Ein-shei Chen was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 1995. Yet she hasn’t let the degenerative disease derail her daily life or dull her dreams. Chen is the president of the Motor Neuron Disease Association of Taiwan. She’s given speeches at ALS conferences all over the world. She’s even convinced the government to build an ALS clinic in her city of Taichung — the second facility in all of Asia.

Chen can only move her big toe. She writes emails and communicates with others using special technology. Composing an email with five short sentences takes her 20 minutes. But she continues to email with her family, friends and other ALS patients. She also visits patients in person with the help of her caregivers and relatives.

Chen’s remarkable story is featured in Richard Cheu’s empowering book Living Well With Chronic Illness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide. Cheu provides pastoral counseling to patients in New York City medical and hospice centers. He helps patients find peace with their illness and live their lives to the fullest.

One of the biggest — if not the biggest — barrier to practicing self-care is guilt. Women, in particular, feel incredibly guilty for tending to their needs.

And it’s not surprising. According to Ashley Eder, LPC, a psychotherapist in Boulder, Colo., “We are surrounded by overt and covert messages that encourage us to minimize our own needs and feel guilty when we engage in self-care.”

Food and relaxation are prime examples. “Think how many times a day you see some kind of reference to a woman ‘indulging,’ ‘splurging,’ or ‘sinning’ because she meets a basic need like eating food she enjoys or taking time to relax.”

There’s also the belief that taking care of yourself leaves less time and energy for others. But, as Rachel W. Cole, a life coach and retreat leader, said, “self-care is other care.” In other words, practicing self-care helps us help others more effectively. Below, Cole and Eder share other powerful ideas to consider if the palpable guilt appears.

Over the weekend, I read David Rock’s very interesting book, Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long.

One strategy particularly struck me. He suggested that if you’re feeling a negative emotion, you can work to reduce it simply by labeling it in one or two words.

Note, however, that thinking or talking at length about the emotional state tends to intensify it, while simply observing and labeling it helps to quell it.

I do this myself, instinctively. I find myself thinking, “I’m overwhelmed” or “I’m frazzled” or “I’m feeling defensive” — and it’s odd how calming it is. Just putting a label on a feeling helps me to master it.

Applying self-compassion to parenting can be incredibly valuable, according to psychologist and author Kristin Neff, Ph.D, in her book Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind.

It’s especially helpful if you’re raising a child who’s under 5. As Neff writes, “Raising infants and toddlers, with their constant need for supervision, picky food habits, tantrums, not to mention dirty diapers, has to be one of the most challenging jobs around.”

In Self-Compassion, Neff shares the work of Australian psychologist Rebecca Coleman, Ph.D. Coleman has developed a parenting program called Mindful Awareness Parenting (MAP). It teaches parents mindfulness and self-compassion skills and helps them make good decisions in tough situations.

The term and concept of “stress” has become ingrained in our vernacular. There are scores of articles on how to manage stress in everything from our homes to our health to our workplace and for everyone from moms to dads to the kids. (I’ve written many myself.)

However, according to Dana Becker, Ph.D, author of the thought-provoking book One Nation Under Stress: The Trouble with Stress As An Idea, by focusing on how each person can manage stress, we’re obscuring the bigger picture and issues: the social, political and economic problems that spark and perpetuate our stress in the first place.

Today’s articles and rhetoric on stress imply that if we fix ourselves, we’ll fix everything. Instead of stress-reducing tips empowering us, according to Becker, “we’re being sold a bill of goods.” We’re buying into an illusion that “blames the victim.”

I have been practicing mindfulness meditation for many years. However, bringing it into my life as a daily practice can still be a challenge, especially when things get busy.

This has made me wonder why we struggle to maintain those things in life that we know are good for us. In a world where choice is overwhelming, and access to possibilities via the Internet are creating an obsession with connectedness, it has become harder to stay focused. And it is through this hyper-connection to the external world that we are losing the connection to ourselves.

Meditation offers a way to unplug from the incessant stream of information and noise, whether external or internal, and be reminded that there is a place to reside that is beyond time and beyond needing to be somewhere else. Meditation brings us close to the simple miracle of consciousness without needing a tragic shakeup to get there.

How often do you stop in your day and feel gratitude for the mere fact that you can see? Did you actually taste the last meal you ate? Were you really listening to the last friend who was speaking to you, or were you already thinking about what you wanted to say next?

Do you want to improve your health and decrease your stress level?

