Sometimes, you just have to pull over and slow down to get out of a stress mess caused by your anxiety. Yes, everything will back up behind you – someone might honk at you to "get a move on," but when it comes down to it – you have to look out for the vehicle that gets you places in life – your mind and body.

Go ahead and make the decision that you’re not going to be bullied around by deadlines, other stressful people, and ridiculous restrictions anymore. Once you accept the fact that slowing life down to a manageable state is going to cause other people to get more stressed, you’ll be better able to focus on your problems, and not theirs.

It’s time to start taking baby steps if stress is taking its toll on you. Are you stressed because you can anxious when you drive more than 20 miles from home? Focus on the first five, and forget about the rest for a little while.

Stressed that you know next week’s going to include 20 hours of overtime? Go ahead and make plans for others to take over at home with the dishes, cooking, and laundry so you can get extra sleep. And schedule a spa treatment for the week after – it’ll be nice to look forward to something.

Study up on kaizen, which is the Japanese art of making minor changes to see big success. The idea behind it is, when you keep all of your tasks in small sections, you get to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment more often – as each step is completed.

This is much better than having to endure a mountain of stress for a long period of time, waiting for a payoff at the end. Broken down, Kai means change and zen means good, so this is a good change for you to make in your life.

It’s not just breaking things down into smaller steps, but making the process better while you do it. Sometimes, we can get overwhelmed facing a huge project and our productivity isn’t as good as it would be if everything was broken up and our focus was more narrow.

With kaizen, you’ll move more slowly, making sure everything is right in your world – whether it’s how you manage money, deal with relationships, or complete a task at work. There’s no failures with kaizen, so your stress is lifted – you don’t place blame on yourself for doing something wrong – you just take your time and find a better way.

If you use kaizen to improve the quality of your life and take stress out of the equation, you’ll find that you don’t respond to situations as you once did, frantic about the mistakes or problems arising. You’ll calmly hone in on the issue, address it in the most logical way you know, and watch the results so that you can improve your life even more.