The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living
This practical, can-do guide, written by a positive-energy medical doctor at the Mayo Clinic, offers clear steps to take to decrease the bad kind of stress. As Sood notes, “Good stress motivates you, preps you for a challenge and gives you extra pep.” Bad stress is caused by “excessive workload, lack of control, and lack of meaning.”  To cope with negative pressure, Sood highlights the principles of stress-free living: gratitude, compassion, acceptance, higher meaning, and forgiveness. Each principle gets a chapter. So do “tribe” (family and friends) and “relaxation and reflection.” Sood also provides his “seven-point program for increasing energy”: eating healthy food, sleeping seven to eight hours a day, keeping company with good people, avoiding news overdoses, following an exercise routine, doing something meaningful each day, and thinking good thoughts for others. Just reading Sood’s lucid, commonsensical recommendations is a start to eliminating negative stress. --Karen Springen