First “hump day” of the year! As we check in with ourselves in the middle of the week, we must remember to keep our stress levels in check. We do this by practicing some fun self-care activities to keep our energy and vibration up. You’ll find some listed above. I would love to hear any you might add.
I have heard a lot of people expressing how crazy the world seems lately. I put that word in italics for a great reason. A lot of our world is based on our perception. We have all heard the cliché ‘Perception is reality’ The reason that it is a cliché, is because there is a great deal of truth to it. The world does seem to be filled with dramatic and rapid change. The same was probably true during the industrial revolution. Also during the dark ages, when any day you could be killed if your neighbor said you were a witch. That must have been some stress to live under. I honestly believe that the amount of stress doesn’t change, just the name and form of stress.
Whatever form stress may take, there is one thing we can say about being stressed out – it sucks. Feeling overwhelmed or out of control of our own life never feels good. There are a lot of new tools to help us deal with this stress. There are meditation apps. I even saw an app where celebrities can read you bed time stories. These are great, but I believe there is a tool that has been around for centuries that can do a better job. In addition to helping us get a handle on our stress, it can do so much more. It can give us a greater sense of mental clarity. It can also give us a great insight into our thinking patterns, acting as a cheap and readily accessible therapist. That way when life is getting at you, or like our poor chap in the picture above, you get a bad phone call, you can use this tool and help avoid overwhelm and burn out.
You might think a tool that can do all of this would be expensive. You will be pleased to know you can get this tool as cheap as a couple of dollars. I wrote about this tool in my first book, A Happy Life for Busy People. I also wrote about it a total of three times on this blog in 2013. Oddly enough, we haven’t spoken about it since then. I think it is long overdue that we bring up the topic again. This amazing tool is the journal. Before you are tempted to dismiss this idea because of its simplicity, let me caution you against doing so.
I am going to share with you some of the reasons this tool is so effective. First of all, a handwritten journal forces us to slow down and record our thoughts. Second, we are…umm… well…recording our thoughts. Trying to keep all of our thoughts in our head can be equated to plugging more and more things into an outlet. Eventually, the circuit will blow. This could be a feeling of anxiety, a panic attack or a full-blown nervous breakdown. These are expensive physically, mentally and with the cost of healthcare, financially as well. The cost of a journal can be as cheap as a pen and a spiral notebook. This takes some of the load off that circuit. It also gives us a record to thoughts we have and what may trigger them. Often, when we write down how we are feeling and read it back later, we can feel a little foolish for how we may have reacted to a certain situation. It is good to have that record.
A journal can be a safe place to share our feelings, even if it is only with the paper. It can be a place of emotional release. A journal can be the cheapest therapist we can hire. Beautiful thing is, this therapist doesn’t have office hours and is always available. In order to keep life from becoming overwhelming for you, might I suggest picking up a journal and just begin recording your day. Getting things out will take the burden off of your mind and will help you from having a melt down, or just blowing a circuit. I would love to hear your stories about how journaling helped you. If you want to learn more about journaling, feel free to check out my book, A Happy Life for Busy People, available on Amazon or wherever fine books are sold. You can also go back and read the posts from 2013 or listen to the episode on my podcast at the link below. Whatever you choose, I would love your feedback!
Here we are at Monday again. The start of a new week and lots to accomplish. While we have a lot of projects to work on, we must not forget the greatest project we should devote our life to, that being the improvement of ourselves. Many people may consider this a selfish venture, and in some way I guess that could be correct. After all, if you are in better physical shape, you can do this easier with less pain. You improve your financial outlook and you have a lot less stress. Speaking of stress, that is one area we really benefit by getting under control. Almost every malady in our life is brought on by one stress or another.
All of the above is true, but we must remember something else. Those around us benefit greatly when we become the best versions of ourselves. If you are fit and healthy, you can imagine that would be a benefit to your spouse. It would also benefit your employer and coworkers as you will call in sick less often. If you are manage to get your stress under control you are more likely to treat those around you with a great deal of compassion. The importance of this cannot be overstated. If the world was under less stress and everyone treated each other with a greater deal of compassion and understanding, can you imagine what that would be like? This may sound like a fairytale to many of you, but the interesting point is that it is entirely possible. There are two very important things we can do to help this become a reality.
The first thing we can do is get to work on ourselves. Becoming the best version of yourself is a lifelong commitment. There is always more to learn. We can and must continue to work on being healthy. If we wish to have a better world, one of the most important things we can do is make sure we are bringing a better person to it. We will bring joy and improvement to three different areas. We will be helping ourselves, others and the world around us. Not bad for one action. Next time you think placing time and effort on improving yourself is a selfish action, this might be something to remember.