If you’re experiencing some of the common symptoms of stress, such as irritability or anger, fatigue, feeling overwhelmed and changes in sleeping habits, then the physical and mental consequences of stress are all too clear.

And if you have made efforts to improve your stress levels, you’re not alone.  According to a new survey, Stress in America: Missing the Health Care Connection, which was conducted online by Harris Interactive, Americans think it’s important to improve their health and levels of stress.

Over the past five years, 60 percent of adults have tried to reduce their stress and more than half are still trying to meet this goal, according to the survey.

In fact, according to the survey’s findings, Americans are struggling to keep their stress at levels that they believe are healthy.  But how well do we do that?

On my morning commute last week, an interesting radio conversation about grief and consolation made me turn up the volume. The co-hosts of one of my preferred morning radio programs were discussing what we say to our friends who are dealing with emotionally trying, tragic circumstances.

One of the hosts said that he dealt with a difficult personal issue a few years ago. He described conversations he had with friends who wanted to offer their support and condolences, and he said, “Most of them told me, ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say to you.’”

And then the host made a particularly interesting comment: “Then my friends opened their mouths anyway — and that’s when I wished they had never said anything in the first place.”

I’ve certainly been on both ends. When I attempt to give my grieving friends comfort or insight, too often I walk away feeling as if I’ve failed. My words are balloons that have come untied, or antiseptic on a burning wound. I long to help — and stumbling over my words, confused over what angle I should take, I feel a miserable failure.

How many of us have admitted that we have nothing comforting to say, and then turned right around and scraped together some kind of awkward, unhelpful comment? Why is it that we feel we must speak, and why do our words so often harm the mourner?

People often talk about running away to another, better place to escape their problems. But they are reminded that the problems remain even if they clean up and do things right this time around.

I often have thought of getting a fresh start somehow. I got that opportunity, but in an unfortunate way.

A failed suicide attempt left me completely disabled, unable to work and with a severe hypoxic brain injury that affected many aspects of my life. I had to start from rock bottom and completely rebuild my entire life.

Before the suicide attempt, I had a great job, made great money, bought a new car and had lots of friends that I hung out with often. In retrospect, I had everything and I was proud of myself for working so hard and doing so well.

Behind the scenes, I had a bad drinking problem and was constantly self-medicating my anxiety and depression.

For many people, work is a pressure cooker. Even if your job is less demanding, there’s still an element of stress. Work is still work, after all. And it comes with high expectations and tough tasks, and requires good results.

As mindfulness teacher Ed Halliwell said, “We’re expected to meet deadlines, make quick and often complex decisions, and manage relationships with others effectively, all the while achieving results in the face of constraints, which aren’t always of our own making.”

Practicing mindfulness on the job offers a bounty of benefits, according to Halliwell. It soothes and calms our bodies and minds. It improves our ability to work and produce great work. Even when stress strikes, instead of getting overwhelmed, it helps us confront challenges head-on, he said.

How? Mindfulness trains us to stay in the present. “It trains us to become more aware of what’s going on in and around us, giving us the capacity to see things clearly and act from a wider perspective.”

Low salaries, lack of opportunity for advancement and heavy workloads have more than one-third of Americans reporting feeling chronic work stress.

And women are feeling it more acutely than ever.  After decades of making progress in the work force, many women are feeling less valued than men, according to a recent APA survey on Stress in the Workplace.  They’re feeling they don’t receive adequate monetary compensation for their work and feel that employers offer them fewer opportunities for internal career advancement than men.

Why are women feeling less appreciated than men, when it comes to compensation and why are they stressed by lack of opportunity?

Possibly because they are.

“Life has a way of testing our ability to stay calm,” according to Carla Naumburg, Ph.D, a clinical social worker and author of the blog Mindful Parenting on Psych Central.

It could be anything from a tantrum-throwing toddler to a broken appliance to a family crisis to an eleventh-hour project at work, she said.

But even on the days when you’re not putting out fires, peace might still be missing. Below, you’ll find tips for creating calm every day and finding peace in stressful situations.

1. Remember thoughts are not facts.

Our thoughts are highly influential in determining how we feel throughout the day. Fortunately, we’re not shackled to negative cognitions. “Thoughts are just thoughts,” Naumburg said. They’re “the result of neurons firing for reasons we may never understand.”

When any kind of thought arises, you can decide what to do with it. “You might want to explore [your thoughts] or act on them, or you might want to let them go and move on. You can decide.”