"Managing" Stress Can Cost You

By Tamela Thomas, Wellness Manager

How do you handle stress? Does a competitive game of racquetball or a long run do it for you? Perhaps you have incorporated time management tools that help you get more accomplished each day to help you reduce your stress. Oodles of books, tapes and programs have been developed to help us deal with stress. I'd like to suggest that it's time to stop "managing," "reducing" and "dealing"—it's time to get rid of stress all together.

Before I learned about one of our guest columnist's programs, I was an advocate of improving long-term health by destressing the system via a simplified lifestyle. Now I have learned another method—a system that takes the stress out immediately and fairly effortlessly.

Robert Siegel, MS, author of Six Seconds to True Calm: Thriving Skills for 21st Century Living, and founder of the THRIVING with CHANGE^TM training program, reminds us of the costs associated with stress - costs we pay directly as business owners or indirectly as purchasers of goods and services. Robert also offers an effective cure, the Six Second STRESS OFF^TM, which provides the first standard treatment protocol to remedy all stress-related conditions. I think you will enjoy this article and it just might inspire you to attend one of his Six Second STRESS OFF^TM workshops.

The Cost of Stress

It's too high and it's unnecessary

By Robert Simon Siegel, MS

Doesn't it seem time—after 25 years of research, books, tapes and workshops—that we finally have a cure for stress? A performance- and health-enhancing treatment that works immediately for all types of stress throughout the rest of your life? Is that asking too much? Read on, because there is a real remedy that dissolves stress in only six seconds.

What could a genuine cure for stress accomplish?

Significant cost savings. A whopping 75%-90% of all doctor visits, medical and psychological, are now recognized as stress related. With an average annual cost of $4,500 per person for health care, that is a potential reduction of $2,125-$4,050 in health care costs per person once stress is "cured," particularly for self-administered companies.

Cost containment. Current health care cost increases are ballooning annually at 12%-20% ($540-$900) per person, with stress accounting for $405-$810 of that increase. A proper stress remedy should also contain such costs.

Lower absenteeism. Alleviating stress-related doctor visits would equally lower the percentage of absenteeism for those visits. A single day of absenteeism costs a company at least $300 per employee at a $50,000 salary, assuming no additional costs for project delays. If absenteeism averages 3-10 days a year per employee, then absenteeism reductions of 2-9 days per employee could be accomplished with a stress cure. Without a cure, the problems repeat.

Improved performance. Each annoying "symptom" of stress detracts from performance and focus. Insomnia from an overactive mind that won't allow sleep results in fatigue which in turn lowers concentration, innovation and decision making at work. Tension headaches, irritation, frustration, upset stomachs, low blood sugar, colds and negativity all damage mental focus and obstruct the positive flow of communications, teamwork and information exchange necessary for normal business operations.

Less serious illness. We forget that many major debilitating illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, ulcers, hypertension, colitis, cancers and a host of immune system deficiencies usually began as stress symptoms that escalate because they are not successfully dissolved in a timely fashion.

That was before 9/11. Companies and individuals across America are already experiencing up to a four-fold increase in absenteeism, doctor visits and prescription utilization since. Six months after 9/11, a protracted war on terrorism, anthrax scares in the mail and sustained economic downturns have much of America's workforce now living above their stress thresholds. A true cure for stress could prevent these huge cost increases and prevent inevitable further damage simply by "resetting" peoples' internal milieu back to calm—quickly and repeatedly throughout the day as needed. Gains in mental focus, energy and performance quality are the resulting side effects.

The Cure: The Six Second STRESS OFF^TM

I am pleased to present a real solution to stress that finally renders the substantial damage stress causes to health, performance, quality of life and the bottom line unnecessary. And it only took me 15 years as a psychophysiologist and stress specialist to get it down to six seconds.

My experience is that "stress" remained an unsolved mystery because it was not fully understood. Stress crosses several disciplines by affecting many body systems and producing a vast array of physical, perceptual, emotional and behavioral problems. Only a general systems approach can handle such diverse, multi-layered complexity.

I've found that virtually every stress symptom is the result of unhealthy, ineffective operation of four body systems—central nervous system, sympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system and skeletal muscular system. Simply resetting all four systems to a more healthy, effective operation results in immediate calm, mental clarity and freedom from stress. It is effective because it utilizes the body's design. Restoring proper function results in added benefits beyond mere stress reduction: genuine health production. Faster than a pill, The Six Second STRESS OFF^TM is a lifelong skill that improves health and performance.

Stress quickly makes sense once you see its symptoms as the ringing of a phone. Not random, stress is actually a change awareness signal—informing us that something is changing. Often we notice after the change has already happened. Mostly it tells us that WE need to change. However, we do not need knee-jerk stress (survival) reactions to change—everything new, different and unexpected—that handicap our perception. The Six Second STRESS OFF^TM trains people to quickly stop the noisy phone ringing and restore full mental focus. This effectively prevents the otherwise inevitable escalation of stress symptoms into major illnesses and expensive health problems. This skill can be performed while working, driving, walking and talking. It's so effective that it comes with a money-back guarantee.

Navigating change successfully is the purpose of stress. Correctly utilized, stress guides us to navigate change successfully. We simply need to stop the phone ringing, pick up the phone to get the message and thrive. When the message has been received and acted upon, the stress dissolves because it has performed its sole purpose: communication. The opportunity to reduce the costs of absenteeism, health care and performance problems while simultaneously improving performance and health is exactly what the finance surgeon ordered.