Your stress relief is right here, right now. Literally, in the here and now, the current moment, there is absolutely no stress. Just stress-free happiness.

So read this article over and over, pausing only to eat or sleep and you will be stress-free and happy. I’m just kidding. But reading is one way to live in the current moment. So are all your favorite activities. That is why you enjoy them so much. They keep you focused in the current moment and your stress is temporarily suspended.

You may not like to hear this, but you are responsible for all your stress. Circumstances don’t cause stress. Jobs don’t cause stress. Other people don’t cause stress. No situations cause stress. What causes your stress? Your reaction to circumstances, your job, other people, situations, etc.

Within your reaction lies the reason for stress. The reason is, you have incorporated the past and/or the future, into the current moment. You might be trying to live up to expectations by yourself or others (from the past). You might be fearful of what yourself or other’s reaction will be if you don’t attain certain expectations (in the future).

Take a minute to think about what’s causing the most amount of stress in your life lately. Now pretend you lost your memory. Did your stress level drop dramatically? If not, you may be thinking about a future outcome. Eliminate both, the past and future, and you will be stress-free and happy.

You don’t have to make any effort to live in the current moment. You do have to make an effort to stop living in the past and future. Your natural state of existence is stress-free and happy, in the here and now. It’s there all the time. You may not have been aware of this or you may not even believe it could be as easy as this.

Worrying causes stress. Is worrying in the present moment? No, it’s when you are thinking about the future. Remembering bad situations in your past causes stress. Hatred toward people or events causes stress, and that is only when thinking about the past or future.

You can do everything the experts suggest to ease stress. Burning it off with exercise, punching a pillow, keeping busy to keep your mind off of it, doing something relaxing like meditation, taking a vacation, and you know all the other suggestions, because you’ve tried them.

Regardless, you always return to stress, right? Along with the stress, is unhappiness. Happiness and stress are complete opposites. And just as if they were on a see-saw, they always maintain their position, completely opposite of each other. When one goes up, the other goes down.

The more stress you have, the more unhappy you are. And when you are extremely happy, you will not have stress. The true you, in a state of stress-free happiness, is to be found in the current moment, the here and now. It is your see-saw raised all the way up. Stress, on the opposite end, is all the way down.

Now that you know how to be stress-free and happy, you may find it challenging to stay focused on the current moment. You may need to train your mind which has been drifting almost, your entire life. Do you remember how stress-free and happy you were when you were little? You were constantly focused on what you were doing at the time, in that moment.

Pay closer attention to your attention. Every time you catch yourself thinking about the past or predicting or fearing the future, acknowledge it by saying, "Thinking about the past," or "Thinking about the future" and bring your focus back to the current moment. After a while, you’ll be catching yourself drifting and quickly make the change.

The trick is, you have to let go of all your thoughts. You can’t control spontaneous thoughts about the past or future, but you can control your reaction to them.

Let go of all thoughts, stay in the here and now, and you will live stress-free and happy. It’s a beautiful thing.