Stressed about this big goal or project in your life? Yes am sure it is a lot of work, but isn’t it also fun? If it isn’t fun – are you defining fun as those activities that have minimal consequences? Watching a movie, visiting a restaurant or grabbing a drink.

Aren’t bungee jumps, scuba dives or hikes also fun? Yes, they have a danger and stress element to them, but the stress goes away when you finish. The gratification is also delayed and frankly compressed to a really short timeline. When you attempt a sky dive, you will probably feel stressed through the training, the plane’s take off and  perhaps even for the first few seconds in the air. The gratification comes in the last few seconds of the dive and in the memories that remain.

Perhaps then, it makes sense to think of your stressful project as fun – where the fun comes in short bursts and the pressure lasts longer but eventually goes away. Shift your focus to the fun – keep the reward in mind not the consequences, learn to enjoy the thrills of the journey as you can’t prevent them and attack those problems as puzzles (hell they need solving). There really can’t be anything more fun than a goal that makes you sweat.