A headline on the wellness magazine read, "Fighting Stress."  My first reaction was, "No!" I realized on further examination that thinking and writing about stress the past few weeks has made an impression on me.  I am inclined to make friends with stress as a source of positive energy, to harness its power rather than allowing it to run amok. I suspect that fighting would make it worse.  It usually  does.

When I opened to the article inside, however, I liked it much better. Five options for managing stress were listed:  aromatherapy, meditation, a nap, a snack, and a walk.  The idea of "fighting stress" transformed into offsetting it with conscious relaxation and small infusions of calming pleasure.

This subject often takes me back to Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz' bestseller, The Power of Full Engagement.  These authors hold that our primary challenge is not to reduce stress by organizing our time, but to optimize productivity by managing our personal energy.  The primary technique they suggest is "oscillation," or shifting back and forth between focused effort and a deliberate, contrasting change of pace. As executive coaches they have found that their clients can, on average, sustain peak outputs for up to ninety minutes.  After that, performance drops while the stress of forcing oneself to continue working grows.

So, returning to suggestions from the article I started with, we could oscillate by lighting a scented candle, breathing deeply, lying down, having a slice of watermelon, or accepting Fido's invitation to hike around the block.  Some stress-busting activities I alternate with time working on the computer include: reading a novel, knitting, listening to music, watching a You Tube video, doing a small household task, running an errand, and (of course, this being the 21st century) checking social media.

Stress becomes negative when it grows unchecked.  It festers when we feel ourselves caught in a trap of ceaseless effort or anxiety or pain. Sometimes the difficult circumstances are, indeed, unrelenting.  They fill and overflow our emotional reservoirs.  However, somewhere in the chambers of free choice, is an opportunity to interrupt the flow, to change the mental channel or do something different, even if only for a few minutes at a time. 

How do you deal with the stress of continual pressure?  Do you push harder and stay up later, trying to fit more tasks into every day?  Or do you have strategies that take you away for a while and bring you back recharged?