Another piece of information that seems like a no-brainer. How easy does it get lost in the whirlwind of emotion? If there is a person that is always upsetting you and stressing you out, get far away from them. Some of you might be saying, “It is my boss, my mother or my friend. I can’t just walk away.” I am here to tell you that you can indeed walk away. If you are sacrificing your emotional well-being as to not offend them, you need to make yourself more of a priority.
We certainly cannot just up and quit our jobs or turn our back on family, can we? If it is causing you enough grief, then you must do what you need to do. At the very least, there are two action steps that will make this a lot easier on you and end up with a healthier state of mind. First, have the hard conversation. Tell them how you feel. This does not mean blaming or unloading on the person. That will only add to the stress. Explain your desire to maintain whatever level of relationship you desire, but that you have boundaries and what stresses you out. Be willing to listen to their side of the story. At the same time, have an action plan in case the conversation does not yield the desired results. Begin looking for that new job, or be emotionally preparing yourself to live life without that person.
On occasion, after your absence, the person may realize how important your mental health is and may have a greater desire to return to your life without stressing you out. Sometimes they will not. Sometimes they may even tell others what a terrible person you are for having boundaries and standing up for them. They, of course, will not word it that way. Usually in a way that paints you in a negative light. Be ready for that. It is often an unfair price to pay, but one well worth the stress you will be losing. Do not give people the opportunity to hurt or stress you out. A snake cannot bite you if you do not go near it. Keep that image in your mind as you go through this process. You may find it helpful. Also remember you deserve a peaceful life. Give it to yourself.
Stressful days, we all have them. It can feel like we are caught up in a whirlwind of anxiety and chaos. It could be Monday, the start of a work week. It can be the end of the month when all the bills are due. When we are stuck in this whirlwind it can be easy to forget some of the things that can help with the stress and chaos. My fourth book will help you to create your own personalized map to get out of stressed. Until that comes out, here are some universal tips to remember. Nothing complicated.
When life goes crazy, just remember to breath deep, eat a balanced meal, give yourself some grace, move your body, get some sleep and reach out if you need. The last one is key. We all feel so good when we are able to help our friends, but often deny them that same great feeling. Having a friend by your side in times of struggle will only strengthen your gratitude and appreciation for that friendship. It will also strengthen the relationship itself. So ask for help if you need. Maybe even print out this picture to have these reminders on hand.
Just your weekly reminder to do something silly and fun. It will not only make you laugh and feel good, it will help prevent burnout and cognitive decline. It is equivalent to letting off some steam so the engine inside of your brain won’t blow up.
I would love to hear what fun and silly thing you do to help you reduce the stress of the week. Remember, do not wait until the weekend. Throw a little something silly during the week as well!
One of the great secrets that I use to make through tough times is taking mini mental vacations. I often tell people that your mind and your body do not have to be in the same place at the same time.
Mini mental vacations can be done in a variety of different ways. You can put on headphones and listen to ocean waves. You can take a short trip to a tanning booth in the middle of winter. You can use some vanilla and coconut essential oils. You could do all 3 at the same time! Having pictures of places you want to visit helps as well. Whatever you can do to take yourself there mentally.
This week, give yourself a mini mental vacation. Take some time to escape from the stress of the work week. It will be good for your health and good for your productivity in the long run.
Taking time to just enjoy the company of good friends is something that friends our soul. After work, stress and negativity fill our week and days, we need time with someone who lifts our spirits.
It is essential to not only have these people in our lives, but to spend time with them and appreciate them. Another great thing we can do is to be this kind of friend for others. Be someone who is a breath of fresh air to everyone they encounter. It is a gift that is priceless. Make time with people like that this weekend.
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.
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.
I have written about this subject before in both my books and on this very website. It is one of the most powerful realizations that I use to change my life. Once I realized the truth of this axiom, I was not only able to withstand many of life’s greatest challenges a little better, but I was able to add a great deal of joy to my everyday life as well. This includes times when I am in less-than-ideal circumstances. These can vary from stuck in traffic to stuck in a very bad day at work. There are a million little challenges like these that life offers up for us. The key to handling these can be as simple as a shift in mindset. Notice the word I used there was simple and not easy. Although, once you develop the ability to utilize this shift, it only becomes easier. In my life, the shift is now nearly automatic!
What great revelation changed my life in just such a manner? I am going to share this point with you and trust me, it can do the same for your life once you master it. In fact, it will even start to do so while you are learning it! Enough of the build up! What is this truth that can turn around a dark day and make everyday life more enjoyable? The answer can be found in the two pictures above. It is this – there is no law of physics or biology that says your mind and body have to be in the same place at the same time. When I am having a tough day at the post office, I take a mental vacation. I think about when Margie and I were in Jamaica. Sometimes I imagine what it will be like when we visit Fiji or the Maldives. This little trick brings the stress level down several notches and gives my brain something positive to focus on.
