People often fail in their attempts to manage their stress because they confuse managing stress with eliminating or controlling it. While managing, controlling, and eliminating might seem synonymous in regard to stress they are very different. Furthermore, while you often are able to control or eliminate external potential stressors (the environment, your behavior), you almost never can do the same with internal  potential stressors (thoughts, feeling). Controlling stressors is a very complex phenomenon. 

Controlling something involves regulating it. An example would be controlling the amount of hot water in your shower. You turn the water on and adjust the mixture of hot and cold water to control the temperature. When it's just right, you step in the shower and start to lather up. Unfortunately, you don't have "hot" and "cold" stress faucets to turn on and off at your discretion. You can't simply turn on happy thoughts and emotions, while simultaneously turning off troubling and painful ones.

Managing involves accepting that you cannot manipulate and regulate all of the variables involved in any potentially stressful situation. When you manage something you accept that you cannot regulate all of the variables involved and you work around them. You coexist with the lack of control and keep  moving forward toward your goal. 

Let's use managing a youth baseball team as an example. Some of the variables involved in this include the draft, players, parents, fields, equipment, weather, umpires, schedules, practice time, travel, and  the opponents. How many of these variables can you actually control? With a little luck you might be able to control some of the equipment, practice time, and some of the scheduling. The rest of the variables are beyond your ability to control. You can see that the overwhelming majority of the variables involved in your job are beyond your control. So, what do you do? Do you throw your hands up and say, "I quit, I can't handle this lack of control?" Or do you say, "I know I can't control most of the variables involved, but I am willing to accept this and do the best I can to manage the team." 

When people are unwilling to take action because they need to control all the variables involved in potentially stressful situations, they often get stuck and do nothing.

Giving up control and being willing to take values-related action while coexisting with uncertainty is a key aspect of stress management.