Do you leap out of bed every morning full of energy and enthusiasm? Do you go home at the end of the day full of energy and enthusiasm?

Would you like to remember what it’s like to have energy and enthusiasm?

Successful people need lots of Energy!

You need Brain Energy and you need Body Energy. However as with any other kind of energy, it’s constantly being drained away and needs replacing.

Dealing with people, your colleagues, your family and everyone else you come into contact with, can drain both your brain and your body. And you probably don’t need me to tell you that.

But for the moment, let’s look at Brain Energy; we’ll look at Body Energy in another post.

Imagine that you receive a call or an email from your boss saying – ‘Could you come in and see me, I need a word with you.’

If you react to that with – ‘Oh no! What does he want, what’s wrong now? What have I done?’ That sort of reaction drains your brain of energy and gives you stress.

Successful business people don’t react – they think!

Reacting drains the brain – thinking, less so.

Get the thinking bit working and say to yourself – ‘I’ll phone him now; I’ll speak to him and see what he wants. If it’s about the poor business results, then what information do I need to make my case? Perhaps he wants to talk about that vacant manager’s position that I could fill.’

Whatever you’re thinking – stop the negative stuff – it’ll kill you!

If one of your colleagues comes to you with a problem or you receive a complaint from a customer; don’t react!

Start thinking – ‘Let’s see what I can do about this.’

Do not, and I repeat – Do not say – ‘Oh no! What am I going to do now?’ Every time you say, ‘Oh no,’ your brain has a huge drain of energy, and that leads to stress!

People will tell you that there’s good stress and bad stress. I’m talking about bad stress, and it occurs when your brain is drained of energy. Some business people seem to believe that it goes with the territory and some even wear it as a “badge of honor” telling you how stressed they are all the time.

They also believe that it can’t be avoided; it’s part of being in business and the world we live in. Organisations do have a responsibility to minimise levels of stress in their workforce, but we have a responsibility for ourselves.

Think, don’t react

It’s very important to minimize your levels of stress and you can do that by thinking rather than reacting. Challenge your inbuilt programs, stop saying, ‘That makes me really mad’ or ‘That really gets on my nerves.’

Start saying, ‘This is something I have to deal with, and I’ll deal with it.’ You have the choice.

I know your probably thinking (or is it reacting) – ‘That’s all very well Alan, but its hard sometimes not to get stressed.’

You’re absolutely right however; let me give you some more reasons why you need to work at minimizing it.

Stress can cause:

• Heart disease
• Sleeplessness
• Sexual problems
• Overeating
• Drinking too much
• Loss of concentration
• Stomach upsets

Research has been telling us for a while that many, if not most of our illnesses can be related to stress.

When we get stressed, a chemical is released into our bloodstream called Cortisol, sometimes known as the Stress Hormone. High levels of Cortisol can lead to diabetes and skin problems.

There is also a suggestion that Cortisol attacks our immune system and leaves us vulnerable to many of the bugs and viruses that come along. This also includes cancer.

So if you’ve ever suffered from skin complaints or perhaps too many colds, it could very well be the results of stress.

I don’t want to scare you death, or give you any more stress, I just want you to – think!