stress

How To Stay Sane When Dealing With Centrelink, myGov and The ATO Online

Centrelink has been in the news lately with reports that dealing with them is “frustrating as hell” and that “the system seems designed to stop people using it”. An Adelaide man became so frustrated that he launched into a tirade at a Centrelink office. Thankfully we don’t have semi-automatic weapons widely available in Australia because the frustration of dealing with government bureaucracy can make even the most sane person want to go postal.

I used to think that people who complained about Centrelink were simply biting the hand that feeds. It’s a government department that gives you money for doing… well, not very much. So why shouldn’t there be a few hoops to jump through in order to proved that you’re genuinely eligible and keep the fraudsters from our hard earned tax dollars?

Well I changed my mind somewhat recently after actually having to deal with Centrelink myself while applying for a Low Income Health Care Card. I’d been to the doctor the week before in my continuing quest to find why I feel exhausted all the time, and the blood test results showed that I had a high level of cortisol, a primary stress hormone.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Meditate

A lot of people these days are stressed out to the max. There’s work pressure, family pressure, relationship pressure, home pressure, financial pressure. Pressure, pressure, pressure. We race from one thing to the next in the eternal search for happiness, oblivious to the fact that the peace of mind and contentment that we seek already lies within. We just have to stop long enough to get in touch with it. But we’re afraid of stopping because when we do, all the unpleasant emotions that lie between us and that inner peace come up and bite us. As a result, we push push push ourselves into ever increasing amounts of stress until we burn out and/or our health self-destructs.

What’s the answer to dealing with the stresses of modern life? Personally I find meditation helpful and I do it every day. Lots of people are interested in meditation but just don’t know how to do it. They’re worried about getting it wrong and doing some terrible damage to their brain, or just wasting time sitting there feeling restless because they’re using the “wrong” technique.

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By Graham Stoney, ago