Don't Panic the Skunks

Marlene, a mother of six children, walked into the house one day and spotted her children huddled together in a circle. When Marlene approached her children to see what the intense interst was, she could hardly believe her eyes. In the middle of the circle of attention were several baby skunks.

The shocked mother screamed at the top of her voice, "Children! Run, run, run!"

At the sound of their mother's alarmed voice, the children each grabbed a skunk and ran. The screaming and panicking set of the danger alarm in the skunks, of course, and each one off them dispelled its horrible scent. Each and every child became mercilessly doused with the hideous smell.

The lesson here is quite simple: The mother had caused the very chaos the she feared simply by

overreacting to the situation. We can learn a lot about people and their reactions from this story.

Allowing situtions to be blown out of proportion does not help to handle difficult situations or difficult

people, for that matter. Don't allow another's difficult behavior to consume your life. It may caouse th double

stress - or as it was this case, six-times as much stress!