Yesterday I went to Magic Mountain, a fun theme park, with my kids and some friends. As we walked (well, scampered, really) through the park and rode various rides, I noticed something that made me think of a blog I wrote just a few weeks ago about enjoying your job more. Unlike Disneyland, where everyone who works in the park generally stays 'in character' and focuses on the enjoyment of the guests and nothing else for their entire shift, there was a variety of commitment that most other park employees showed toward their jobs, mirroring what we find in most fields, especially customer service-oriented ones.

Some of the park employees were friendly enough, but obviously watching the clock. These people were pleasant, but not really smiling. They did their jobs perfunctorily, and were nice, but were obviously 'working'. Many people approach their jobs this way--they manage to get by, and do a decent job, but they look forward to breaks and days off, and would quit their jobs immediately if they didn't need the money. The can't imagine things any other way.

Contrast this with the guy who ran 'The Scrambler'--I didn't catch his name, so I'll refer to him as "Scrambler Guy", or "S.G." for short. S.G. acted like he was having as much fun running the ride as we were having on it! Where other people might turn on the ride and turn it off after several minutes, staring off into space and imagining being at home while the ride was running, S.G. was constantly keeping things interesting: asking us if we want to go faster (of course!), reminding us that there are churros to be had (yum!) and providing us a soundtrack with his "beat boxing" (which wasn't great, but I had to admire his effort). His energy was infectious, and I found myself happy to ride the ride three times in a row and hear his commentary throughout. I made the comment to him that he seemed to really enjoy his job, and he replied something like, "Ya gotta make it fun, right?"

Well, actually, not everyone does approach their job like S.G. does, but those who do--those who use their creativity and energy to go beyond their basic job description and create a better experience for themselves and those around them--tend to enjoy their jobs more, experience less job burnout, and generally enjoy life more.

The good news is that most of us have the ability to change our approach to our jobs, and make the job more fun. And with an extremely competitive job market out there, that's usually much easier than switching jobs, so it's a good route to pursue if possible. Think about it: if S.G. came to work at your company, how would he approach the job to make it more fun? How might you approach your job differently?

More Job Satisfaction Resources:

Make Your Job More Fun

What Makes A Job Great?

Respond: How Can You Improve Your Work Experience?

Find Satisfaction At Your Current Job

Poll: What Causes You The Most Stress?

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Many of the questions I hear about stress are asked more than once, by different people; many of the stressful situations that people face are shared by many. Below are a few answers to frequently asked questions. If you have a question that you don't see addressed, you can post it in the comments, the forum or send me an email--your question could be included in the next round of FAQs.

What Coping Strategies Are Effective?
"I need help with coping strategies! I've worked very hard to build up security in my life, and now because of tough economic times, I find myself with few assets that are worth anything and a precarious job situation. These stresses are even taking a toll on my relationships! I feel like everything I've worked so hard for, everything I thought I'd always be able to count on, is falling apart. What coping strategies can help with this?" Read on for the answer, and an invitation to leave your own answers.

Can Simple Tips For Managing Stress Actually Work?
"I'm feeling completely overwhelmed, and am having difficulty managing stress! I keep reading about simple things like breathing exercises or meditation, but they can't change my life. How can these tips for managing stress help?" Read more for more on managing stress.

Read Stress FAQs

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I recently visited my friend and colleague Carl Lanore on his Super Human Radio show, and we discussed optimism, pessimism and the ways these perspectives can impact us in the face of crises and setbacks. We had a very interesting discussion, as the topic is more applicable to many people this year than it has been in past years when so many people weren't facing financial stress and all the other stressors that can come with it. One concept that came up is the idea that pessimists may be safer than optimists in some ways. While I still endorse optimism and love the benefits that come with this perspective in life, we discussed how unbridled positive thinking can cause disillusionment when things don't go our way in life.

This is a commonly addressed theme, and many of my readers have had the same question. Here's a more detailed answer to the question: are pessimists better off?

