Do you ever feel like you’re spinning your wheels? Or, do you ever feel that all of your efforts are going to waste? Does it seem like you’re doing everything right but you’re not getting the results that you expect? It is possible to eat the perfect diet, exercise three times a week, live in the right environment, and even have the best career for your mind and body and yet have declining health. The reason that is possible is due to one little word, one little nemesis in our reality. That one little problem, that can negate all of our efforts, is stress. Even if you’re doing everything that you should for your well-being, anxiety can make you go backwards, at least too much stress can. Stress can create every single health issue you can possibly imagine and even ones you never thought of.

Pressure takes a huge toll on your well-being–so what are you going to do about it? Many people feel certain that there’s nothing they can do about the load on their bodies right now. They feel unable to influence the amount of hours they put in, the intensity in which they work, the amount of bills they have to pay, and the looming college education for their children, children’s wedding costs, their own retirement and the list is endless. They are feeling trapped in a continual spiral of working harder and harder to meet the demands of their lives.

But there’s something that most people overlook. They forget that there is not a gun being held in their head, and if they were to take a break from working so hard, and so diligently, (as if their life depended upon how hard they were working), they would realize that their brain has a capacity for ingenuity, creative ideas and delegating, among other amazing talents. It is rare indeed that we don’t have options. When it comes to our lives, we decided the purchases that we will make, we decide how hard were going to work, we decide what our priorities are and what level of our health we are willing to compromise in the name of making a living.

It doesn’t have to go down like that. Yes, life is demanding and work can be taxing. But you do have more choices than you may think. If you free up enough time to let your brain be creative and seek out some ideas about working in an area that you enjoy, you possibly could end up loving your work like more and more people are doing these days and then work is not a chore and is not so stressful on the body. For those of you who are doing what you love, but are doing it fifteen to sixteen hours a day, I suggest you look at your choices also. Balance is an art and living a poised life is a blessing worth seeking.