This is Optimal Living Daily episode 3255, a new way to say goodbye to stress by Dr. Lisa Firestone of Psycholive.

And I'm Justin Molek, the guy who's been reading to you every day including holidays since 2015

To bring your life a little bit more happiness inspiration

Motivation many of that fun stuff and we keep it up. So let's get right to it and continue optimizing your life.

A new way to say goodbye to stress by Dr Lisa Firestone of Psycholive.org.

Millions of Americans struggle with unhealthy levels of stress.

Stress isn't just destructive to our mental health,

but to our physical health as well.

It weakens our immune systems,

and contributes to heart disease,

high blood pressure, strokes, and other illnesses.

These facts are important, but hearing about them or even relaying them admittedly

makes me feel a little, well, stressed.

Too often reflecting on our stress just makes us feel worse.

So rather than scare you straight when it comes to stress, I thought I'd offer a real solution to those nagging and at times terrorizing thoughts that lead to stress.

The mere mention of the word stress is enough to make our head spin with

thoughts of to-do lists, meetings, schedules, social calendars, kids, work, and money.

Whatever the trigger mechanism is, it's always there to distract us from any potential sense of calm.

When we allow our negative thoughts to take over, we spend precious energy handling the symptoms of stress

instead of solving the problem or dealing with what's really making us feel such pressure or worry. These negative thoughts tell us when to worry and what to worry about,

but never do they offer us a real solution to our problems. If we were to challenge these negative thoughts,

we would soon realize that not only is this destructive thought

...