Is It Safer To Be A Pessimist?

More On Optimism, Pessimism, And Positive Psychology

• Benefits of Optimism
  

• Positive Psychology
  

• Benefits of Gratitude
  

• Gratitude and Sleep
  

• How To Be More of an Optimist
  

• Join My Gratitude Group
  

What's your take on this? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

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I know, I know, it seems early to be talking about 'The Holiday Season', right? I mean, it's only the beginning of November! (Wow, it's the beginning of November ALREADY?) Seriously, though, with a holiday stress poll saying that the vast majority of my readers find the holidays stressful, I wanted to help you relieve some of that holiday stress with a secret weapon that you can use for a limited time only: an early start! Here are some things you can do now that will help you create a much less stressed next-two-months.

Holiday Stress Relief
What causes all the stress of the holiday season, and what can you do to manage it? Read this article now, and get a handle on the stress before it begins. This is the season to enjoy it all!

Dealing With Difficult People
As the holiday season approaches, you're likely going to see more of people: more family at holiday gatherings, more of your co-workers at holiday parties, and more people when you're traveling and shopping. Here are some tips for dealing with the difficult people in your life.

Take The Free E Course on Holiday Stress Relief!
The holiday season can be a time of great stress. Fear not! This free 5-week e-course helps you get prepared for the holiday season without all the stress and let the joy of the season shine through. Now is a great time for this e course--you can get the 'work' of the holidays out of the way easily, and in time to enjoy the holidays the way they were meant to be enjoyed--with less stress!

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Isn't it fun when you learn that something you enjoy is also good for you? Well, good news: many of the things that bring you pleasure are also effective for stress management! Therefore, this blog is devoted to life's pleasures that double as stress relievers. Read up, and choose some to start incorporating into your life right now!

Life's Pleasures for Stress Relief
How can life's pleasures enhance your life? And which ones should you choose? What's the secret to continually enjoying life as you age? Learn more about how to build a lifestyle with built-in pleasure and stress relief.

Having Fun: Why and How
Why is it important for us to have fun, and how can we get more fun into our lives? Read more about why adults need play time, too, and how we can enjoy some regular fun.

Readers, Respond! Top Ways To Have Fun For Stress Relief
It's important to have fun in your life, as a way to relieve stress, stay connected with others, maintain balance and stave off burnout. In childhood, it's easy to have fun, but in adulthood, fun often needs to become a priority. Do you have enough fun in your life? And what do you do to have fun and blow off stress? Add your answers to this reader response article, or in the comments.

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According to this poll, job stress is the greatest stressor faced by readers like you. With a tough job market, high unemployment rates, and greater pressures in many jobs, it's no wonder. But having a job you enjoy can be a great stress relief. Here are some tips for those who dread Mondays and look forward to Fridays--or just people who could enjoy their jobs more; find help in turning your job into a more enjoyable one.

How Does Your Job Rate?
What makes a job more enjoyable? Positive Psychology researchers have differentiated different types of jobs into three categories of meaning and enjoyment. How would you classify yours, and how can you make a so-so job more fulfilling? Read here to see!

Make Your Job More Fun
How do you make a job more fun and fulfilling? Here are some simple tips that can make a huge difference in your experience of your job!

Find Satisfaction At Your Current Job
Here are some additional tips for those who are on the road to burnout, and want to enjoy their jobs more.

Readers Respond: Can You Create A Better Job?
Wish you had a better job? According to a poll on this site, job stress is the biggest stressor people face, and affects a great number of people. Many people would like to have a better job, but don't want to take the risk to switch jobs. If you could change your job to be a better job, what would you change? (Fewer hours, more recognition, nicer co-workers?) Or, if you've taken steps to make your current job a better job, what have you tried? Has it worked? Share your "better job" fantasies and tips!

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Ever get the feeling that some of the stress in your life might be brought on by...you? If so, your perceptions may be accurate, which can be both good and bad.

