Are you stressed? Is your job demanding? Are you increasingly tired and overworked? Be surprised: Instead of working less you might even have to work more to get your true spirit back!

Is the following scenario familiar to you? The moment you switch on your computer it signals an overflow of unread emails. Your dairy is packed with appointments. Papers pile up on your desk as do trade magazines and books about personal and professional development. Today, you have reports to write, proposals to send out and presentations to give.

There are projects to supervise, phone calls to answer, staff to instruct. And of course, there is your real work: Your consulting, your designing, your constructing or writing. Maybe there is even family: Your daughter is to be picked up from violin lessons after work, your son to be dropped off at his friend's party.

Besides, if you happen to be a small business owner, apart from being an expert in your field, you have to be a financial manager, a marketing manager, a business development manager, a HR manager. The list of your jobs is endless.

Very often the result of having to successfully manage and fulfil multiple tasks at once is frustration and desperation. Instead of increasing, your level of energy is decreasing. You feel tensed, trapped and tired. Desperate to gain more time to get all the work done you might already have cancelled your gym membership and stopped going out on Friday nights.

However, experience shows this will get you nowhere. Instead it might even intensify your misery. Here is what internationally acclaimed psychologists recommend for re-energising and boosting your life-work balance:

Instead of investing more time in, simply take time off your business. Get out and start performing simple acts of kindness: Volunteer as a coach and show your little nephew's team how to kick the footy. Grab your elderly neighbour's shopping list and bring the groceries home for her. Help organising a fundraiser or simply write a short Thank you note to the always-friendly lady who diligently irons your shirts.

"Giving makes you feel good about yourself. When you are volunteering, you are distracting yourself from your own existence, and that is beneficial," says Prof. Christopher Peterson, University of Michigan, USA. He is a leading expert in the field of Positive Psychology and has researched phenomena of happiness over decades.

According to Peterson, giving puts meaning into your life. Consequently, you feel much happier and stronger and less stressed. Proven benefits of a stronger, happier state of mind include superior work outcomes, higher income and larger social rewards, more activity, energy, and flow, better physical health and even longer life, Peterson's colleague, Californian Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirksy, says.

To increase your level of personal and professional success and satisfaction and reduce the level of stress you're experience she recommends:

• Regular set aside time to write down a couple of things you are grateful for, like your son's smile.

Make it a daily habit to appreciate little things like the sweet taste of a ripe mango.

Invest time and energy in friends and family since a strong relationship and the commitment to spend time with loved ones contribute immensely to the highest levels of happiness and lowest level of stress.

After all: Being happier, healthier, more fulfilled and less stressed - isn't that why you started your own business or your new job in the first place?