Reduce Stress to Help Live Your Dream

When trying to achieve your dream life, many things affect your outcome, one of those being stress.  Actively managing stress and keeping life simple can make a dramatic improvement in your daily life.

If you’ve been wondering what degree of stress you live under, here is a quick way to get a fair estimate.   Thomas H. Holmes and Richard H. Rahe, in 1967 published a study in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research that provided a table of events and the amount of stress they cause in our life.  The most interesting feature of this table is that the people they interviewed told them, how they could rate specific events for the stress they cause, so this is human rather than a medical appraisal of the degree of stress those events caused.   The participants ranked life events based on if they thought the event was more intense and required more adjustment than a new marriage would require.  They then took all these numbers and created a final number from the median of each number and dividing by 10. 

The combined total of both positive and negative stresses in the past few months will give you an idea of your current stress level.  Keep in mind that people have varying stress-handling capacities and this table does not take into account such regular stresses as recreational drug use, alcoholism, chronic illness, allergy, battering and random stresses such as car accidents, contest winning to the dreaded tax audit.   In addition, some stressors you may adapt to faster than others.  You will also notice that some of these events are positive, unfortunately sometimes even positive things take time to adjust to and can cause stress at first.  For example, Christmas is a positive holiday, however it is stressful to manage all that comes with it!

Below is the scale that they created.  This is presented as information only and should not be used for diagnostic or treatment purposes. 
                        EVENT

- Death of spouse          100
- Divorce     73
- Marital separation    65
- Jail term     63
- Death of a close family member  63
- Personal Injury or illness   53
- Marriage     50
- Fired at work     47
- Marital reconciliation   45
- Retirement     45
- Change In health of family member  44
- Pregnancy     40
- Sexual difficulties    39
- Addition of new family member   39
- Business of adjustment   39
- Change in financial status   38
- Death of a close friend   37
- Change to different line of work  36
- Change in number of arguments with spouse 35
- Mortgage over $10,000    31
- Foreclosure of mortgage or loan  30
- Change in job responsibilities  29
- Son or daughter leaving home   29
- Trouble with in-laws    29
- Outstanding personal achievement  28
- Wife or husband begins or stops work  26
- Beginning or end of school   26
- Change in living conditions   25
- Revision of personal habits   24
- Trouble with boss    23
- Change in work hours or conditions  20
- Change in residence    20
- Change in school    20
- Change in recreational activities  19
- Change in  church activities   19
- Mortgage or loan under $10,000  17
- Change in sleeping habits   16
- Change in number of family get-togethers 15
- Change in eating habits   15
- Vacation     13
- Christmas     12
- Minor violations of the law   11

So how can you deal with stress?  There are many things you can do to help you adapt and reduce!  I am just adding a few to get you started! 

1. Exercise – great way to reduced stress and help you re-set your mood
2. Decrease Debt – living within your means not only helps you create more wealth, but also reduces stress
3. Breathe deeply – simple and easy, stop for 2 minutes take some deep breaths and you will be amazed at how you feel afterwards. 

Remember less stress means you can enjoy your life even more, so start working on reducing your stress.

Reach your Goals with small steps, small times and consistency

Many times we find ourselves overwhelmed with the prospect of reaching our goals.  We become focused on the achievement of the goal and try to accomplish it by going for it all at once.   We focus on the loose 20 pounds by December instead of loose two pounds this week.  This makes us feel like we are constantly working on that goal and yet not getting anywhere.  This leads to feeling defeated and wanting to stop since we don’t seem to be reaching our goals even though we are working on them!  So how do we change that?  Three easy steps: focus on the basics, take life in small segments and be consistent! 

When looking at the basics of a goal you take the smallest task that will get you to your goal and then do that.  By breaking our goals down to small basic steps we can make our goals to become a reality.  So instead of loose 20 pounds we focus on walk 40 minutes a day and not eating junk food.

Take life in small segments; break your day down to 15 minute sections.  You can get that 40 minutes of exercise in if you focus on just getting a few minutes done at a time.  It is much easier to say I am going to avoid junk food for fifteen minutes than it is to say the whole day.  Plus, once you start something you tend to stick with it after about 10 minutes. 

