We hear a lot about the negative effects of stress today, ranging from insomnia to cancer there are a lot of problems associated with this modern day disease. However, with the right mindset you can turn stress into an asset to make you work better, faster and more efficiently. The goal is to turn stress into a challenge and think of it as a motivator instead of a threat. You can also create some stressful events purposfully to “practice”, read on to find out how!

The most important thing you can do to battle stress is to live with it. This might sound weird, but I don’t think that a naturally stressful person can just stop being stressed and live life with a faint smile all the time. It’s simpler to live with it and learn how to handle stress by treating it in different ways. In the end you will get rid of it, since stress will become more of a challenge, a nuissance, or just a part of everyday life, but nothing special.

A lot of stress is related to deadlines. While I can’t show you how to slow time, I can srtretch it a bit. I have been working on very close deadlines in the past month and I have to say I worked at least 50% faster. This shows me that I can indeed work 50% faster if needed. Today I coded something in 20 minutes which normally would have taken me more than an hour, simply because I needed to leave home at 4pm, it was 15:30 and I really wanted to finish. So why can’t I translate this into my normal work routine. I decided to try and “time” everything and do anything I do as fast as I can with the least amount of errors. This means I can work faster, meeting deadlines easily, taking a load off my back, relieving some of the stress. I suggest that if you have issues with deadlines, try and practice by giving yourself an even shorter deadline for a task. In my experience this exercise works best with short, 20-40 minute tasks because with large projects it is very hard to estimate the time to begin with.

Another method I try and use with others when trying to calm them down is weighing the consequences of actions. Usually people are mostly stressed by small things like not being able to get ready on time, worrying too much about school, or whatever. In this case it might be helpful to examine what will happen if the cause of the stress really occurs. Is it really that bad? Will being 10 minutes late mean anything at all? Will getting a B instead of an A set you back as much as you are stressed about it? Try and be honest with yourself, you may feel that you are rightly stressed, but using the power of your brain you might realize that despite your feelings, this isn’t a big issue.

Of course the problem with stress is not short term, it is in the long run we suffer the consequences. therefore it is vital that you try and deal with this issue right now. I am a very unstressed person, because I mean I’m 23, I have a job I like, my family is the best, what can really go wrong? Ok, I don’t make a deadline, I will be embarrassed and my work will suffer, but in the end, it isn’t worth a heart attack when I’m 50. This is not the same as not caring, it’s just a sort of self-therapy, since both my father and grandfather died young because of stress related problems. I know many of you may not have the best job, you might have family problems, so in a way for me this is not a hard task. On the other hand you see a lot of depressed people with loads of money and ok families, so I don’t think specific situations have much to do with this overall.

Exactly because specifics don’t have a lot to do with this problem, you should do a lot to create moments in your life every day which are positive, because the overall feeling, the big picture will count. It’s fine to be stressed sometimes, it’s fine to be sad sometimes, this is normal and part of the healthy state of being human. however you can reward yourself with a bite of chocolate, a quite moment reading, a trip to the zoo, whatever you like, every day, to make it that bit brighter.

On another note, this is another post where I have totally gone ranting and it’s all over the place. I am quite capable of putting together a better structured article, it just takes more time. If you find you can’t follow please let me know in the comments, I’ll spend that bit extra on rant type articles!