In the beginning, and on particularly stressful days, this can be difficult to do. What I recommend is to have little things that help you. A picture of the tropical location, or any location that fits your idea of a get away. This is totally customizable. This activates your sense of vision. This can be powerful as it is the one we tend to use most often. I suggest incorporating as many of your senses as you can. In my example, I have several videos with sounds of waves crashing saved in my phone. I can always watch them or even just close my eyes and listen. One of the most powerful senses is the sense of smell, which actually utilizes an entire different area of the brain. I have coconut scented lotion that reminds me of suntan lotion. With essential oils and other fragrances, the possibilities are endless. You could even have a small bottle of the scent your significant other wears to remind you of the amazing person you can come home to.
Pick one or several mental vacations you can go to when life seems upside down. Once you pick one, find items you can use to help take you there mentally. This can be a fun and creative exercise. I recommend trying this out as often as you can. Maybe give yourself an escape at the end of the day? I have coconut scented candles and bubble bath to go with a nice glass of coconut rum. You can do what works best for you. You do not need a stressful situation to take a mental vacation. The more you travel in this fashion, the easier it becomes. When you do go on vacation, make sure to be thinking of things you could take back with you. Also, do your best to be mindful when you are somewhere you enjoy. This could be vacation, or could be as simple as a walk in your favorite park. Do not just focus on how far or fast you can hike, but stop and smell the air, look around at the green of the grass and the bark of the trees. Smell the dampness in the soil or the scent of the pine tress. Take it all in and the when you need to escape, it will be right there waiting for you inside your mind. I would love to hear your perfect mental vacation and the items you use to help you go there.
Many of you wrote in to express how much you enjoyed our posts on self-care. With that in mind we decided to do another and bring you a little something different. I think the picture above is a great example of why we need to recharge our batteries, as well as that of our cell phones. In fact, if you need a good reminder to take care of yourself, every time you plug in your cell phone let that be reminder to charge your own batteries as well. Most of us cannot even imagine taking as much time for ourselves as we give to let our cell phones charge. Writing that just sounded crazy to me. Most of us take better care of an electronic device than we do of our own bodies.
What happens as our cell phone battery begins to get low? We may drop a call. Our connection to the internet may be spotting or may not exist at all. Perhaps our applications we are running slow down. We look at our phone and realize it is because the battery is low. We not only know this, but we expect it. As the energy in the phone becomes lower, so does its performance. How come this does not transfer to our thoughts on people, most of all ourselves? We realize our phones run best with a full battery. Wouldn’t it make sense we would too? We often feel guilty for saying no to someone or for taking time for ourselves.
Let us look at what happens when we let our battery run low. This can be skipping sleep, working extra long hours or not addressing stress in our lives. What are some of the symptoms? Let us first look at the physical or ‘outside’ manifestation of this. It often first appears as general fatigue. Much like our phone slowing down, so do we. Just like an electronic appliance, if we keep going at this rate we will eventually stop. Either by passing our or passing away. We also can get headaches. There are even specific pain relievers marketed as “tension headache relief”. If Madison Avenue can figure out stress can cause us physical discomfort, how come we can’t? Add muscle cramps or pain. This can come not only from stress, but not practicing other self-care methods such as staying hydrated.
Many of us “battle through” these symptoms. Some even consider them a badge of honor of sorts. Let us look at how this can affect our mental state or our mood. Stress can bring on feelings of anxiety or even paranoia in extreme states. Even milder cases can drain our motivation. This can cause us to get less done which can stress us even further. Talk about an equation for disaster! How about feelings of restlessness or overwhelm? Those are fun aren’t they? You may be tempted to say “So what! As long as I am making the boss happy, who cares if I am a wreck?” This brings us to our next reason taking time for self-care and to recharge is so important.
We may think being continually stressed and running ourselves on empty only impacts us, but we could not be more incorrect in that thinking. Being both physically and mentally drained can cause our behavior to change as well. We can be prone to angry outbursts. Have you ever found yourself snapping at someone who did nothing wrong except to cross your path when you were stressed and burnt out? Not only is this not good for our relationships, it also adds the stress of having to repair the damage your stress did in the first place. We can begin to overeat or even under eat when we are not taking time to focus on our well-being. We certainly wouldn’t be eating the stuff that will fuel our body and allow it the best chance of coping with what we are putting it through. Some people even turn to drug or alcohol abuse to help them cope with the stress when they are no longer able to do so physically or mentally. This often can be true of high-achievers, who have a hard time taking time out from chasing their goals to focus on themselves. Can you imagine how one or several of these behavior changes would impact the lives of those close to you or even those depending on you?
Most of us charge our phones at least once a day. Make sure you do at least that much for yourself. As you can see your cell phone is not the only thing that performs poorly when its battery is drained or it has too many programs running at the same time. Make sure you are getting enough rest, eating and drinking the right things to fuel our brains and bodies. Lastly, make sure you are taking steps to address stress. This can be meditation, exercise, talking with a professional or even a friend. Make sure you do not have too many applications running in your own life. Keep the batteries charged and you will keep yourself running smoothly.
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.