The third ingredient is to do the small things consistently.  You need to walk at least five days a week and eat healthy multiple days to see any affect.  You cannot try and achieve your goals for one or two days and wonder why it did not work.  It is the repetition of the activity over time that will get us to our goals.

You can achieve your goals, it just takes the time to plan the small steps, the will to focus on the here and now and the discipline to do it every day!  In no time you will be on your way!

Staying motivated, Positive and Happy

It can be very hard to stay motivated, positive and happy.  Especially with continually negative news (even when not warranted) and the day to day responsibilities that most of us have.  I myself find I can struggle to keep going even though I love what I do.  Some days I just want to throw my hands in the air and call it quits, but I don’t.  I do keep going.  How?  Usually I take a bit of recovery time for myself and try to refocus my energy to the positive. 

Yesterday was one of those days, so I pulled out some affirmations I use, committed myself to a media sabbatical (only positive things going in), put exercise first and reminded myself of my priorities.  Amazingly after only half a day I feel more revived than sometimes a long weekend can revive me!

 I challenge you, instead of being cranky or negative refocus yourself and get back to working on what you love.

Discover your purpose by Adding Exercise

Is living a life of happiness and purpose related to your level of physical fitness?  Yes!  It gives you the energy and emotional desire to go out and do more, thus getting you healthier from just moving around more!  I am sure there are other ways that it also increases your physical fitness, but what I really want to look at is if you are not living a life of purpose and are unhappy can focusing on physical fitness help you find your life direction?  I believe it definitely helps and has big impacts on my journey!  There are three main reasons that participating in fitness helps you with your direction.

1. Self esteem
2. Clearing your mind
3. Reduce stress

First, when you are exercising you end up establishing a higher self esteem.  When you are surer of yourself it is easier to move in the direction of your true calling.  You have the confidence to make the right jump or confront the issues that are affecting you.

Second, when you exercise it helps to clear your mind.  It allows you to zone out.  This helps because sometimes it makes way for a break through to occur with no other thoughts in the way (you often hear that great ideas came through in the shower, this is the same phenomenon).  These break through can be realizations that you are at the wrong company, it is time to retire or that it is time to start your own business.

Finally, exercise reduces stress.  Stress blocks logical thoughts making it harder to think and feel in an organized non emotional manner.  The less stress you have the clearer you are able to think and determine what you want from life.

So are you ready to add physical fitness to your life so you can begin to discover your true dreams?  It is much easier than you think and you don’t need to become an athlete to achieve this either!  I recommend three basic ways to add easy (and inexpensive) exercise to your day (talk with a doctor first if you have not worked out in a while!)

1. Walk – super easy just put on some shoes and hit the road.  Start small if you need to by walking around the block, keeping adding more every week.
2. Yoga – I love yoga as a way to not only get physical activity but to also find mental clarity.  There are enough styles of yoga out there that finding one you like is just a matter of trying different classes!  Try a local studio; buy a DVD or my personal favorite the web!  www.yogatoday.com is full of great teachers and lots of classes.  You can even start with the free class to see if you like it!
3. FitDeck Playing Cards – these cards make working out at home incredibly easy.  I have multiple sets and am always amazed at how fun and easy these cards make exercise! Even my four year old loves to do these with me!

Don’t wait another day, add exercise to your life and find that discovering your happiness is much easier!

Out of the Box Motivation

What do you do when you need a boost of confidence, or energy, or just enough motivation to keep going?  What happens when the normal does not work?

This weekend was a bit of a downer for me.  I was really struggling with the positive energy to keep working on my business.  It is especially hard when you work alone as an entrepreneur, my self motivation was gone!  Even though it was the weekend, I just could not shake my lack of excitement and motivation for my business.  It affected me all weekend and would not go away! 

So how did I move on and get energized and ready for work today?

Well it was tough, at first I tried to exercise (which usually is the golden ticket), then I tried entertaining friends at our place and then went to a friends house.  Normally all these things will get me motivated and ready for another day, but they just were not working!  Luckily my husband started making suggestions on Sunday.  He said read a book – “and I mean one for fun not to learn more about a project”.  I just started at him, because I really don’t own many of those books!  (Self help is my world).  Then he said or go watch a movie (Max was napping so I had time)!  For me that was the winner, I never take time to watch movies!  Amazingly I felt so refreshed after the movie (Sex in the City).  I was amazed.  What I began to realize is that sometimes it takes stepping out of our box, in all areas of our lives to create balance.  So even though I am very adamant about keeping my life balanced, I rarely change what items I am balancing.  I learned that by not always relying on my workout to give me ideas will make my rejuvenation even better.  Making my Monday even better!