The other thing that we can do to help bring about a better world, is to help others become the best version of themselves. It is VITAL to mention here this does not mean telling others what you think they should do better. It is being a supportive and encouraging friend to whatever self-improvement action they are working on. Knowing that we have the support of others can help us with any goal we are working on and give us the strength to improve that area of our lives.
If you wish to give a gift to yourself, those you share life with as well as the world at large, just work on becoming the best version of you. This does not only have to include effort we put forth, but making sure we take time for self-care and stress relief. It may seem cruel to say ‘no’ when someone asks you to do something, but if it will cause you a great deal of stress, or you are feeling like you need some time to heal, it would be far better to take that time. Become the best version of yourself and help others who are struggling to do the same. It is the best thing we can do to create an amazing world.
In a world of adulting and Bill paying, sometimes you need to reconnect with the simple joys of life. Above is a picture of an alpaca. Animals can bring us a great amount of joy. Whether that is a family pet, going to the park to watch the birds, or even an alpaca at the state fair, Animals rarely fail to put a smile on our face!
Animals not your thing? Maybe you have an allergic issue that prevents you from enjoying them? Maybe you would just like to have another outlet to bring you joy? How about going back to simple childhood activities? In an age of cell phones and high resolution video games, it can be refreshing to pick up a crayon and draw a picture. That is just what my lovely lady is doing in the picture above! We, for some reason, feel we should leave these activities behind as we grow older. Truth is, as adults, we may need them more than ever!
What simple activity do you practice to bring you joy?
Last post, we looked at why waking up even ten minutes earlier could benefit you. In case you missed that, I will give you a quick recap. In my own life, I was able to work in some mild exercise to get my blood pumping and my mind moving. I was also able to make my coffee, get dressed and do everything else in a less stressful fashion. Anytime you can reduce stress in your life, that is a win. Not hitting the snooze may sound like additional stress, but it really is not. Do you know what is stressful? Hearing the alarm in the first place! When you hit snooze, you get to have that stress an additional time…or two…or three. Not to mention the 5 or 10 minutes between hitting snooze and the alarm going off again are not filled with blissful slumber. In fact, most of the time it is filled with the dread of hearing the alarm.
The stress of waking up only lasts a moment. Once you are out of bad and standing up, it usually dissipates fairly quickly. Unfortunately, if you have hit snooze too many times it is usually replaced by the stress of running late and trying to get ready. The key is to fill your morning with things you look forward too. These are morning rituals. There have been many listed in the pictures above. We will look at what some high achievers do in the picture below. In the meantime, think of what rituals would work for you. Would some simple stretching help to get your body limber before your morning commute? How about being able to make your coffee with time to enjoy the aroma and maybe even a sip or two before you head out the door? How would reading something inspirational affect your mindset first thing in the morning?
After you make a list of morning rituals you would like to incorporate, then decide how long each would take. Set your alarm accordingly. If you hit snooze, you will know that you will have to forgo one of these items that will make your life better. That may help get you up and out of bed. After a few days of going through your morning rituals, you will feel how starting your day less stressed and more inspired will feel. Do this for a week and you will not want to stop. I can speak from personal experience. When I did not hit the snooze, my mornings, and by consequence my days, were a lot less stressful.
Here are a few of the things some people you may recognize do with their mornings. You may notice it is a nice blend of productivity and stress relief. I suggest the same for us. If you are thinking, “Neil, this all sounds great but that would mean I would have to get up an hour early!” I would tell you two things. First, there is a great book called Miracle Morning that I would recommend you check out. It will have you realize that an hour early could change your life. It will also show you how to do this in as little as 6 minutes. The other suggestion is to divide it up by day. Your Monday morning ritual may involve something to get you fired up. Your Tuesday may involve something to ground you. You can switch between exercise, stretching, meditation, journaling and just five minutes of meaningful silence. Before you know it, you may want to do a few of each and find yourself setting the alarm a few minutes early!
I would love to know what your current morning ritual is and what you would like to add to it. As for me, when I go back to work, I am going to get back to my planks, squats and reading my motivational day by day calendar. I would love to hear yours in the comments below.
Here is a post we can all get behind! As I write this, I’m on vacation listening to a steel drum band. The funny thing is, I used to have every Monday off. It was my designated off day. Back then, I loved Mondays. Looked forward to them even!
This got me thinking, how taking off an occasional Monday could change our perception of them. How would your view of Monday change if it involved sleeping in, spending some time at your favorite coffee shop… or maybe listening to a steel drum band? I say do it! Treat yourself. Take a Monday off and plan something fun!
While it is important to focus on what we put into our bodies in terms of food, the is a lot more to our daily diet than that. What do I mean? What is your daily diet of self-care? What is your daily diet of activities to improve your physical health? How about improving your mental health? How about your spiritual health? What about your daily diet of information?
