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Stress management is a funny old thing. When you're not stressed you can do all the right things - eat properly, sleep well, exercise and relax etc. but as soon as you're stressed, things go completely out of the window, just as you really need to be doing them.

Suddenly, you're a fast food junkie, you drink lots of tea or coffee, even though you'd managed to wean yourself off those 10 cups a day and got down to a smug 4 cups plus of course the gallons of water (I mean litres - oh dear, something else to worry about, I'm so out of date) and herb teas.

We tell ourselves that once the situation or pressure is under control, we'll go back to our normal way of doing things. This is probably fine for the short term stressful situation like a work deadline or looming exam, but how will this work if it's a long term situation?

At some point, something will have to give and before you know it, you are suffering from colds, feeling under the weather or emotional, or having that feeling of being overwhelmed and totally fatigued.

OK, it's easier said than done to put some coping strategies into place, and it does take discipline to follow them through, just when you need all your energy and focus to keep going, but think of the consequences if you do nothing.

There are lots of stress management techniques you can try but I've selected 3, as a start to better stress management.

One - Ask yourself, if you could only change one thing about the situation that would make a difference, what would it be? What could you do to achieve that? Maybe you need to speak to your boss or your spouse, for instance, to enlist their help.

Two - Pick just one thing that you've always found relaxing in the past that you would enjoy now, such as swimming, reading, meditation, yoga, a long hot bath or walking, and start doing it even if you can only find a spare 10 minutes. If you can achieve 10 minutes see if you can build it up 30 minutes.

Three - If you find your situation is stressful because of another person eg. your boss, see if you can look at things from another perspective. What's it like being in his/her shoes? If you were an observer looking at both of you, what would you notice? Does that change the way you look at things?

Good luck!!