How to Stay Cool, Calm and Collected

3

The Key to Being In Control

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

As suggested in Chapter 2, one thing that is probably missing in your current approach to dealing with stress is a basic understanding of the real cause of your stress. This chapter will provide you with that understanding, and thereby, allow you to deal with stress quickly and decisively right at its source.

What Stress Is and Where Stress Is

Stress is the feeling you experience when you perceive a gap between what you want and what you have. The bigger the gap and the more important the issue is to you, the greater the potential for stress. In other words:

(Want − have) × (importance to you) = stress potential.

Here are ...