Many people suffer from stress overload.
Of course, there's no living without stress.
Stress is life.
Some people, though, have too much.
Some are trapped in stress because preserving their current circumstances is so important to them.
They can't escape, can't let go, can't stop resisting change.
Others overreact to things, both real and imaginary.
Some are just high-strung, born that way or made that way by experience.
There is hope for stress sufferers.
I don't mean drugs.
It's time.
Time, itself, and the way you perceive your experience in time.
Life happens in the present.
Everything, even our own thoughts and feelings, happens now.
Not some other time.
Most people pay more attention to the past and/or the future than they do to the "now".
They may not realize it but this is a choice.
People hang onto stress even though it's of no use to them.
They don't know it's a choice.
The key to managing stress is to let it go, into the past.
It's meant, as a survival mechanism, to be temporary.
To stay stressed all the time is to court disaster.
The past is where regrets, wistful memories, broken dreams and lost opportunities live.
Guilt and shame feelings that belong in the past can haunt the present, bringing up stress that we feel "now".
The future harbors fear.
We worry about what will happen and we're not always especially rational about it.
More stress.
Still, life happens in the present and we can choose to live now.
It's more peaceful, relaxing and rejuvenating.
It can be very interesting, and it's always here.
Just pay full attention to what's happening now.
Use your senses.
Your stress will then, at least, be current stress, not some increasingly irrelevant remnant from the past or a fantasy about the future.
Use your current stress to guide your current actions, then move on and leave it.
You will find that, already, there's a new "now" to be lived.