It was 7:00 am on December 10, 1996. I awoke to the familiar tick-tick-tick of my compact disk player as it began winding up to play. Sleepily, I hit the snooze button just in time to catch the next mental wave back into dreamland. Here, in this magic land I call “Thetaville”—a surreal place of altered consciousness somewhere between dreams and stark reality—my spirit beamed beautiful, fluid, and free from the confines of normal reality.

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart

Sam Walton lived a life which displayed everything he believed in. Over the years, especially since Wal-Mart became a publicly traded company on the stock market, Sam’s vision and philosophy have slowly been forgotten. Although Wal-Mart may not offer the greatest customer service today, Sam’s words on the importance of customers to any business are timeless.

The pace of modern life has become so fast and intense that it has created an epidemic in our society. This epidemic that affects the majority of us is stress. You have probably heard how stress affects the human body. It is not unusual for people to suffer all kinds of psychological and physical problems because they are afraid of dealing with the factors responsible for their stress.