It is a distressing fact many people react badly to stress. In the worst cases of prolonged stress, this can lead to nervous breakdowns and depression. Stress is rarely cited as the cause of death but doctors recognize that stress can lead to other, physical and mental, disorders, which can then lead to death by suicide or heart disease. Stress is a killer, there is no doubt about that. Yet a certain quantity of stress often results in a job being done better.

The trick is to learn how to deal with the predicaments that we find stressful. If the cause of the stress is financial, learn how to handle your money better. If the cause is emotional, sort it out with your partner or get out of the relationship. If you are not happy in your job, get a new one or retrain. If you are content where you are, but you still need help to deal with your stress, then help is at hand.

There are many methods of working off stress. Some people like to go for a 'swift drink' on the way home and that is okay as long as it is kept under control. Others like to go training or jogging. Others like to take it easy in a hot bath, a Jacuzzi or a sauna. Some enjoy a massage and others take up yoga and or meditation.

Stress is all in the mind. Even sport or training only 'helps take your mind off' your problems. It stands to reason then that if you want to conquer stress, you have to revolutionize the way your mind deals with it. Counseling will help some individuals, indeed they may need it, but most people can help themselves by getting a good book on meditation techniques.

Meditation is not easy to do properly unless you are a natural and there are some, but for most of us it is a skill that we have to learn. If you want to learn and you stick with it, you will attain such a level of aptitude as will permit you to deal with stress and the problems that caused your stress. It will allow you to see the problems more clearly and maybe you will realize that they are not really problems at all - only challenges and tests, puzzles to be solved in a game.

Meditation is more than just thinking, but I cannot go into how to teach meditation in this short piece of writing. The Internet has loads of good Information on meditation, but I personally do not find reading a computer screen relaxing, which is why I suggest getting a book, so that you can read it somewhere peaceful and practice what it explains.

Suitable places could be in your bedroom, on the decking or in the garden surrounded by your flowers. Indoors you could recreate the smells of the garden with scent and aromatherapy. Lavender is believed to be soothing for a lot of people.

Some people like to play relaxing music, although it is better not to have lyrics or you may become distracted. Some people like listening to whale songs. I like to start my meditation sessions by relaxing my whole body. I begin by picturing little people inside my legs, arms and body pulling wires to move my muscles. I start in my feet and tell each person individually to take an hour's tea break and I watch him leaving his post, in my big toe, for example, and walking up the inside of my leg to the canteen (wherever that is). Before long he is joined by other colleagues from other 'departments', until no part of my body is capable or movement, because there is no-one there to operate the muscles or wires.

Then I go back to the office in my head and I open up a fissure in the ground. This crack keeps getting wider, very slowly getting wider and all the thoughts, problems and ideas that I have, play a game of jumping over the widening crack. Some are weak and fall down the crack soon. Other ideas are strong and determined and the crack has to get pretty wide before they disappear as well. Eventually, I am left alone, unless I choose to join in the game too and then the factory becomes completely empty and there is a works shut down.