My pleasure. Not entirely altruistic, though; I have kids and this is a way of being prepared for their emergencies whilst my company pays for the training. Everyone benefits this way.

@blandry

I agree with a lot of what you say, but view it with a slightly different slant. In my opinion, stress is an unavoidable byproduct of anything happening that affects what is important to you. What's often forgotten, as you rightly point out, is that stress isn't always destructive; having each of my kids was incredibly stressful for me, but in an entirely positive way (I was keyed up for ages afterwards).

Therefore, one of the key steps is to better understand what we really believe to be important to us, and what your experience has obviously done is just that. However, many of us will still rate things on your "it's not that big a deal" list with a higher importance than you do. I, for instance, do view retaining my job as personally important simply because it's a means to feed my family, and anything affecting my job security has the capacity for raising my stress levels.

Which is why I believe reducing the number of things one sees as important is not the whole answer. One must also find a mechanism for accepting the stresses one is under, minimise their adverse effects and maximise their positive ones. How? Phil Factor's certainly touched on some, and I've suggested another, but I'm all ears for plenty more suggestions, 'cos there are definitely still times when pressure gets to me so my technique's nowhere near perfect.