Above you will find some good suggestions to include in your daily diet. However, I suggest taking a look at your own diet. What is your daily diet for self-care? If it is nothing, you may find yourself feeling drained and uninspired. How about your daily diet when it comes to physical health? If it is not good, you will feel tired and may find yourself sick more often. This holds true on mental, emotional and spiritual levels as well.
What about your daily diet of information? Do you spend your morning commute listening to some political talk radio that gets your blood pressure boiling? Maybe you spend and hour every night watching the news and feeling depressed and hopeless? What if you spent that hour listening to something that would give you tools and strategies to succeed? You could include something that would inspire you and make your heart soar!
What does your daily diet look like? Could you benefit by including any of the items listed above? Please share what items you are going to add to your daily diet to improve your life in the comments below.
It is Monday as this blog is released. For many, this can be the toughest day of the week. First day back to work. With the challenge of waking up and commuting there, often problems that occurred during the week have to be dealt with. Even if you are reading this on a day other than Monday, the same can hold true.
Listed in the photo above is a good remedy for this stress and anxiety. Before bed, just focus on one thing that makes you smile. This can be something you are looking forward to. Perhaps a vacation? Run a mental movie in your head of everything that includes. Feel the sunshine on your skin. Taste the wonderful food at the resort. Smell the ocean breeze and suntan lotion. See the palm trees and blue water. Hear the lapping of the waves on the shore.
What if you don’t have something to currently look forward to? Think of a great memory. Maybe a fond walk with a love one. Do the same thing of engaging as many of your senses as listed above. One caution, do not let yourself be filled with sadness or regret that this is a memory. Instead, be filled with the feeling of gratitude that you had that experience in your life. Remember, not everyone is blessed enough to have memories like that.
We have focused on the importance of our morning routines. That often starts with the night before. The last 20 minutes before bed (and the first 20 upon waking) is when your brain is most susceptible to suggestion. Why not fill that time with something that fills your heart with joy. As a bonus, you will sleep better and, more than likely, have more enjoyable dreams.
Last post we discussed addressing some issues we may not have known we had inherited from our family, neighborhood or other influences. It may make some people uncomfortable to think they are changing or God forbid, improving something about themselves. I get it. In today’s world it can be hard to admit we are anything less than perfect, even if it is through no fault of our own. Nobody likes to admit they have something to work on. Do you know what nearly everyone likes? Realizing they are getting better at something. It can be close to downright exciting to think you may be working on mastering something. Here is some great news, there are plenty of areas in which we can do this!
If we stop and think of the very important issues in life, how many were we taught or have we stopped to research? What do you think is important in your life? Where did you learn how to do it well? Did you ever stop to learn how to do it well? Relating to others is one of the most important skills a human can have. How well did you do in your ‘relating to others’ class in school? Do you recall when your parents sat you down and explained some of the many aspects that go into a healthy and sustainable relationship? Me neither. How about communication? The ability to both convey your thoughts, feelings and emotions to others as well as hear and understand theirs is skill that is as rare as it is valuable. How many years did you study that in school? If your education was anything like mine, that answer would be less than one. . What good is learning our alphabet and how to spell words if we are never taught how to effectively convey and use those very words.
It would seem a great deal of important subjects are left for us to learn by chance, or for far too many of us, by trail and error or not at all. The problem with this is that the stakes are far too high for most of us to learn that way. One mistake in how we relate to others can not only cost us a job, it can ruin relationships and cause emotional trauma to others, including those we truly care about. We occasionally get some instruction on interviewing to get the job we are seeking, although even that is limited. Did ever seem odd that nobody ever told us how to ask the right questions to discover if someone would be the right life partner for us? The same holds true with maintaining a healthy mental and emotional state. As far as I know, there exists very little, if any, instruction in public education on this subject. Is it any wonder, as the stresses in life continue to rise, we are seeing a host of people with mental health challenges. We were never even told how to deal with the stress that is all too prevalent in our lives.
We repeat here the axiom from the last post that fault does not equal responsibility. It is certainly not our fault we were never taught how to succeed in some of the most important areas in life. This is not a knock on our teachers and parents. They were never taught these things either. It is, however, our responsibility to educate ourselves on these very subjects. If a healthy relationship is important to us we need to learn what the components of one are and how to get them. If being able to communicate to others and have them understand you may be valuable, don’t you think it might be worth a few hours of research? How much effort is living a life with less stress and more joy worth to you? What other areas are important? Do you think being a great parent to your child is important? Do you think you may have received some bias or incomplete information on that subject growing up? Would you like to give your children the best possibility of success as they grow up?
When I share this information I hear a lot of groaning about having to dedicate additional time learning. “I spent enough time studying in school.” is a refrain I hear all too often. If that is your mindset you must then become comfortable at the thought you will not develop past the person you were when you left school. “I don’t have time.” is another answer I hear. To that I say this – it is not that you don’t have time, it is that it is not a priority for you. If I told you that you could have ten million dollars but I would need 2 days worth of your time starting tomorrow at 6am, where would you be at 5:59?
