To understand this you first need to know what each are.

Being anxious is common. It is the state of feeling excited and just a wee bit more. Being anxious can be a good thing in that it helps you to feel motivated or excited about certain events.

If controlled it helps you to get work done quicker, it can stimulate your creative urges and your job performance levels can increase.

If this feeling of being anxious increases, or if your energy decreases as work pressures, deadlines etc advance, then it can change. If allowed to progress beyond the feelings of excitement or minor nervousness, being anxious can become a case of anxiety.

Anxiety is harmful. At all levels no matter how big or small, anxiety will create harm. Anxiety changes your brain chemistry and affects your body's ability to function.

Anxiety will create changes in your heart rate, blood pressure, nerve conduction, digestion and literally every system in the body. Anxiety will create fatigue and change your ability to process information.

Anxiety is common today as you have allowed the progression to this state. How has this happened?

Your day to day life has changed. Your work pressures have increased since you now use 'time saving' devices. The computer, cell phone and other gadgets have allowed you to fit more into your day to day routines. As you become busier and busier your energy levels decrease, your health declines and that feeling of being anxious has become … anxiety.

Anxiety is kept under control when your body and mind function well. When your energy levels are high, then stresses are low. Once your energy declines, stresses become more stressful. They eat away at your reserves and allow stress to sink in and change your functional ability of your mind and body.

This is a slow process, it doesn't happen overnight. Most of the time you are unaware of it until it is too late. You wake up one day go to work and suddenly notice you snap at people more often. The deadlines seem to come faster than usual. The creative urges dry up and you feel you are trying to force ideas or inspiration from your body and mind physically.

You finish the day and feel drained rather that euphoric. You get home and your spouse seems to be more on edge and your children more grumpy and irritating. Your weekends feel too short and life becomes too hard.

All just because stress has changed over time … no more being anxious ...you now have full blown anxiety.

In an ideal world you would have a thermometer taped to your forehead. It would read the level of stress and energy in your body and mind, you would then when to take a break or slow down. This way all the anxiety and stress events would be avoided or combated easily.

The problem is you don't have a thermometer to measure the stresses increasing. So what can you do?

You need to day to day stress relief exercises. This way you know you are reducing your stress and anxiety levels before they get too high. You don't need to spend hours each day doing this. Just a few minutes each day, doing an enjoyable activity, that reduces stresses and anxiety automatically. Then each day your stresses will melt away.

Anxiety and stress are killers, slow assassins that will creep up on you unless you take action now. Don't wait until you are clutching your chest with a heart attack, don't wait for the boss to look in your eyes and say 'Jones that idea is just rubbish'. You need to eliminate anxiety and stress now. A life without anxiety and stress is a life … not a death sentence.