Have you ever heard the saying, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”? This is a very applicable saying to most business and personal matters including stress management. If you fail to plan on your stress management strategy, you plan to fail managing stress.

We all know how important it is to manage the stress in our lives. Stress crops up in just about every aspect of life nowadays. Long-term stress can cause physical and emotional damage that can really impact your life. It can even lead to disease and death.

In order to have a stress management plan you need to know that there are two basic ways to handle stress. You either change the source of stress or you change the reaction you have to the stress.

While designing your stress management techniques remember to clearly identify the stressors. Assign an action to each stressor. An example would be if a stressor for you is the morning rush hour drive to work every weekday morning an action to address that stressor might be to leave fifteen minutes early in order to avoid the usual traffic bottleneck.

In order to change the reaction we have to a stressor, we have to know what the usual reaction would be to a particular stressor. Then, we figure out an appropriate reaction that would give us more control over the situation.

An example would be if your boss always yells at your first thing in the morning to get him a cup of coffee and you really have tons of stuff to do as soon as you sit down at your desk; you could instead of fuming and getting all upset first thing in the morning, you could bring in a cup of coffee from the vendor in the front of the building that you pass every day into work. This way you have your boss’s expected cup of coffee and you can walk in, hand it to him, sit down at your desk and get to work.

Keep a stress journal at home that you fill out at the end of each day. In the journal record any stress that you encountered that day and what your reaction was to the stress. How did you handle it? Did you have a good result from your stress management? Could you have done anything differently that may have brought about a more positive or improved result?

Write down any thoughts you have. This journal not only improves your stress management plan it is a good tool for dealing with stress because it gives you a good sense of control over the things that stress you out. Writing things down also has a very relaxing effect on people.