Dedicating time for study in these subjects is worth more than that ten million dollar price tag mentioned earlier, it is priceless. Being able to better understand, and even more importantly meet, the needs of your spouse? How much would you pay for that? Not feeling so stressed out at the end of every work week, or even every work day, how much would that be worth to you? You see, studying the main topics in life is like digging in a vain of solid gold. The knowledge you get can not only positively transform your life, it can do the same for lives of those you care about. Can you imagine sitting down to share topics like these with your children while at the same time listening to what concerns they may have? How valuable would that be? How about learning how to help people feel good about themselves? Would that be skill that might come in handy with the boss at the office or the one you love at home?
Here is the grand upside to all of this. The knowledge on all of these subjects is readily available and it is free. All it takes is some time and effort on our part. There are literally millions of books available in the public library system at no charge to us. There are forums, articles and experts available online with a click of a mouse. There are audiobooks we could listen to in the car, seminars we can attend, videos on YouTube we could watch while we are in line at the grocery store. There is so much information out there, in so many different forms that there is no excuse not to become an expert in any area of life that is important to us. Learning one new thing a month, which is painless to do, can give us 12 tips to a healthier lifestyle. Can you imagine incorporating 12 new things this year to improve your health? How much of an impact do you think that would have? What if we learned one new way to improve our intimate relationship a week? This is still insanely easy to do. Do you think adding 52 improvements to your relationship in a year would positively impact your love life?
There is no excuse not to begin to become an expert on the important areas of our life starting today! How important is the success of your children? How important is the happiness of the love of your life? How valuable would having extra energy and health be? Decide what is important to you and begin to study today! Your life is far too valuable not to.
As we grow older we realize what we thought was important in our youth may very well turn out to be quite less important in later years. If we think about our own lives we undoubtedly will realize that this is true for us. I have heard people say “Ask yourself if this will mater 10 years from now.” Some things in life that seem make or break we can’t even remember a year from then. Gossip, even work related issues that can certainly be tricky at the time, can pass by to be forgotten. In looking back, I have been upset by some pretty silly and stupid things. How do we know what not to waste our time on? How do we know if the issue we are currently dealing with will even matter a year from now? After all, in the heat of the moment, most things do seem pretty important. There is a simple way to reduce the time we spend getting upset with, and wasting our time on nonsense. This will not only reduce the amount of time we spend upset, thus reducing a good deal of stress in our lives, but will also allow us to put that formally wasted time to better use.
A great way to make sure we do not spend time on what does not matter is to spend some time deciding what does matter. This is best done when you are not emotional. Being able to reflect on what is truly important in your life will allow you to often see the nonsense of life for what it truly is. This is helpful when you find yourself in a highly emotional state. If what is important to you is your spirituality, your family and your health, does it really matter what foolish thing a politician does? Is it worth wasting your time arguing the point with your coworker or the guy standing next to you at the bus stop? Probably not. Then again, if your politics are very important to you, it might be. If you can spend an afternoon (or whatever time of day works for you) pondering what you value in life and writing it down, this could pay great dividends down the road. When you find yourself greatly upset about something, refer to your list. If it is not on there in some capacity, find a way to let it go.
These are one of those times that recognizing that we are different in this regard will also save you a lot of stress. All of us place importance on different things in life. If it frustrates you why your spouse does not get as upset as you do about a certain issue it may serve you well to consider it just might not be that important to them. Although that might also frustrate you, it could certainly help you to understand your spouse and the situation better. If you are in the market for someone to spend your life with, this is also a great exercise to do. Finding someone who is passionate about the same issues as you do, could save a lot of stress as the years progress. If you are already in a relationship, being able to articulate what upsets you in a clear and concise manner to your partner will be helpful in both reducing upsets, but also getting to know one another on a deeper level. Like most relationship tools, this does not only work in an intimate relationship, but in other relationships as well.
As we grow older it is helpful to realize what is important to us and what becomes nonsense can and should change. As we mature, so does what is worth our time and energy. When I was younger, I placed great importance on solving every issue with people in my life. As I grew older, I began to value my own peace of mind more. When there was an issue that involved a conflict of values, or some unnecessary drama, the question went from “How can we solve this?” to “Is this an issue that really needs to be solved?” Sometimes we just have to agree to disagree. On a few occasions, when the other party refused to do so, it was sadly time to let that person go. My own peace of mind was more valuable than maintaining a relationship full of conflict. As a result of getting clear what is most important to me, I have been able to not only reduce the stress in my life, but use the time that would have been wasted on this unproductive conflict to further and deepen the healthy relationships in my life. One secret to an amazing life is periodically checking in with ourselves to ask “Are there some issues in my life that I spending time on that are just a bunch of nonsense?” As the years go by that answer will change and develop as we do.
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 