Ideas for Lower Stress Living

Although no life can be entirely without stress, there are methods to help us reduce and cope with stress.  By adopting the following rules for low-stress living throughout the year, the holidays will be more joyful - and less stressful.

• Make time your ally, not your master.
• Learn and practice the skill of deep relaxation, using relaxation tapes, yoga, meditation, or the like.
• Manage your life as a total enterprise, much as you would manage a corporation.  Establish short-range goals.
• Don't become lopsided in any one area.  Seek rewarding experiences in all dimensions of living.
• Engage in meaningful, satisfying work.
• Don't let your work dominate your entire life.
• Get your body weight down to a level you can be pleased with, and keep it there through diet, exercise, rest and balance.  When you can smell those chestnuts roasting on an open fire, it is especially important to stick to this philosophy!
• Form and keep sensible eating habits.  Use sweets rarely, minimize junk foods, emphasize foods that you like that are good for you.
• Find some time every day - even if only for 10 minutes - for complete privacy, aloneness with your thoughts, and freedom from the pressures of work or family.  Preferably do this for a few minutes several times a day.
• Don't drift along in troublesome and stressful situations.  If possible, solve problems as they occur.  Don't let unresolved problems linger or accumulate.
• Have one or more pastimes that give you a chance to do something relaxing without having to have something to show for it.  Don't lose your pastimes in the holiday shuffle.
• Open yourself to new experiences.  Try doing things you've never done before, sample foods you've never eaten, go places you've never seen.  Find self-renewing opportunities.
• Read interesting books and articles to freshen your ideas and broaden your points of view.  Listen to the ideas and opinions of others to learn from them.  Avoid "psychosclerosis" (also know as "hardening of the categories").
• Form at least one or two high-quality relationships with people you trust and can be yourself with.
• Review your "obligations" from time to time and make sure they will also bring rewards for you.  Divert yourself from those that are not good for you.
• Surround yourself with cues that affirm positive thoughts and positive approaches to life that remind you to relax and unwind occasionally.

From "Stress and the Manager" by Karl Albrecht