Staying positive - without pushing it

We're going to assume that most people are intimately familiar with stress, so today we're going to skip the background and jump right into some stress-management tips.

First, remember the lessons from the red and green zone newsletters. (You can find them in our archive to the left if you want a refresher or have just joined us.) If we reduce the amount of time we spend needlessly stressed, we become much better equipped to deal with the stresses that do crop up.

One of the simplest and oldest stress-management tricks is simply concentrating on breath. Slow, deep breaths activate the body's parasympathetic nervous system, also known as the "rest and digest" system. (This is opposed to the sympathetic system, which governs fight or flight responses.)

Notice the effect deep breathing has on your heart rate. This is important, because it shows us that conscious functions - in this case, breathing - can be a route into the brain and body processes that we think of as beyond our control - including stress responses.

A second easy way of priming the parasympathetic system is caretaking, or feeling cared for. That can mean cooking for friends. Or it can mean going out to a movie with your family. Or volunteering at a homeless shelter. Generally, anything that involves bestowing or receiving good on a personal level can fire up your parasympathetic system. Whatever brings you the most joy.

Before we go, there's one important point we need to emphasize. Battling stress by encouraging positive emotion is not the same as forcing yourself to be happy. We'll deal later with the difference between happiness and contentment, but for now, we'll say that expecting yourself to be happy all of the time is a recipe for disappointment. Also, these practices shouldn't be used as a way to hide or escape from unpleasant emotions. There's a time and place for everything, including legitimate hurt, anger, and grief. Denying those emotions will frazzle the sympathetic nervous system you're trying to preserve. Instead of trying to shut out sadness and stress by forcing yourself to be happy, when the time is right, tap into those sources of positivity to help cope and build resilience.