Stressed?

.

21 Century – Schedule: 6.30 am wake up,7.00 am prepare kids for school, 8.30 am stuck in traffic, 9.00 am financial meeting, 10.00am XX Report, 11.00am Client furious, 12.00pm New Project, 12.30pm Late for Business Meeting, 14.00pm ZZ Report, 15.00pm Re-re-re- adjust YY Report, 16.00pm Send documents, 16.30pm Finally time to work on that old project, 17.00pm Boss furious, 17.30pm Business Meeting, 18.30pm Very late for picking kids and bringing them to Parents/ Child evening, 20.30pm Finally home, 21.00pm Cooking? Or Order pizza? 21.30pm Read details about that New Project, 23.00pm Partner desperate, and 24.00 am Finally BED! (Ok, I skip some little details, but I leave it to your imagination!)

Are you stressed?
Unfortunately, our schedules are crammed with responsibilities that can get overwhelming. Continuous stress can negatively impact your health. In a way you know that…, but you just don’t know what to do. You can`t delete your schedule, but you can help your mind and body to stay focus and counteract stress.
What factors can impact stress and health?
1. Bad eating habits can be very good friends with stress.
2. Smoking and alcohol do not calm your spirits, but they bring more damage.
3. Lack of physical activities.
4. Disorganization.
5. Lack of sleep.

So, let`s de-stress your life!

Basics:
1. Pay attention to what you eat and when. Eat 3 meals a day, respecting the hour and make sure you have vegetables and fruits and plenty of water.
2. Organize! Your day – the evening before, or first thing in the morning. Your stuff – put everything back to its place after you use it.
3. Make sure you sleep at least 7-8 hours per night.
4. Walk for at least 10 minutes every day in the fresh air or at least every 2-3 days.
5. Do at least one activity that you enjoy every day.

And now, let`s outline your day in 20 steps:
1. Prepare for the morning the night before: plan breakfast, lunch bag and clothes.
2. Make a list with the things you have to do outside work or keep an agenda in your phone or computer with necessary remainders.
3. Get up 10-15 earlier if you know you are slower in the morning.
4. Keep reading material, nice music or audio books with you to cover the moments when you have to wait.
5. Keep duplicates of your keys and of your computer work.
6. Plan ahead for supplies: tokens, gas, basic meal, stamps, pens, paper.
7. First thing at work: plan a realistic day: priorities, hard work, things left aside.
8. Do unpleasant tasks when they arise – postponing them just increases agony.
9. Apologies if you did something wrong and assume responsibility.
10. Don`t do things that you have to lie about.
11. Make promises that are logical, realistic and that you know you can keep.
12. Learn to say NO for extra work and bring arguments for your statement.
13. Be kind to unkind people. At least, you won`t have a grey consciousness.
14. If something really goes wrong, do your best to fix it. If it still doesn`t work let it go, don`t stress for it!
15. If you are really in a bad mood – just think of the moments when you felt better.
16. Allow a fair time between appointments.
17. Get off from the bus a station early, or walk till the convenience store – that will be your walk.
18. Play a game, watch a movie, read something, chat with friends.
19. Set a reminder alarm clock/ specific music if you know you forget to get to bed.
20. Drink relaxing tea or a worm cup of milk and/ or take a nice relaxing bath, before bed if you know you are falling a sleep hardly.

Of course, other artistic or physical, relaxing activities are welcome, but if don`t have time for that and you really feel overwhelmed, practice a short relaxing exercise: BREATH!

Inhale deeply through your nose counting to 8, until you feel the air going deep in your stomach. Then exhale slowly through your mouth counting to 15. Concentrate on the sound of breathing and on the counting. Repeat for 5-10 minutes (5-15 times).

Good luck and a less stressful life!

Note: The above steps are really experienced by many. On a personal note – don`t forget I got for a long time through a full time job and full time school.

Happy or Unhappy

.
What is happiness?
Where ever you look you`ll find many definitions and theories on happiness.

Basically, happiness is a state of mind of a person that feels joy, peace, satisfaction, pleasure related to his/her personal environment: relationships, employment, health, economical, political and religious surroundings, freedom, inner thoughts.
How happy or unhappy you are it comes to one`s own values.
But what steps drive you to that state of mind?

1. You have a goal.
2. You are excited about the actions you take to achieve that goal.
3. You achieve that goal.

Result: happiness.
Of course, this state of happiness becomes boredom with the passing of time, as long as no new goal appears.
What steps drive you to the contrary state of mind?

1. You have no goal, but you keep doing things.
2. You have a goal, but it`s not really what you want, but a surrogate (for different reasons)/ or/ You have an unrealistic goal.
3. You are making no progress towards your goal.

Result: unhappiness (with all the additional feelings: frustration, anger, sadness, anxiety)

Let`s reformulate this, as steps towards happiness.

1. Establish a goal that it`s desirable and realistic for yourself. It doesn`t really matter in which area.
2. Establish the first action and a target date as first steps in the way of achieving your goal. Write it down, fix it mentally and talk about it.
3. Take pride once you accomplished the action and establish a new target step.

Happiness is just an instant – contemplation of satisfaction. The intensity of that moment is determined by the progressive accumulation of emotions while achieving small steps at time toward the desirable goal.

Personal Improvement

Somehow we are all interested in personal improvement …We want to be smarter, richer, happier, more successful, kinder etc. But what do we do to achieve that? We usually get tips from different sides and learn. I decided to write here some different ideas that I gathered in my way. You may comment or add some new information. I know out there you`ll find plenty of books on personal improvement, some very specialized and very good – but they all cost a lot of money. And, at a certain point I could even recommend a few. But, what I`ll do here- I`ll write some guidelines that you may apply to find the answer within your self.
You are allowed to print or distribute the material under this label as long as you keep mentioning the author: Serenia.

We are the answer to all of our issues.