Self Help

Having read through our directory of stress-related articles listed on this website, you were educated with a brief foundation for understanding and dealing with stress. We reviewed the meaning of stress, looked at its origins and potential effects, as well as laid down some general guidelines for you to use in coping with your stress. We talked about stress in our daily lives with our families, our jobs, out life crises, and our religion.

Regardless of the differences the day brings to each of us, different jobs, different friends, and different circumstances, we all experience stress. As a research and writer of health-related material of stress and stress solutions, I experience my own kind of stress on a daily basis. Writing can be an intense and exhaustive task. It requires extreme discipline, persistence, and the drive to keep going even when I do not feel inspired or motivated to produce material.

One way that I have found to keep my mind clear is to take frequent breaks. It has been estimated that the average span of concentration for the average adult is a short one and one half hours, so after sitting for approximately one hour I take a short power-break. I will stretch my muscles, take a brisk walk, or even step outside and breathe in some fresh air. This helps me deal with my work-stress time and time again. There are enough proven techniques that anyone can find to help deal with their stress on a more permanent level. Sometimes you just have to be creative, depending on your circumstances. One very quick solution to stress is to stop setting unrealistic goals.

There is nothing wrong with having big dreams in life, but if those dreams are totally unrealistic, yet you continue to chase them down year after year, then the stress of not reaching those goals can wear you down to emotional nervousness and physical sickness. Unless people who have unrealistic visions change their goals, they will be doomed to failure, as measured by their own ambitions.

The continual unhappiness resulting from unrealistic goals can have a very negative effect on a person’s ability to resist stress. Through the magic of television, most people now leave school with high expectations regarding their future lifestyles. Yet they may be ill prepared to put in the long hours of training and hard work to get there. This can lead to a vast amount of dissatisfaction, and is responsible for some of the frustration found among the unemployed in those men and women under the 25 year-old bracket.