I have always struggled to live a stress-free life. I worry about almost every aspect of life and living this way has caused me a lot of problems including various bouts of ill health from time to time. I needed to find a way of coping with and reducing the amount of stress in my life and in this article I write about how I have managed to achieve this.

So what do I stress about? Well I suppose it is anything and everything. Women and my relationships with them; my financial position - having a lack of money and worrying about how I am going to be able to pay the bills etc. I also have anxiety over my career and my personal friendships. For whatever reason I also used to worry about what other people thought of me.

I am the kind of person who is classed as a thinker. I will be the first to admit that I over-think at times; some people would go as far as to call me a stress-head - others, no doubt, see me as some sort of freak. This thinking is very much in a negative manner and is a cycle which I have found hard to break.

About a year ago I was invited to appear on a national radio show to talk about my occupation which is providing an affordable DVD duplication service and offering SEO specialist advice, and also strangely enough helping an organisation to do with fostering solutions. I was due to talk live on this radio program at around 2pm. All morning as was my way of course, I was thinking and worrying about how I would come across to other people. I was afraid that I would make a fool of myself and would sound like a bit of an idiot. I also, for whatever reason, started to stress about whether I would be able to remember, under the amount of pressure that I was likely be under, the important aspects of my occupation which people would be interested in.

I was getting myself into a bit of a state and even thought about phoning up to cancel the interview. I then called up a good friend of mine who has always provided me with sound advice. I explained about the radio show and about my fears. He advised me to think in a much more positive way about the interview and to start some deep breathing exercises. It would, he continued, be a chance to promote my own services and therefore was something to be grateful for.

He advised me that what I needed to do was to keep myself busy. If I am very busy, I would not have any time to think in my usual negative way. He informed me that my main problem was that I had too much time on my hands, which results in me spending far too much time thinking and worrying.

This is something I had realised a few years before but had in truth not acted on. I thought about what my friend had said and then decided to get stuck into some much needed gardening. Have a guess what? I managed to do very well on the radio; I even enjoyed it.