It's everywhere.  You can't see it, you can't put your finger on it, but it stalks you every day and night.  It's there when you go to sleep and when you wake in the morning.  It's there when you make your first call in the morning, when you break for lunch, and when you finish up for the day.  It's there when you kiss your kids and when you turn on the TV and turn off your brain for the evening.  What is it?  Stress.

Having just come back from a long-needed vacation I can tell you that you just don't know how much stress you're under until you get away for a while.  When I left two weeks ago, there were friends of mine whose calls I was ducking because I just couldn't deal with their drama on top of my own.  There were business issues I had put on the back burner because my brain just couldn't cope with even one more thing to do.  There were great new ideas that I just couldn't get excited about because all I could see was the amount of work it would take to implement them.  I was fried.  But I just thought I was tired.  I didn't realize that tired had long since passed and I was well and truly crispy around the edges.  Stress had been stalking me for so long that I had gotten used to its presence.  So used to it that I almost didn't notice.  Almost.

But when I left with the instructions to my staff not to call me unless the office was burning down and not really even then since I couldn't put out the fire from 1500 miles away, I realized that I really didn't want to hear from anyone.  I just wanted to sit and be for a while.  I was done with "doing".  I was ready to be a Human "Being".  And it was an amazing thing to watch.  I drove to an event in Ohio.  As I drove down I was yelling at other drivers on the road and working hard not to pop the educational CDs into the player.  But slowly, ever so slowly, the stress began to melt away.  I stopped thinking about work.  (When was the last time you actually did that?)  I started to breathe again.  And, by the time I was driving home, I was actually mosey-ing. 

It was a good thing I was too, since a good 10 seconds after the light changed in CT, a guy ran the red light.  Had I been in "do it" mode, I would have been in the middle of the intersection and he would have hit me - hard.  Instead, I was just putting the car into gear as he barreled through.  I couldn't even get up the ire to be upset with him.  He didn't realize he'd run the light.  And I was fine.  No worries!  And off I went for the rest of my relaxed day. 

Think about how stressed you feel right now.  Now consider how long you have felt stressed.  Our bodies are only meant to be under stress for 15 minutes at a time.  I'm betting that, like me, your stress has gone on for longer than that.  If you've felt stressed for a while, then believe me, your assessment of how stressed you are is seriously under estimated.  A day off here or there can't solve that kind of stress.  You need a block of uninterrupted non-work time.  Get some.  I can't tell you how much more productive I've been since I got back.  You will be too.  (Not to mention being a happier, easier-to-be-around person.)

Kelle Sparta is a national speaker, trainer and coach and the founder of Sparta Success Systems.  You can find out more about her and her company at www.spartasuccess.com.