10 Easy Ways to Minimize Stress The biggest hazard to your business may be the one you can't see: chronic stress.

As if there aren't enough threats to your business, the biggest hazard may be one you can't see: chronic stress. Hiding in plain sight, this toxic saboteur can ruin the best-laid plans with a trip to the ER and a sinkhole of medical bills. You may think you're handling it, but that's usually an illusion, supplied by the adrenaline released by the stress response, which masks the damage to your body by giving you a sense you're powering through it.

Brian Curin, 39, thought he was managing risk well as president of the footwear retailer Flip Flop Shops, which has more than 90 locations. Yes, there was pressure, but he exercised and ate well. He did feel a little off, though, and had a faint ache of something resembling heartburn.

Curin decided to pay his doctor a visit. Blood work, a resting EKG and a respiration test were negative, but a stress test and an angiogram turned up a big problem: four blocked arteries, one of them at 100 percent--not what Curin expected at his age. Without open-heart surgery, he could have been dead within weeks.