Because high levels of stress are thought to adversely affect students' health as well as their grades, researchers recently examined the lives of 877 university students and their stressors. Long story short, they discovered that the greatest number of stressors that students experienced were self-imposed! (They also found themselves stressed by outside pressures, but stressors they brought upon themselves were the most widely experienced.) And, while college students share some unique features, they aren't so unique that they don't share many of the same factors that are faced universally--self-imposed stressors may be more common to the population at large than people realize.

The reason I dub this 'bad news' is probably evident--obviously, it's not great to know that large amounts of stress might be self-imposed. However, self-imposed stress means stress that can be more easily managed. It can be identified and, well, we can stop imposing it on ourselves!

For the stressed college students, researchers recommended stress management, assertiveness training, time management and even counseling sessions to help the students get a handle on their stress. These can be helpful for virtually everyone. See the resources below for more information.

Stress Management Resources from Elizabeth Scott

• Managing Stress 101

• Time Management

• How To Deal

• Stress In College

• Self Sabotage

• Assertiveness Training

What are some ways that you bring more stress upon yourself? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

_{Source: Hamaideh SH. Stressors and reactions to stressors among university students. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, October 15, 2009.}

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I started keeping a gratitude journal several years ago, and, though I go through phases where I write more often or skip a few nights, I've found that I tend to drift to sleep more easily and happily after I've gotten myself into the 'warm and fuzzy' place that comes from counting my blessings. That's why I wasn't completely surprised when I ran across this research study about gratitude journaling: researchers have found that differences in gratitude levels actually affect sleep quality!

Researchers assessed 186 men and 215 women (40% of which had clinically impaired sleep), and measured their level of gratitude, their quality of sleep, and five main personality traits (to see if differences in sleep quality could be tied to personality differences). (The five personality traits, which have been generally accepted as definitive to personality, are: openness to new experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism.)

Researchers found that gratitude predicted better self-reported sleep quality, as well as duration of sleep, and less 'sleep latency' (the amount of time it takes to fall asleep after the lights have gone out) and daytime dysfunction. The relationship between gratitude and each of these variables was mediated by the thoughts people had before falling asleep: more positive before-sleep thoughts and less negative ones. All of these results were found to be unrelated to personality traits, including neuroticism, (which one might expect to affect sleep quality and ability to fall asleep).

This research is pretty big news for those who need better quality sleep, and those who need more of it (which, according to a sleep poll on this site, includes the vast majority of us)! We can use this information to help ourselves and our children in many areas of our lives, since sleep deprivation affects not only our stress levels, but our daytime functioning. (See this article on the importance of sleep.) Here are some things to try:

Gratitude Journaling
I recommend keeping a gratitude journal for general stress relief and overall happiness, but now that we know this practice can lead to better sleep, I consider it a must. See this article for tips on maintaining a gratitude journal, where you'll have a record of all that you have to appreciate in your life--great for reading when you're feeling blue.

Gratitude With Kids
If you have children, and if you're not doing this already, it's a great idea to get in the habit of reviewing three things that you have to be grateful for before you tuck them in and turn out the light. This can be done in the form of a sharing conversation, a prayer, or a family gratitude journal that you keep together. You may find bedtime reluctance diminishing and daytime moods and productivity improved.

Tweet Your Gratitude
Join me on Twitter, where I've started a daily gratitude practice--you can maintain a daily gratitude announcement there, where you 'tweet' three things for which you're grateful at the end of each day, and can see what others are grateful for. (You can also share your list on this blog or in the Stress Management Forum if you're still working up to making it a nightly habit.)

Additional Sleep and Gratitude Resources:

• Join My Gratitude Program!

• Power Naps and the Importance of Sleep

• Healthy Habits for Better Sleep

• Quality Sleep for the Stressed

• Benefits of Gratitude

• Keep a Gratitude Journal

_{Source: Wood AM, Joseph S, Lloyd J, Atkins S.Gratitude influences sleep through the mechanism of pre-sleep cognitions. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, January 2009.}

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I've been talking for a while about the benefits of gratitude--increasing the gratitude you feel in daily life can help you manage stress as well as strengthen relationships and enjoy life more. And increasing your gratitude quotient can be as simple as counting your blessings on a regular basis.

