Stress Management Primer 14

1. Act as soon as you get the symptoms (anxiety, increasing irritability, inability to focus). The body does have a brilliant early warning system. Don't ignore them.
2. Get back to basics: time out, back to nature, regular exercise, time with those who are supportive, loving, fun. Reading.
3. No. It doesn't HAVE to be done. That's a great skill to practise.
4. So is saying no. If you say yes to more work you are potentially saying no to great health.
5. Care with stress 'delayers'. Excess coffee. Over-reliance on alcohol.
6. Remember: you are not a machine.
7. Remember: everybody has their threshold. Exceed it and you will fall over.
8. Remember: the body is remarkable at re-building great wellness; given a chance.
9. No one on their death-bed ever said: "I should have spent more time at the office".
10. Real stress management is less about learning to meditate and more about how to communicate with your boss, your spouse and your teenage daughter.
11. Have a rule: add something to your busy life and simultaneously drop something.
12. Your young son's request to play Lego isn't causing you stress. It's that nagging e-mail which is stressing you. Get a system to resolve that.
13. Re-discover music for putting the world to rights.
14. Use your hands again. Quite literally too many of us spend all of our time 'in our heads'. Get out of it a lot more. Chop wood, carry water, make bread.