Once you know what your stressors are and how you cope, you can start to improve your skills. Becoming aware of how you cope is the first step to improving your overall coping skill. Only then can you determine how effective your coping is, and how to improve your overall skill.

• Identify stressors, what causes you to feel stress?
• Determine how you cope, what do you do in response to the stresses?
• Rate how effective your coping is, are you able to accomplish what you want?
• Study how others cope, what are some coping skills others use that you would like to employ.
• Select coping responses, how would you like to respond to the stressor.
• Reality testing, could you really easily employ the coping techniques you have selected?
• Adopt new skills, plan to use new effective coping skills.