Org Development There are many sources of stress, and one of the keys to managing stress is to identify its sources, and address them. I feel that I have stress relating to many things, including money and family and career. But at this stage of my life, I also feel that while there is a lot of pressure, these sources of stress are pretty reasonable. I have taken on responsibilities in the past few years, and especially since I started going to school (which is part of the career stress) that have increased what is expected of me by others. Ultimately, I feel that it comes down to how I perceive the pressures upon me, and I know that I perceive them maybe more strongly than they are -- I expect to be perfect, even when others do not expect that of me. So I see people noticing my mistakes when they are not, and in that I think I create added, unneeded stress for myself.

I feel that some of the factors work together to create stress. Usually any one individual factor is not such a big deal -- I have a plan for everything -- but stressful situations do arise, and they usually arise as the result of compound stressors. When two or three things are going poorly at any given time, stress is going to increase because it's just that much more difficult to see the progress towards my goals. This isn't all that common a situation, but it definitely can occur, because of the increases in responsibility and the learning curve with respect to dealing with that uncertainty.

There are a few different things that I do to cope with stress. First, I find that exercise is really good. When the...

It is this psychological thing when you feel stronger and better able to physical manage challenges, that your mental state supports this as well. The diet plays into this. I am really starting to learn that some foods are just junky comfort foods. You feel good for a short time, but overall you end up feeling worse. This plays into the exercise thing -- just feeling better physically makes stressful situations that much easier to handle. So diet is something I look at less, but from what experience I have, diet can be quite important in handling stress, when you avoid the cheap junky comfort foods and focus on making healthy eating choices.
Emotional mechanisms are affected by both the social and the physical. There is little doubt that when the body feels good, stress is handled much better on the emotional level. For me, I find that this is preventative. I feel that emotional strength, deriving from feeling good physically, allows me to actually deflect stressors away from me. Socially, I think is a way for me to defeat stress after it comes. So while the physical side of things is preventative, I feel that my family and friends do a great job for me when I am stressed. Sometimes you just have to go out and have fun, or just to realize that things are going to be okay. That's a great coping mechanism, when stress hits. So the emotional side of things, this is a means of restoring a happy, balanced emotional state after a stressful situation has occurred.

For me, stress management is…