This article gives free tips and advice about how to reduce stress. I am a person who used to stress in a big way. At one point a work colleague made a comment that he thought that I walked around with the weight of the world's problems on my shoulders. My hair started to turn grey when I was only twenty-one years of age. Things though had to and were about to change.

I realised that the way I was living my life was not only probably unhealthy but was also a very unhappy one. By the age of twenty-two I decided to attempt to change the way I lived my life. I believed that I needed a change of attitude, I was somebody who was extremely negative and the first thing I worked on was trying to become a far more positive thinker.

I then went about reading lots of books about mind over matter and positive thinking. To my surprise, I actually enjoyed reading this material and the lessons I learnt were to change my life forever, in a good way.

The first thing I learnt, which seems so obvious now, is that worrying and stressing about a situation does not make it go away or make it any easier. In fact it makes it a whole lot worse. The important thing to remember is that in life all you can do is try your best. When a negative thought or worry enters your head you need to immediately ignore it and to change your thought processes into thinking about something which makes you happy or smile. You have to treat these demons as your worst enemy and fight them away. Treat it like a war and be determined not to let them win the battle of minds.

The next lesson I learnt was that a life spent constantly stressing is a waste of a life. You never know when your time is up and therefore you need to make every minute count. We only know for a fact that we have one life, even though I do personally believe in the after life, therefore we have to make the most of that life. I now live every day like it is my last, I live each one to the full.

The last piece of advice is to think about other people in the world who are not as fortunate as yourself. I for example used to feel very sorry for myself and believed that I was very unlucky. When thinking about other people who live in the world, I actually realised that I was actually one of the lucky ones. People in for example parts of Africa and the third world would probably laugh at me if I had described my worries to them.