Stress is a mental condition generally brought on by worrying about things you cannot change and/or feeling overwhelmed by a situation. It can erode your sense of self, and adversely affect your blood pressure and even your mental stability.

Stress, however, can be positive. Some folks actually thrive on stress. The more pressure they are under to perform, the better they do!

Stress, although often caused by external forces, is nurtured and magnified in the mind. Let's examine what you can do to decrease, and even eliminate, it. It can be managed! There are several ways you can do this yourself. Consider this your:

Seven-day Stress Eliminating Course.

Here are seven simple steps to follow, one for each day:

1. Acknowledge that stress is good

Make stress your friend! Your body reacts to stress either by fighting it or fleeing from it. Identify your responses to stress. The extra energy you feel in fighting it can be re-channeled to enhance your performance at the right moment. Consider this; no top sportsman is ever totally relaxed before a big competition. Use your stress wisely to push yourself that little bit harder when it counts most. On the other hand, ignoring problems by fleeing from the situation will also affect your well-being. Try and identify how you can constructively alter your situation.

2. Avoid stress spewers

Stressed people spew out stress words and thoughts indiscriminately. They like to talk about their problems and, before you know it you are affected, too! Identify the ones that affect you! They include the doom and gloom media warnings of what may ? never ? happen!

Protect yourself by recognizing stress in others and limiting your contact with them.

3. Learn from the best

When others in your environment are not coping well, identify the ones who keep calm under pressure. What are they doing differently? What is their attitude? What language do they use? Are they trained and experienced? Study their habits, ask them how they do it, learn from the best stress managers, and copy what they do.

4. Practice breathing techniques

You can trick your body into relaxing by using this breathing technique: Breathe in slowly for a count of 7; then breathe out for a count of 11. Repeat the 7-11 breathing until your heart rate slows down, your sweaty palms dry, and you start to feel better.

5. Put a stop to stressful thoughts

As stress is a mind manipulator, you can tangle yourself up in stress knots just by thinking thoughts like: "If this happens, then that might happen, and then we're all up the creek!" Most of these things never happen, so why waste all that energy worrying needlessly?

Put a stop to stressful thoughts; cut them off as soon as they pop up! Even if you have a ?legitimate? cause to worry, ask yourself: ?what can one ounce of my worry do to prevent it or fix it??

6. Isolate your trigger points and hot spots

Make your own list of stress trigger points or hot spots. Be specific. Do presentations, interviews, meetings, feedbacks, tight deadlines trigger stress for you? Then identify specifics. For instance, do only presentations to a certain audience get you worked up? Is one type of project more stressful than another? Do you drink too much coffee?

Once you have identified your stress factors, you can then take the appropriate steps to reduce them. Do you need to learn some new skills? Do you need extra resources? Do you need to switch to decaf?

7. Take care of your body!

Lack of sleep, poor diet and no exercise will add to your distress! This, although obvious, is all too often ignored as a stress management technique. Be good to your body. Give it rest, good nutrition, and go out and enjoy life!