Continuously affirm to yourself, "It is just an event"

It was Shakespeare who said, "This, too, shall pass." Life each day can be viewed as a stream of connected events—some positive and some negative. The negative events can cause great stress, but they have the stress-producing power that only you assign to them. Separate your perception, opinion, and value judgment of a negative event from the event. Affirm to yourself, "It is just an event," and you will avoid triggering stress reactions.

Because time proceeds in one direction only, you have neither the power nor the option to change the outcome of a past event. But you have total power to choose how or whether you will respond or react to it, thereby influencing succeeding events and outcomes.

It is likely that, because of different beliefs, values, and opinions, four people who see the same event will relate and react to it in four different ways. But beliefs, values, and opinions are always in the mind, not in the event. Use this knowledge to separate your emotions from the events that occur in your life.

Probably 80 percent of the stress you experience during your life is created solely by how you use your mind. If you use your mind as you always have and as those around you use theirs, your stress level will continue to build until your body breaks down.

If, however, you learn to use your mind correctly, your stress level will be automatically reduced. Therefore, your goal is to stop reacting mentally and emotionally to what is going on around you, to perceive each new situation as just a neutral event. Then you can choose unemotionally what response to make. Your life stays under your control.

Daily life is full of potentially stress-triggering events. As you become more active, accept more challenges, and set more goals, your potential for stress becomes greater. Yet your stress level is something over which you can exercise almost total control, should you choose to.