Writing in a gratitude journal is an excellent way to cultivate gratitude. And, according to Positive Psychology pioneer Christopher Peterson, the most effective way to cultivate gratitude using a gratitude journal is to write down three things that you're grateful for at the end of each day. This is effective for several reasons. First, sticking to three things keeps the activity brief and manageable, and allows you to really dwell on each of the three. (More, and you start to appreciate each item a little less; fewer, and you are experiencing less gratitude.) Also, writing your items at the end of the day allows you to write about things that have happened (as opposed to things that you hope will happen) that day, thus really valuing what you have in your life. Additionally, the end-of-the-day reflection allows you to consciously think about gratitude throughout the day as you informally decide what you will write about that evening; it keeps the feeling of gratitude more present in your mind. This simple system has been shown to bring a greater level of gratitude to people's lives.

But 'simple' isn't always easy.

Sometimes it's a challenge to form new, regular habits, especially when you have a busy, stressful life. Remembering to do simple things can be easier said than done, but it can often help if you have the support of another person or group of people. This way, you feed off the momentum of the group, and knowing that you're engaging in somewhat of a group activity can keep you wanting to be involved so you don't 'disappoint' others.

That's why I'm starting a Gratitude Group on Facebook and Twitter, as well as on this site. Each night, I'm going to be tweeting three things I'm grateful for from that day (to see my tweets, follow me on Twitter--my username is ElizabethScott), and I invite you to do the same. (If you put "@ElizabethScott" somewhere in the tweets, I can see them--as can other readers--which gives this activity a 'group activity' feel.) I'm also starting a Facebook group that will work on cultivating gratitude and tackle other stress management topics. This will come in a few days; I'll keep you posted on this blog.

All of this is designed to help you take your stress management efforts a little further, with as little effort as possible. Low effort, high reward--isn't that what we're all looking for right now?

You can also put what you're grateful in the comments section below, or in my Stress Management Forum. Sharing those things in life that we appreciate can help make gratitude contagious, which gives us even more to appreciate!

Gratitude Resources:

• Benefits of Gratitude

• How To Keep A Gratitude Journal

• More About Positive Psychology

• Gratitude and Happiness

• More Stress Relief For Busy People

_{Source: Seligman ME, Steen TA, Park N, Peterson C. Positive psychology progress: empirical validation of interventions. The American Psychologist July-August, 2005.}

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When you are experiencing stressors in your life, there are two main option for coping: you can try to change your situation, of you can try to change your view of the situation you're facing. Changing a situation may involve switching jobs, letting go of toxic relationships, or cutting extra activities from your schedule. Changing your views might mean looking at a situation in a different way in order to see someone else's perspective (and, therefore, see yourself as less of a victim of their thoughtlessness), staving off road rage by deciding to enjoy your time in the car with an audio book, or even simply looking at a situation as a 'challenge' instead of a 'threat'. Most of the time, a mixture of both options can be appropriate and effective.

If you find yourself constantly embattled with people and fighting to change many situations in your life, you may be overdoing it with your need to change things in your life. You may need to work harder on 'going with the flow' of life, and accepting certain things, almost 'making friends' with people's flaws and life's little frustrations.

Conversely, if you find yourself feeling 'trapped', constantly trying to please others and fit their agenda, and not taking your own needs into consideration; or bending to the breaking point to be 'okay' with conditions at work or home that stir frustration in you that you constantly work to stifle; or unsuccessfully attempting to convince yourself that you really don't want things to be different than they are (but you still do), you may need to take a little more action in your life.

See this article for more on the two main styles of coping with stress, and you'll find additional resources to help you craft a comprehensive plan for stress relief.

What style of coping do you favor? When in your life have you found yourself using the wrong style, and what have you done to change things? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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