of what you feel like doing by an act of your will.  Stress always has you constricting, so find ways to open...

When you are in the midst of a trial that is causing you stress, what’s the best way to come through it and not get stuck in it? 

It is with calm faith.

Oh, but that is so much easier said than done, isn’t it? I mean you are IN the trial, this is a REAL issue.  This is not you worrying about the future and what if this or that happens. Something has already happened. Now what?

Today I’ll share with you the 3 best ways to have calm faith IN the midst of the trial so that you will come OUT.

God tells you to expect to come through it, not get stuck in it.  Isaiah 43:2 says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”  Notice He says when you pass through, not when you drown in the waters.  

Psalm 23:4 is another witness to us of this expectation. “Even though I walk...

I’m not sure it gets much more stressful than hearing a diagnosis of having kidney cancer when you weren’t expecting a thing.  This happened to me several years ago and I’m sure glad I had learned beforehand what the Bible teaches about healing so I knew how to respond in the day of crisis.  Today I’ll share 3 biblical truths that helped me to not worry about my health.

One of the leading causes of stress I hear from my clients is health related, either their own health or that of a loved one.  The stress comes from being in pain, incurring huge medical expenses, getting a scary diagnosis or wondering what would happen to their kids if something happens to them.  Health problems cause stress and stress causes health problems.

As always, to stress less, we need to go to the Bible as our ultimate authority, instruction manual and guide.  And there we’ll find these three biblical truths:

1. Jesus took care of our healing on the cross...

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew exactly what to do when you ran into difficulties in life and need a good idea?  Wouldn’t that help eliminate stress? A problem would come but instead of worrying or becoming fearful about it, you would just turn to the things you knew to do and not be ruled by your emotions.  Today, I’m sharing a plan for you to turn to when you are in need of a good idea of what to do.

1. Stop and quiet yourself.  Sounds simple but this is hard to do when you have been hurt, embarrassed or afraid, or when your mind is spinning fast trying to find a solution to your problem.  When we approach problems with a boiling over mad or scared to death attitude, we’ll make bad decisions. We’ll want revenge, we’ll make short-sighted decisions, we’ll be ruled by emotions and limited by our
   human knowledge of the situation.
   
   
2. Go to God with the problem.  Again sounds simple, but how many of us have thought about our...

Warning: If you want to keep your anxiety and stay in your depression or if you just want some sympathy this video is not for you.  But if you want to bust through the obstacles to stress-free living, here are 4 tips on how to do it. 

I’m about to say something that won’t be too popular.  But I say it out of total love and a desire to see people bust through stress instead of getting stuck in it.  I also say it as a person who understands stress, worry and fear consuming your life. And I say it as a person who found my way out to freedom and want to help you too. 

Okay, here goes...Some people are stuck in their life of anxiety, depression and stress because they see the obstacles in their life and they just lie down and say, “They are too big.  They are too tough. They’ve been around so long. There’s nothing I can do about it. They must be part of God’s plan or He wouldn’t have allowed it. This is just the way...

Is expecting the best just a positive thinking, worldly idea that is really a bunch of nonsense and won’t help your stress?  No! I’ll show you from the Bible today Jesus’ take on this subject and 4 ways you can apply it to your life.

Have you heard this quote before?

“Expect the best, prepare for the worst.”

Or how about this one…

“Expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed.”

Or...

“Don’t expect too much. It’s always better to be surprised than disappointed.”

There are a lot of ideas out there about what we should expect but the only ones we need concern ourselves with are from the Bible.  

In Mark 9 the father of a demon-possessed child came to Jesus and said, “But please, if you’re able to do something, anything—have compassion on us and help us!” Jesus said to him, “What do you mean ‘if’? If you are able to believe, all things are...

Today I’m sharing with you a super easy way to bring healing to your body from the physical reaction to stress.

Someone once said, “Life is so daily.”  That is an accurate sentiment of the pressure, responsibilities and tension of daily life. We feel a persistent and insistent demand to always be doing something, learning something or figuring a problem out.  This constant pressure when allowed into our hearts and minds gives us stress. 75-90% of all visits to a primary care doctor are related to stress.  Stress takes a toll on our bodies.

How stressed out are you - right now?  Let’s do a quick check of our bodies.

• Are you squinting or have a furrowed brow or scowling face?
• Is your jaw clenched, your lips pursed or do you feel like your throat feel tight?
• Are your hands clenched?
• Are your shoulders lifted up?
• Are your toes curled under?
• Do you feel tightness in your arms, legs, or backside?

A high strung nature is how it is sometimes...

Have you ever experienced general anxiety where your muscles feel tight, you’re on the verge of a headache if you don’t have one already, and you feel kind of riled up, irritated, annoyed but you may not even be able to say why. You don't feel happy and you find yourself getting angry over the small stuff. You are fuming and fretting. Fussing and feeling distressed. But everything is going okay in life or at least nothing new has happened.

So, why the nervous tension and how can you exchange it for calmness and peace?

Four common causes of nervous tension that you can address are...

Over-stimulation.  We are exposed to so much. So much noise.  So much visual stimulation. So much marketing.  So much information. So much clutter. The body’s response to the stress of the over-stimulation is a whole host of chemicals being released that are slowly eating you alive as well as making you feel tired and frustrated.

To combat this we must build periods of...

A recent Gallup survey shows the unhappy state of America.  It reported increased depression, increased daily physical pain, increased day-to-day worry, declines in “positive energy” from family and friends, and declining satisfaction with their standard of living, among other things. Surveying over 2.5 million people it showed that happiness is in a sharp decline.  But anyone who desires happiness can achieve it by learning these principles I’m sharing on how to create your own happiness.  

So, how do you create your own happiness? To get my first point, click here to see part 1.  Today we are starting on point #2.

To Create Your Own Happiness:

#2 Don’t manufacture unhappiness.  Seems obvious.  Yet so many of us do it!  Of course, not all unhappiness is self-created but there are enough problems created by life that we certainly don’t want to add to it by anything that we do.  To a large extent, by...

Who decides if you are going to be happy or unhappy in life?  You do. Abraham Lincoln said that people were just about as happy as they made up their minds to be.  We want to pass the responsibility off on others, but the good news is if it is up to us, then we aren’t waiting on anyone else and we don’t need to try to control them to get our happiness.  

I have 4 ways to create your own happiness. We’ll cover the first one today and then in the next blog, we’ll cover the other 3. 

So, how do you create your own happiness?

1. When you get up in the morning choose to be happy.  Say out loud, “I choose happiness today.” Don’t say to me, “But Donna, that is too easy.”  Don’t get super-sophisticated in your methods or be in total disbelief and miss out. Take this with child-like faith, not jaded by your life experiences.  
   
   Luke 18:16 & 17 says, “Let the little children come to me, and do...