Stress is a major part of every day life for most Americans.  Each person has a different source and a different reaction to that stress.  My life is very busy; I have a wife, a daughter, a part time job, and I go to college full time.  Many people think that my life is full stress, but usually its not.

Recently, I was under a great deal of stress. It was the end of the of the school term and I had a whole lot of school work to do, as well fulfilling responsibilities in other areas of my life.  I did what I normally do, I developed a list, organized it, and generally did everything from increase your productivity with a 6 pack.  As  usual it worked, I had ninety percent of my work done ahead of time.  The last ten percent of the work is when the stress kicked.  I had to do a large project with a partner. I worked on it little by little and made good progress, my partner never showed up.  Everyday that I was getting behind caused me more and more stress, that's when I learned the source of stress.

Stress is caused  by not being able to meet expectations.  In my case the expectation I could not meet was a deadline, for others it's forgetting to do something or just promising to do too much.  No matter who you are or what you do, you can track your source of stress down.  When you start to feel stressed the first thing you need to do is find the source.

Mitigating your stress is often the best you can do, once you start feeling stress it's usually too late to stop it entirely.  Common remedies for managing stress including counting to ten, taking a long hot bath, or listening to your favorite song.  What happens when your bath water gets cold or your song is over, often you feel worse than before.  First, the only thing you actually did was waste time.  Second, you probably just gave your self more time to think about how much crap you are in.  Once you know the source of your risk you should immediately act.  If you are going to be late for a deadline ask for an extension, you still may finish early.  The best policy really is honesty, do not try to hide your mistakes or hide your problems.  Often you will find bosses, teachers, and family to be understanding when you run into roadblocks.  Do whatever you can to stop or reduce your stress, the earlier you start the better your results will be.

Your last resort when stress is preparing to over take you is to lock down the house.  When you lock down the house the first thing you do is remove all distractions, for me that usually means removing myself and going to the library.  The next thing you need to do is the first thing you should have done, determine the source of stress.  Next, you need to eliminate everything else in your life that will not help you remove your source of stress.  This means calling in sick to work, canceling a weekly bowling game, or even not blogging for a while.  Once you have cleared your life and determined your source of stress, get to work.

Why is stress such a big deal?  Most people don't understand my preoccupation with diffusing stress and avoiding it.  Simply stress will drag down most areas of your life it will make your job harder,  hurt personal relationships, cause adverse effects to your health, and generally ruin all your fun.  According to the CDC  " when stressful situations go unresolved, the body is kept in a constant state of
activation, which increases the rate of wear and tear to biological systems.", the report this came from also talked largely about the adverse effects of stress on your career.

When the little bits of stress start to creep into your life you need to take action immediately.   Remember, stress can drag down all aspects of your life and the sooner you end it the better off you will be.

Written by Jon

Report from CDC

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fniosh%2Fpdfs%2Fstress.pdf&ei=qJpISYWvHYmQtQO-jrD0DA&usg=AFQjCNHu3FU1m9NUuZ5SPtOtq0DauKE9Rg&sig2=UX_JJBSr77GBX6z8wHcs5g