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One easy strategy to reduce anxiety in social and professional situations is to arrive for an event or a meeting five minutes early. Being the first to show up rather than the last gives you more of a feeling that you own the room and can help you avoid that sense we all get that everyone's looking at us as we enter (though usually people are doing nothing of the kind).
Exercise, no surprise, can make a big difference too, since it elevates endorphins that in turn elevate mood. And since anxiety is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol and even obesity, working out can start to undo some of the damage stress does. Remember to allow yourself simple pleasures too--listening to music, taking five-minute breaks from your work and surrounding yourself with people you enjoy. If those things make you feel better just thinking about them, they should. They work. Chronic anxiety is terrible, but it's also treatable--and many of the treatments are actually fun.
Mehmet Oz is vice chairman and professor of surgery at the New York Presbyterian Columbia University Medical Center, a best-selling author and the host of the nationally syndicated television talk show The Dr. Oz Show