Would you mind elaborating a bit on the "took every advantage I could to compensate for the damage caused by stress."
In a similar position and would be good to learn what worked for you.
In a similar position and would be good to learn what worked for you.
For example I have simple exercise routine I do every evening. It is just stuff I do before shower and bed. I also stopped driving in narrow city roads, I leave a car at motorway exit and walk last mile.
Forget self-help stuff. It is really just basics; fix your sleep, health, sex, community you live in...
For programming I follow simple TDD routine (and other simple best practices). And I do not do anything else at computer except making money. Today is an exception, I have 2 hours a week for facebook and news ;-)
If you really want to go bold, one of the best decisions in my life was to do a ten day silent meditation (i did one of those of dhamma.org; free courses where you of course donate according to your means at the end).
Idle time is an investment in your brain. We don't need constant information or entertainment.
Specific books mentioned in the thread I can vouch for:
The Power of Habit (popular science) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609433-the-power-of-hab...
Superhuman by Habit (actionable, no-bull, if somewhat introductory) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23206969-superhuman-by-ha...
Epictetus' Enchiridion. A cheap, used Dover Editions copy off Ebay is all one needs.
Also, if a Christian, morning and evening prayers by candlelight using the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.
A good exercise is to just sit quietly in a dark room, and completely empty your mind. Think no thoughts -- whether you believe them to be good or bad. This simple thing turns out to be so incredibly difficult, that many monks on the Holy Mountain have mastered. I myself can barely go a minute before a stress or a worry about my day or job or family comes into my head, but cool thing is you do eventually get better.
It certainly sounds like one of you is talking about the meditating by using your thoughts as an object (sorting thoughts obviously makes no sense once you stop identifying them as "yours"), while the other is talking about simply doing it object-free.
Both are taught by many of the same traditions, with neither being necessarily better or worse, though usually the object-free version is taught later because it's hard to do without something to focus on when you're first starting.
I personally find the prior more useful when I'm trying to process a specific problem or stressor and the latter to be more useful after I've done some preprocessing. They are often done sequentially for this reason, as well as because meditating briefly with a specific focus helps prepare you mentally for the more general focus-free meditation where you simply rest in the experience of existence. But other preparation meditations with focuses can also be used to help you mentally prepare, such as focusing on body sensations, breath, vision, sounds, etc. Thoughts are just another thing you can observe.
EDIT: I'd note that the Wikipedia article on Hesychasm describes it as asceticism and "blocking off", so in retrospect I'd describe it as a different class of meditation than those that involve resting in experience. More like visualization practice or some of the scarier death practices. But they're talking about the "advanced" version there, and such things are easy to misconstrue because the language for describing it is poor. But I'd still call it a meditation.
sorry, I think this is where the confusion is coming from. My original expansion on the comment with heyschasm was in response to kingmanaz. If you are a Christian, the heyechastic practice is markedly better than simply meditating. I was trying to differentiate between modern renditions of what meditation looks like, with the christian ascetical discipline of heyschasm, and I concluded by saying both are beneficial in any case, to someone who is under extreme long term stress.
Hesychasm is alive and well in the Orthodox Church. Mostly practised by monks, but well known outside monasteries.