In today's fast moving world stress lies in wait around every corner as an ever present danger. Instant news flashed around the world, just-in-time manufacturing, computers and modern technology in general all produce great benefits for society but also quicken the pace of life considerably and seem to leave us with more and more to do and less and less time in which to do it.

Now nobody is going to slow down the world, not that we would necessarily want them to do so, and so, faced with the ever present danger of stress in this fast-moving environment, we must take the technology that has produced it and use this to our advantage.

Along with the numerous challenges of the modern world come a variety of new tools to deal with them. Computers for example can create more work in a shorter time, but they can also allow us to get a great deal more done with less effort. They are also a superb tool for communication and enable us to form friendships with people of similar interests across the world, which would have been quite impossible only a few years ago. This simple ability is an example of one thing that we can do to help keep stress at bay, namely to broaden our interests outside of our family and work and pursue hobbies and interests with a wider circle of friends.

Although still in its infancy, the science of psychology is also helping us increasingly in dealing with stress. Studies into such things as neurobiology, nutrition and a host of other things are beginning to produce useful treatments for stress.

One of the most effective tools today for combating stress is a combination of proper exercise and diet and modern technology has allowed for considerable scientific study of both.

There is certainly no shortage of potential stressors in our modern world and this fact is demonstrated nightly as we watch the television news and see a world that is apparently coming apart at the seams. And yet the vast majority of us seem to manage to cope pretty well. Perhaps there is more to life than the television and newspapers would have us believe.

Dealing with difficult problems is, quite frankly, difficult, but such problems do not necessarily have to lead to stress. If we simply take the tools of modern technology and use them to our own advantage to solve our problems, rather than to simply ruin our lives, then there is no reason at all why we should not be able to keep stress in its place - lurking around the corner.