Today everyone has to deal with stress. You can't read a magazine, paper or even go a day without someone mentioning how stressed they are.

Life is fast. And it's getting faster. Today one person is doing the equivalent work that maybe 5 people were doing decades ago. And there are so many changes, that happen so quickly that we have to be ready to act. Change brings both opportunity and threats.

If your company isn't ready for those changes your competition is going to eat your lunch and probably your dinner too. And if you personally aren't ready for change, then you're going to be in for a bumpy ride.

It's the ability to grasp and act on change that will determine your future career, your happiness and your relationships. To grasp change requires an agility of mind to process all the information that is coming our way. And boy, oh boy, is there a lot of information.

I read some research that found that there are thirty-seven hours of unfinished work on the average person's desk at any given time.

So today there is more work than ever before, more information than ever before and more competition than ever before. And so there is more stress than ever before to cope with.

Yet there's a sparsity of good information out there on how to deal with stress. So I have made it my new project to develop and provide a robust, workable and thorough system for dealing with stress.

Getting stressed is really just a case of getting out of touch with yourself. The art of living is the ability to go with the flow. People get stressed and seriously messed up because they stand against the flow of life and say 'No. I'm going to stand firm here, with my arms outstretched and hold back the flow of life'.

Good luck with that one, pal.

Your Partner, your Children, your friends and family, your market, your company, your Customer's are all heading somewhere. You have to lock onto that and let the current of life take you there. It doesn't work for you to dictate where everyone should be. We succeed in life, not by being arrogant and rigid in what we want. But through being flexible and responsive to what others want.

It sounds easy, but it's very difficult to do. Not intrinsically difficult. But it becomes difficult because it's the reverse of the way our brain is wired up.

Look at any baby. Now you might think it's a cute baby. Regardless though, I bet that Baby is completely selfish. It cries and demands and throws tantrums. It has absolutely no regard for it's Parent's tiredness or their sanity. It's me, me, me, all the way.

That is the core of how we look at the world. As we grow up we learn to pretend that we are concerned for others. And some even learn to actually care. But the seed we come from is from caring only about ourselves.

And so when the sun is shining, the sky is clear and the birds are singing we are concerned with Customers, Co-worker's, with our Partner's and loved ones, the wellbeing of our company and the world at large. But when our back is up against the wall. When we're wet and tired and the rain is pouring and there's only one umbrella, we want it.

You have to understand this mindset. Then you realize that by our nature, we are at our core selfish. When everything is fine with us we are capable of being generous, tolerant and expansive. But when we are at a low point our capacity to deal with things shrinks. And so our focus naturally shrinks to our needs.

So when you are stressed, when your company is under pressure, then you have to understand that your natural way of thinking is to be concerned with yourself. And it's from this selfish basis that you're likely to antagonize Colleagues, upset Customers and generally try to push everyone where you want them to be rather than where they want to go.

That's why it's so much more powerful to catch situations at an early stage before you end up dealing with stress.

Stress Is Like...

Being stressed is like a house that has got out of control. It starts one day when you don't know where to put something. You want to keep it in case you need to read it or you want your Partner to read it. So you just put it down on the coffee table - for now. Later you get back home after a particularly busy day, you've had dinner and you're shattered. You're all settled in front of the TV and you can't bring yourself to face the dishes. They'll wait until tomorrow you say.

Tomorrow you get home late, your Partner and kids are still out at one of their activities, so you're doing dinner. You look at the mess in the kitchen and realize all you have to do and you begin to think 'Why do I have to do all this after a hard day at work?

So grumbling away in your head you cook the dinner. Everyone gets home and eats their dinner. It's late and the kids have to do their homework. You have to help them do that and then the phone rings. Your Wife's friend wants to gossip about someone's relationship problem. You help the kid's with their homework, they get off to bed and you're Wife is still nattering on. You look at the kitchen and think, 'Sod this, why should I do this? She's done nothing. I've done enough. I'm leaving it.'

The next morning you get up and the house is a complete tip. Just looking at it wears you out. So you try to avoid looking at it and hope it's done when you get home.

Our houses get in a mess quickly when we don't deal with things. And often we have stuff that we just don't know what to do with. When we don't deal with this, when we just leave something lying around hoping that someone else will make the decision for us or that we'll know what to do later, it's like graffiti on a wall.

Studies show that a wall with one bit of graffiti on it is more likely to have a second bit of graffiti, than a clean wall.

Rudolph W. Giuliani was credited with reducing crime dramatically in New York. One of the ways he tackled this was by focusing on reducing graffiti and vandalism. People react to their environment. If they see vandalism and graffiti all around, they believe anti-social behavior is less likely to go unpunished, that people care less. However in a spotlessly clean environment, crime and vandalism seem to hold a heavier penalty and more chance of being caught.

Watch people's behavior at a supermarket car park. Where all the trolleys are parked in the bays as they are supposed to be, people are far more likely to return their trolley to the parking bay. But if others are strewn about, people can justify it in their mind. 'Well they've got to take that one back anyway.' Pretty soon you've got trolleys scattered all around the car park.

Well that's exactly how stress is caused. Something bothers you. You don't know how to deal with it, so you put it to the back of your mind. Then something else crops up. Now you have your mental powers divided. There's a part of your mind that won't let go of how that person treated you. Then there's another part that's worried about this thing.

The longer you let stuff stick around in your mind and the more things that you are bothering you. Even if they are only nagging you now and then, the less brainpower you have to deal with the new stuff coming at you every minute.

So then it all piles up, until after a while it gets all tangled up. If your thoughts were visible, it would look like a ball of wool after a cat had been playing with it.

The result is that you feel overwhelmed, confused and don't know where to start to deal with your stress.

You need a system...

The Zero Stress System - Coming Soon. Go to www.livewithoutconflict.com/blog to be among the first to know when it is available.