Have you ever felt sad or stressed, and someone said to you, “Don’t be sad,” or “Don’t stress about that?” They may even add, “Just be happy and think positive.” I don’t know anyone who benefits from this kind of advice, or who can just say, “Oh, okay! I don’t feel sad (or stressed) anymore.” The way to stop feeling negative things is to first look at them so that you can manage what’s causing them. Ignoring the cause and the feelings isn’t usually a helpful technique, at least not long-term.

When looking at happiness as a goal, it’s important to understand some elements in your life that may affect your path to happiness. The first elements we’ll cover are stress and anxiety. When you are defining what happiness means to you, you may use terms like “no stress,” or “not worrying,” or “not feeling tense or anxious all the time.” Stress and anxiety are part of everyone’s life but a goal should be to reduce the amount as much as possible.

There are things that happen in our lives that we have little or no control over, and some of those things do create stress for us. There are also choices we make which will cause us stress or anxiety. In order to avoid these or minimize them, you need to know what kinds of things cause YOU stress. Different things seem stressful to different people. What in your life seems or feels stressful to you, and what types of things cause you to feel anxious, nervous, worried, or tense? What would your life look like if you removed these things?

It’s helpful to understand that stress isn’t always caused just by negative things. You could have a whole lot of good things going on in your life, but they create stress. Anything that creates a significant life change will cause stress. Think of getting married, having a baby, starting a new job, or moving into a new house. All of these things are positive, great things that we celebrate in life, but they also create stress.

Anxiety is a momentary short-term emotion including worry or tension, as well as being mentally and physically prepared for something to happen. Your mind starts thinking about all the possibilities, often negatives, and it causes anxiety, or adrenaline, also known as the fight-or-flight response. Anxiety is a short-term response to a situation.

Stress, on the other hand, is the result of ongoing anxiety. Ongoing, long-term stress about something can turn into burnout. Stress isn’t a response emotion like anxiety, but instead is what your body and mind do when managing longer-term anxiety-causing situations. If your car won’t start, it may cause anxiety. Then the car starts, the anxiety is gone. But if your car is continuously breaking down that is repeated anxiety, a constant ongoing worry, which evolves into stress.

If a cause of stress is an event, the stress may go away after the event. If it’s a significant life change, you will adjust to the new situation and the stress will decrease or change. The goal should be to reduce stress-causing situations and experiences, or manage them as you go.

Take some time this week to think about what things are causing you anxiety and stress, and what you may be able to do to lessen those effects. What can you change to remove these obstacles to your happiness? How do you react physically to anxiety or stress, as well as mentally or emotionally? Look for methods of calming your own anxiety that work well for you and start practicing those each time you feel anxious. Open the path toward happiness by removing negatives wherever possible.