Habits equal autopilot. Take brushing your teeth for example. Once that becomes a habit, you don’t have to write positive affirmations or remind yourself constantly to brush your teeth. It is simply a habitual part of what you do every day. That is why I emphasize the five habits of stress management, not the five rules or the five goals. If you make these five habits an essential part of your life, then you will be able to manage stress effectively.

One myth that has become established in the self-development arena is that it only takes 21 days to form a new habit. This simply isn’t true in all cases. Sometimes it takes a shorter time, sometimes a longer time, and sometimes old habits are so hard to break that new ones never take hold.

There is no such thing as a stress-free life. No evidence has ever been presented which suggests that a stress-free life can ever be achieved. Stress can be managed, relieved and lessened, but never eliminated.

Stress-free moments certainly exist, but that is the extent of it. People, who have bought into the idea of a stress-free life, believe they should be happy and positive all the time. They have been sold a damaging falsehood. As the first sentence in M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled famously said: “Life is difficult.” Learning to deal effectively with life’s difficulties, learning to manage the inevitable stress of life is attainable, while eliminating stress is not.

If you decide to focus on one thing at a time, instead of trying to solve everything at once, and just do that one thing, then you will feel a sudden decrease in stress.

The worst possible approach to a problem is waiting until it becomes overwhelming or irreversible, and that is exactly what many people do. They put dealing with stress on the backburner until they start to experience all the worst symptoms of stress, and by then, it may be too late!

If you have ever procrastinated and then found yourself energized to complete a task at the last minute, then you have used the beneficial aspect of the fight or flight response (not the procrastinating part, but the energizing part). You see, with all its negative long term effects, the fight or flight response still gives us energy, and if we know how to use that energy, then stress is potentially good, at least in the short term.