We should learn to distinguish between positive and negative stresses and establish our own optimum stress level. Experience is the best yardstick. The stress that will work for you is the one that will take you up to, but not beyond your limits. At this point, you will be performing most efficiently, will feel most stimulated and will be at your happiest and most self-confident. This is your optimum stress level. If you let stress raise much above this level, you will feel tense, agitated and unable to think or act clearly. If you let it fall much below this level, you will feel bored, unfulfilled and drained of energy and enthusiasm. If you are constantly living below your optimum stress level, fend off boredom with variety and challenge. Seek out new goals and think perhaps, of changing your job or revising certain aspects of your lifestyle so that you regain your interest and enthusiasm. If you are constantly living above your optimum stress level, modify your goals; take time off to give yourself a breathing space. Immerse your self in something quite removed from all the pressures and demands exerted upon you at work or at home. Walking, jogging, exercise, painting. Seek an outlet that is enjoyable and creative not competitive and put the pressures of life aside for a while. A certain amount of pressure can be beneficial. It channels thought and focuses the mind. But too much pressure and too many conflicting demands on your time will lead to panic, confusion and an inability to think or to act clearly. Preserve a sense of proportion in the running of your day-to- day life. If every minor setback that you encounter becomes a major crisis, you are making yourself needlessly anxious. So save your energy, and your anxiety, for real crises and emergencies and introduce a healthy sense of distance into your life. Most of the minor disasters of life have a distinctly funny side and you often do not have to search far to find the humour. Laughter is marvelous therapy and like tears, a reliever of stress in its own right. Both erupt on the moment and act as valuable distractions by interrupting the serious, often self-defeating, process of thinking and worrying.
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