So I challenge you, expand your life balance.  Do something out of the ordinary!  You never know where it might lead you!

Keep Going

How do we as professionals keep going when we don’t want to?  I wish I knew the answer every time I had a slow start day, but I don’t.  I believe every time we struggle it may be a different issue!  Is it a project that you don’t want to work on, do you need a vacation, or did your day get off to a bad start and you just need to reset?  How do you re-set your day? 

My re-starts:
Great music
exercise
mediation
bath
walk around block
long lunch
small tasks that keep me moving till the motivation comes back – like filing and paying bills

What is balance?

Everyone talks about leading a balanced life, but what exactly does that mean?  To me balance is taking the time to recharge so that I can continue to achieve, prosper and focus on what is important in life.  You can be more effective in your job on a daily basis if you work 9 focused hours versus 12 half focused hours.  At some point during the day your brain turns off and you are no longer as productive or as accurate as you could be.  Often times you end up needing to review what you have done the next day.  Wouldn’t it be better to end your day earlier, get in some exercise or quality family time?  Then you are become recharged, and don’t feel as if you are neglecting anything.  This allows focusing on work when you are there to be easier and more rewarding.  Try it for one week and see how you feel.

Yoga

Yoga is a powerful exercise, mediation, stretching, and spiritual experience.  This morning I had the chance to do 25 minutes before Max woke up.  It always amazes me how beneficial just a few minutes can be and how much I am energized by yoga.  Within that 25 minutes, I had woken up, stretched the morning kinks out and even worked up a sweet.  It put me in an instantly happy mood.  It is one of the few things that I believe can be beneficial to everyone. 

Many are afraid of yoga or consider it a new wave experience.  Yoga is much more simply a fantastic exercise that allows you to stretch, strengthen, relax and push all at once.  How to get started?

1. Pick a local class to join.  I recommend starting yoga with a live teach at a yoga studio so that you can learn the poses correctly.
2. If you don’t like it a first try another style.  There are many styles of yoga from Hatha which is a slow stretching style to Bikram which is 26 poses done in a heated room
3.  Keep going it takes time to learn, but is worth the effort

Tools for learning more about yoga or doing yoga?
http://www.yogajournal.com/
http://www.yogatoday.com

Enjoy

Exercise When you don’t want to

My current practice is to drop Max off at day care and then hit the gym before work.  This particular routine is very hard for me because I am not a morning person.  I have a better workout in the afternoon.  So why am I doing this routine?  Because it is the only way that I can guarantee myself a workout for the day.  I find that when planning lunch or afternoon workouts I don’t always get there, because things come up with work, the house or I just decide I am not in the mood and would rather keep working.  With the morning workout nothing else is distracting me, and it happens to be on the schedule so it is hard for something to come up and get in the way. 

So how do I make it a good work out since my workouts are not great in the morning?

1. I let myself ease into the workout by taking a longer warm up.
2.  I start with what I like.  I really enjoy strength training, so after warm up I start there.  By the time I hit my cardio phase I am all ready into it.
3.  When doing cardio, if I am struggling I keep telling myself 5 more minutes (because I know I can do 5) and before I know it I am done. 
4.  Also when doing cardio I switch machines through the workout to keep it exciting, I really can’t handle much more than 30 minutes on any machine.
5. I have a ten minute rule – If I get 10 minutes into my workout  and I still am struggling I allow myself to call it a day.  (Studies have shown that 10 minutes is a break point for your body to get in the grove)

This morning was one of the hard mornings.  It is raining here and I really was not in the mood for the gym (I actually wanted to be walking outside).  To make matters worse it was a cardio only day so I did not have the strength training to get me in the mood.  So I started my workout with a mini pep talk (I am here might as well do this) and then moved on to focusing on the first 10 minutes.  Once at 10 minutes I was still struggling so I pushed for five minutes more.  Soon I was at 30 minutes and thought this is a perfect time to stop, instead I switched machines.  I made it to my 50 minutes of cardio and now have the energy and focus to get through my day!