1. Not overworking to the point of exhaustion. Ask yourself, “Are there parts of work I can do less of for my own health and happiness?”
2. Eat right: There are foods that will aggravate stress, and foods that will sedate stress. Try cutting down or quitting caffeinated and sugary drinks and foods that increase stress levels. Try eating more complex carbohydrates, lean meats and fish, and vegetables and fruits.
3. Getting daily exercise: This is a tough one, because it’s really hard to make a regular schedule to exercise and get to the gym. It can be work in itself. This is a lifestyle change, not an instantaneous  “hit the gym once in a while” thing, so pace yourself. Stress happens over time, and your stress combat plan should develop over the long term.
4. Practice relaxation: Yoga, meditation, even mindful breathing are all superior techniques to help reduce stress.
5. Network development: Many times, guys don’t have anyone to talk to. They might not talk with their other male friends, and their wife or girlfriend may be stressed in her own way. Making the outlet to talk and creating a support network is essential to stress management. Without it, we end up stuffing stress, letting it fester and building it up over time to create much worse problems.
6. Develop routines: stress is a part of everyday life, and those that have the plans most easily executed will come out on top of their stress. See the lifestyle changes you’re making as integral to your lifestyle, not a temporary thing or fad. If you set your sights on stress management as a high value for you, you’ll start to choose behaviors that reflect that value.
7. Practice positive psychology: Thinking positively – while hard for some – trains your brain to see things through a different scope. Choose optimism over negativity.
8. Reduce alcohol consumption: Alcohol is a depressant, and it also affects your sleep by increasing the body’s stress hormone epinephrine, which stimulates heart rate and stress. Alcohol, in moderation, can take the ease off stress, but, for the long term, it’s not the best solution.
9. Say ‘no’ more: Too many guys are just as guilty of not saying ‘no’ as their female counterparts. When we can’t say ‘no’, we guilt ourselves into accepting more and more from others, whether that’s doing favors, taking on more work, or generally stuffing our own need to do less. Learn to take on less responsibility, and learn to say ‘no’ – the world won’t end if you do.
10. Manage your time: The inability to manage time erodes our foundation to deal with stress. Not being able to deal efficiently with all that’s thrown at us in a day can shut your whole machine down quickly. Learn to manage your time, and you’ll immediately experience better stress reduction. Use lists, calendars, and your phone. Plan commuting times, cook on Sundays for the week’s worth of lunches, and generally start to visualize your upcoming week, so that you can do what you need to do before it needs to be done.

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You’re a busy guy. You’ve got tons of responsibilities: work overload, family duties, chores and to-do lists, time with your wife or girlfriend, time with your kids, working out, having a beer with a buddy… the time commitments can be endless. Where does it end? When you can sit back and breathe, do you ever feel overwhelmed and like you’re burning the candle at both ends?

Stress has many components, and for guys who have a hard time saying “no” to others, it can seem much worse. I know. As a recovering “nice guy”, it was really hard for me in the past to say ‘no’ to others, when they would ask something of me. As I’d take on more and more commitments, I would overwhelm myself, and either generally not be of use to the people asking (by dragging my feet on something), or by generally internalizing a lot of anger at them, and at myself for not getting what I wanted.

If we can learn to say ‘no’, we take the power back that we’ve given others. Having expendable time in your life will be something you create consciously, instead of reactively (and through fear) making commitments to others when you don’t really want to.

I think we can’t say ‘no’ to commitments because we don’t want to let down the other person, because if we do, then they’re mad or disappointed in us, and who wants that? When we give others power over us, to overly praise or reject us, then our fate kind of lies in their hands. If we can learn to get ourselves to the point where it’s o.k. to to say ‘no’, and check it out with the other person if we need to (“I’m afraid if I say ‘no’ to you, I’d disappoint you. Did I?”). If we start seizing back the ‘no’ we mean to communicate, and state it with empathy and not anger, we’ll ultimately get a lot father in our lives.