Anxiety for Fun and Profit

This week’s Tuesday Reading is a piece “Anxiety for Fun and Profit” which I found on a recent flight in the April 2009 issue of United’s Hemisphere magazine.

The article’s key thesis is “We need just the right amount of worry to achieve our goals in life.”  Too much anxiety, you succumb to perpetual negative thinking;  too little and your desire for contentment overrides any possibility of change.  A sidebar to the piece has seven tips that will help maintain the right amount of stress:

1.  Take control of that which you can control.  Don’t obsess about the rest.

2.  Manage your workload with small, achievable deadlines.

3.  Take a break.

4.  Suck in a deep breath.  Hold it for as long as you can and let it out slowly.  Repeat, nine times.

5.  Compose a mantra and repeat it.

6.  Listen to music;  it slows the heart rate and increases endorphins.

7.  Sleep.

Have a great week.  .  .  .  .