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These simple tips for coping with stress help you integrate effective, easy-to-implement stress management techniques into your everyday routine. Understanding how stress occurs and what it does to your body underscores the need for stress reduction in your life.

UNDERSTANDING THE STRESS CYCLE

Have you ever narrowly avoided an accident? You were distracted by something in the car, and when you looked up, you were about to hit the car in front of you. Your heart raced, time stood still, and you slammed on your brakes just in time to avoid the accident.

After the crisis ended, you relaxed. You breathed a sigh of relief, draining tension from your body with every breath. Gradually, your system returned to normal - and you were exhausted.

What you experienced was a classic reaction to stress: alarm, response, and recovery. Stress is your body's way of telling you to stop daydreaming and to pay attention to the only thing that really matters at that moment.

Stress anxiety problems occur when your body cycles through alarm and response, but you never reach the recovery phase of the stress cycle.

According to Dr. Rajiv Laroiya, repeating the alarm-response cycle without reaching the recovery phase can cause health problems like insulin resistance, core obesity, reproductive issues, high cholesterol and blood pressure, memory impairment, and other undesirable ailments.

Stress management is the key to stopping the alarm-response cycle before it starts. The most effective overall stress management program includes mind and body stress management techniques.

MIND GAMES

You can control your thoughts and train your mind to think in ways that reduce and alleviate stress.

*Schedule An Appointment To Worry*

Mark Twain wrote, "I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." Indeed, many of the things you worry about every day - missing a flight, failing a test, making an embarrassing mistake - never come to pass.

To keep from being stressed over things that never happen, schedule an appointment to worry about the dreaded event after it happens, not before. Write it on your calendar as you would any other important event. When you catch yourself worrying, remind yourself that you can't worry now because you're going to worry next Friday at three o'clock, or whenever your appointment is scheduled. You don't show up at the dentist's office the day before your appointment, so don't start worrying until the appointed time.

If the event you were worried about actually happens,

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