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Every one of us is dealing with this. Everybody knows that it's bad for health and everybody knows how to cope up with it. But do we really make the sincere efforts to deal with stress?

I would just like to draw your attention to a small story, which you might have heard sometime. A class teacher once drew the attention of his science class towards a glass full of water. He asked the class to guess the weight of the glass. Some one said 200 ml and some one said 500 ml and so on.

The teacher now lifted the glass high in air at an angle of 180 degrees and asked the class as to how long he can hold the glass. Again the surmises began ranging from 2 minutes to 2 hours depending on the strength of the teacher's hand.

And the next question was, "What will happen after 15 minutes?" One student said that the hand will start paining mildly. "And what will happen after 1 hour?" The teacher asked. The class replied that the hand will strain and can lead to leukemia too.

But right then the teacher put down the glass and asked the result. "Your hand will come to normal position after few seconds," the class said in unanimity. Now teacher explained that the glass is nothing but our mind and water is like worries. We keep carrying them till the time they lead us to disaster. And once we put them down, we are back to good health. So why carry the burden of your worries from here to there?

It is, practically, impossible to avoid stress in today's fast changing world and the reasons could be quite different. One might have got a scolding from the boss or the teacher, or one might have had a fight with a friend or a loved one. One might be unable to complete a task or might be searching for a task to complete (unemployed)... the reasons could be different but one thing is sure that everyone is stressed irrespective of his/her biological state.

However, all stress is not bad, so no need to avoid it either. There is good stress also known as "eustress" which helps indirectly. Studies have shown that one performs best under stress. The pressure to reach the deadlines makes a person perform better. But it is helpful only in short term. Thus, one must always try to avoid stress, and if not possible, direct it to positive side.

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* Gaurav Goel is a student of Masters in Human Resources & Organisational Development (MHROD) at Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University.