Stress Reduction Technique

I tend to think a lot about stress reduction in my life because I think it's an important part of being happy. In my opinion it is because our happiness depends on the way we think about situations and not necessarily about the situations themselves. If you can find ways to think about things in a non-stressful way you might be more happy than someone else in the same situation. So I'd like to share a way that I view a certain aspect of our lives that I think might be beneficial to other people.

Money, or more specifically the amount of money that we have can be an enormous cause of stress to people and I don't think it needs to be. I like to think about money in terms of panic points. The panic point is an arbitrary number at which a person freaks out because they don't have enough money to meet their needs. The panic point can be different for everyone but I think the most common panic point is $0. This happens to be a very stressful panic point because at $0 you actually don't have enough money for anything. When you get to this panic point you either use credit which digs the hole deeper, make lifestyle changes that reduce expenses or find ways to make more money. All three of those solutions can be stressful but I think all three can be avoided if a person just chooses to think about a different panic point.

I'm thinking about certain people that I know that always find a way to squeak by but never have any left over money and are always stressing about it because they only worry when they run out of money. But what if they started to worry when they got down to $1000 instead? Maintaining a $1000 balance is just as easy as maintaining a $0 balance once a person saves $1000. Having $1000 is, however, much less stressful than having $0. All a person needs to do is decide what changes they would make at $0 and instead start making those changes at $1000. The result is a reduction in stress because you act like you are out of money, which means you don't spend it, but it's less stressful because desperation isn't actually right around the corner.

So if you are someone who is stressed out about money, I suggest cutting cable bills, eating out and everything you can possibly cut, only for a time, until you reach the new panic point that you decide fits your lifestyle. Once there start pretending like the panic point is your new $0 level and I think you will find that stressing about money issues will go away.