Heidi's 5 Steps to Eradicate Stress from Your Life

(If you haven't read part 1: Stress and Other Unfortunate Realities of this, I highly suggest it)

So, keeping all of this in mind, what is to be done with all of this stress?

Well, I've decided to make:

5 Steps to Eradicate Stress from Your Life
Step 1: Decide you are willing to fix what's wrong. Even if it's hard to do. This can be one of the hardest steps for some people. Who would either rather go the easy route, that in the long term, can quite literally kill you or are just in denial of there being a problem at all.
Step 2: Identify the stress. You won't be able to fix what's wrong, if you don't know what's wrong.
Step 3: Identify your "support system": the people who will not only support you and tell you you're doing a good job, but also keep you going and give you tough love.
Step 4: Create goals to manage time, relax, etc. and share them with one or two other people you feel comfortable sharing them with.
Step 5: Continue with these goals for at least the next month ( the minimum time needed to make the things you are doing a habit). Make sure you have people that are helping you complete these goals. Revise your system only if it isn't working.

Congratulations! Hopefully, your stress, if it isn't gone, is at least lowered.

Note: This is not a studied or scientifically created system. This just worked very well for me and other people I know.

Stess and Other Unfortunate Realities

There comes a time in every high school-er's career when they realize that stress and other unfortunate realities are inevitable.

You'd be surprised at all of the things that could be stressing out a high school-er. So, if you're a parent of a high school-er, listen up. There might be other reasons your kid "hates you" or hides in their room all day and night or goes out with friends every single weekend. Whatever they're doing, it's probably to deal with the amount of stress they have. (All though, it may be due to the denial of life also, but I don't really have much experience with this.)

Here's a short list of things that there are to stress out your every day high school student (that cares about life):

• Friends
• Enemies
• (potential) Boyfriend/Girlfriend
• Peer Pressure: Drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. (Don't assume your child is doing these things, but it can be a huge stress factor)
• Social Acceptance
  
• Grades
• Scholarships
• Colleges
• Teacher Relationships
• Part-time Job
  
• Money for now
  
• Money for college and future life
• Choosing a career
• Parent Relationships
• Sibling Relationships
• getting enough sleep
  
• And a multitude of other things

Now, there are so many things just right there. I could probably come up with more if I thought about it. So, what do you do about your super stressed out kid/friend/self?

Make sure the relationships are strong and stable. All though, colleges and scholarships and grades may all seem super important, and they are, the most important thing is the relationships. No one that has crumbling relationships will be able to keep going forever in everything else. Having a strong support system is one of the most important things. Without this, it's hard for anyone to feel the need to do anything.

For a high school student, the overbearing idea that "you need to be socially accepted by people is the most important thing" is the most destructive idea that can be implanted in a student's mind. This idea enables someone to believe that someone else's idea about what they should do in life is more important than theirs. It encourages conformity in not only fashion, but life choices. Conformity is not necessarily a bad thing. Like people conforming and not murdering people. That's good. Conforming everyone's ideas is bad.

PART 2 coming later... because I need to sleep and I don't have time to finish this now :)