|
To the many good suggestions here, I would add meditation. I was skeptical of it at first, but have found that it works well.
It's important to realize that stress is a normal part of life, derived from the natural defense mechanisms that kept humans alive all these millenia. Those who did not have a keenly-felt sense of stress (such as being alert to the presence of predators) did not survive, and thus did not enroll their genes in the evolutionary chain.
Stress is crucial to any kind of achievement. I have a doc friend who explains it as the "performance-anxiety curve," which plots performance on one axis and stress on the other. Up to a certain point, the progression is nominally 1 to 1, i.e., stress and performance go hand in hand, until the curve hits an inflection point, whereafter stress continues up and performance falters and, with the application of more stress, noses down and degrades rapidly. High-performers manage their lives so that they "surf" along the peak inflection point of the curve. Those satisfied living under the curve somewhere--where most people live--accept less achievement as the price of reduced stress.
|