stress & you Take a look at how you may be putting yourself under unnecessary stress. Try to identify unnecessary stressors in your life. By eliminating as many as you can you free a lot of energy for more positive use and for meeting important challenges. For instance, physical inactivity is a stressor - it decreases your body's ability to function at optimum levels, it encourages the storage of wastes in the muscles and skin, and makes you chronically fatigued. So instead of indulging in it, start some kind of exercise program, follow it regularly. Many people who take up regular exercise report that they experience conceptual shifts so that things which appeared stressful before no longer bother them. Like cigarettes and drugs, various foods and drinks can be heavy stressors, too. They offer nothing in the way of positive health and vitality, but are a constant drain on the adaptive energy in your body. It is well established that caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, sugar and excess fat are stressors, which actively work against its normal healthy functioning.

Many emotional stressors can also be discarded. Take a look at what continues to trigger off the stress response in your life and ask yourself whether you really want to meet this challenge - for instance a relationship which doesn't work or a job you hate - or whether it is something which prevents you from turning a lot of your creative energies to more constructive use.

Some stressors provide challenges from which one can grow. Others are simply habitual. They lead nowhere and bring little in terms of increasing awareness or ability to make better use of life.

You might like to start a journal in which you record observations and feelings about your own life. Take a look at the work you do and ask yourself if you find it really satisfying. Are the financial responsibilities you have taken on really necessary? Can you reduce them in any way? If not, you might just try having the courage to drop some of them and accept the changes this will bring about. We all have a tendency to hang on to the status quo at all costs. Usually the cost is heavy in terms of lost creativity and life. Even if you learn the world's finest techniques for meditation and stilling the mind, if you are in a job you hate year after year or are faced with a relationship that no longer has meaning for you, they will do little good. Each of us not only needs to face up to the demands of stress, but to take responsibility for removing it wherever it is no longer useful and relevant to us.

Are you one of those miracle working superhumans who work from 9 to 5 - or 6 or 7 - and then come home to look after home and family and relatives and friends? Do you do the shopping, errands, and feeding of partner or children and still expect yourself to emerge from it at the end of the day a scintillating wit? This is what I call playing the superhuman role - a role which is commonplace among creative and ambitious people. It is a dangerous game to play. Push yourself to your limits and you could produce physical symptoms like headaches, colds and flu, back or neck or shoulder ache, chronic fatigue and PMT or emotional troubles - from feelings of inadequacy to depression, irritability and dependence on alcohol or drugs. You could also find you were not doing the best for your job or the people closest to you either, even though you may actually have been sacrificing your own needs to theirs. Many an intimate relationship has failed as a result of the superhuman syndrome. Don't let it happen to you.

stress it out

At this point I suggest you make a list of everything you think of as a stressor in your life - work, relationships, financial commitments, family - anything that causes you to feel stressed. Now make yourself a chart and write in each of these stressors in the left hand column. Think carefully about each one and decide whether it is possible to drop that stressor altogether, to change it in some way, or to embrace it - to turn it from a negative object of fear into a challenge. For instance, if you have too many financial commitments, can any of them be eliminated? If your television is rented could you do without it and what would the consequence be? Perhaps you would find you suddenly have much more time for yourself - to read more, visit friends, spend time relaxing. If your work is a stressor is there anything you can do to change it or better still, embrace it as a challenge? If you are eating too much fat, sugar and white flour, decide to make an effort to alter your diet.

The following are three keys to making stress work for you rather than against you. Make use of them to change the way to think about stress in your life:

you are the one in power

You have all the inner resources necessary to deal with any situation that may arise. But do you know it? Stressors are neutral, neither good nor bad. They simply are, and they call for some kind of action. Your response to them and the stress they trigger in you is entirely dependent on you. And it is in your power to decide clearly whether you are going to face the challenge and see it through so that stress becomes a stimulus, or you are going to allow yourself to shrink from it and let it turn to distress. Taking stock of your own power and realizing that you alone have the ability to control how you respond to stress can lead you to look at it in a positive way, so that instead of succumbing to misery and despair you can, each time you face a stressor, find it an exciting challenge.

know when enough is enough

Many people who appear to deal with stress well and face stressors positively make the mistake of carrying things too far. You can enjoy the 'high' of the flow of adrenalin, but you can also become addicted to it. And no one can live forever under stress. Not only will it age you and eventually make you ill, but long before then it will also distort your perceptions of your world and your sense of values so that you become mechanical in your thinking and irresponsible towards other people as well as towards yourself.

You have to know when to take it easy. And you have to learn how. If you happen to be a dynamic type, you also need to learn deliberately to stop yourself sometimes and temporarily give up your challenge. Everyone needs to plunge themselves regularly and deeply into a state of deep relaxation. For there you are able to see things from a different perspective and you emerge from the experience not only renewed in energy and clearer in your thoughts, but also freed from the automaton-like behavior that comes with stress addiction. For everyone, stopping and letting go is difficult sometimes. For some, it is very hard indeed. For unlike those who shy away from stress for fear of its disturbing their peace of mind, some shy away from stillness as though they fear it will make them see something in their exciting lives that needs to be changed. For you can hold on to stress as a way of hiding from yourself. But for those people, as for everyone, some form of regularly practiced deep relaxation or meditation can be the key to yet greater enjoyment, commitment, and excitement in the never-ceasing world of challenge which they love so much.

discover your own guidelines

Find out how many different principles and ways of managing stress you can successfully incorporate into your life. Then do it. And not just at work. Stress in a relationship can be a way of improving not only the quality of the relationship but also the value that you place on it. This demands facing discontent clearly and squarely and expressing it in a way that doesn't try to make someone else responsible for it. Another thing it demands is looking at every relationship as it really is, rather than as you would like it to be; also it means being aware of your own needs and expressing them clearly and openly instead of being quietly resentful that they are not met automatically by others.

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