If you are wanting to stop the yo-yo pattern of stress creation and stress reduction, you're going to have to examine your life in detail, find the real root causes of stress, to make the changes you know you will need to make, in order to stop stress from taking over your life completely.

If you have stress-creating, self-harming habits, you're most likely aware of them. If you're spending more than you earn, eat when you're upset emotionally, or lashing out at your loved ones whenever you let pent-up anger get the best of you, these are not healthy ways to run a life – and you know this.

You can pinpoint the root cause of the stress that exists in your life with reasonable ease. Sit down with pen and paper,then go through all the various areas of your life, then rate each one on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 equating to very low stress, and 10 equating to very high.

If money scores a stress rating of 10, you NEED to focus your energy on creating newer, better habits that will push this number down to a 1. And as you work towards crafting and installing your new habits, keep up your analysis – keep and expand on what works, and toss what doesn't.

Sitting and whining about all the stress that you have in your life is useless. You absolutely must actively work to reduce it. Of course, these changes are going to take time – and time in this case means lots of it. You're changing courses, not teleporting to a fixed location.

You might falter from time to time, but drifting mildly off course on rare occasions doesn't mean your course is completely blown. Just get back on course (by repeating your good habits), and your normal reactions to stress will BECOME the good habits you might struggle with at first.