Stress can have a major influence on your health. Whilst some stress is a natural component of life, too much can seriously affect your health. Many conditions such as heart disease and IBS are linked to stress.
One of the causes of stress is being disorganized, which makes you feel that you are not controlling your life.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Is your office so cluttered that you waste valuable time searching for the things that you need right now?
- Do you sometimes wish for more hours in the week to finish all the tasks that need doing?
- Is your lack of organisation holding you back and causing you stress?
- Have you got the ideal work/life balance?
- Do you lose your car keys because you have forgotten where you left them?
- Image by LunaDiRimmel via Flickr
Breathing exercises become essential as you get older because age reduces the level of oxygen in your lungs. When you only take shallow breaths, as you do in normal breathing, you will eventually notice stiffness in your rib cage as the muscles surrounding the diaphragm start to lose their elasticity. This causes stale air to build up in your lungs that is composed mostly of carbon dioxide.
Rapid shallow breathing also leads to heart disease after a number of years or excessive feelings of tiredness. Breathing exercises to cleanse the stale air in your lungs should be practiced on a daily basis. You do not need to set aside a long period of time for this – five to ten minutes is sufficient. You can do the exercises when you wake in the morning or just before you go to sleep at night.
You cannot avoid stress – it is part of the hectic world you live in.
Did you know that ?
- Up to 80% of all diseases are stress-related?
- Workplace stress costs the (USA) nation more than $300 billion each year in health care, missed work – (source New York Times Sept 5, 2004)
- Stress is a major cause of people not turning up for work
- Stress is the major cause of couples splitting up
- One of the main causes of stress is worrying about your finances
- Stress causes over tiredness and this causes more traffic accidents then drunk drivers.
Do you know how much stress is costing you?
I was looking at my doctor’s website yesterday and in particular the statistics on what they have treated. Ten per cent of patients are treated for depression. How many more people are not yet at the stage of clinical depression, but are very unhappy?
Are you happy? If not, what can you do about it. Positive psychology believes that it has the answer to happiness. Research has shown that 40% of happiness is under your conscious control. The other 60% is due to our circumstances, where you live, the family that you are bought up in and so on.
Happiness has two main components. You can asses yours by asking yourself the following questions:
- How satisfied are you overall with your life and are you progressing in your life goals?
- How often do you feel positive emotions and how often do you feel negative emotions?
Stress Management
Can you be free of stress quickly and easily?
I was trained as a school teacher here in the United Kingdom. Although I stopped teaching many years ago, a short time ago I returned briefly as a temporary teacher filling in for teachers that were away. I visited several schools over a few weeks.
What struck me about the many teachers I talked to was that most of them said that they wanted to leave the profession. Why? The number one reason was stress. The teachers thought that the pressures and demands put on them from head teachers, local education authorities and government education policies were just too much. Most of them were suffering from anxiety symptoms.
Stress is the number one reason why people take time off work.
Is there anything that you can do to be free of stress?
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What are the Different Types of Meditation?
While there are many different types of meditation, there are two general classifications: concentrative and mindfulness. In concentrative meditation, you focus on clearing your mind to provide you with greater concentration, awareness and clarity. In mindfulness meditation, you open your mind to become more aware of the things around you, such as scents, sounds and thoughts.
Are mindfulness meditation techniques becoming mainstream?
Most of the time you are lost in your thoughts, Your mind constantly chatters away, often dwelling on fears and anxieties. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to switch of this constant internal chatter for a while? This is where mindfulness can help.
The practise of mindfulness meditation techniques have been a part of Buddhism for a very long time but are increasingly to be found in other contexts such as:
- Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
- As part of patient care in hospitals
- As part of the education curriculum
What is mindfulness? Read more
Do positive affirmations make you live longer?
Susan was a friend of mine that was rarely happy. If you asked her how she was, she always came out with some negative event that had just taken place. Amongst her replies were:
- Someone nearly broke into my house and I had to drop out of college to deal with increasing my home’s security.
- A vandal scratched my car and this made me ill
- I’ve just found out that my daughter’s boyfriend has been in prison
- I drank too much wine last night and feel awful
These type of statements come from a very negative attitude to life.
Whilst I am not a great supporter of positive affirmations as they can often take the place of decisive actions, in Susan’s case they would certainly have helped re-frame her statements in more positive terms. Susan could have used positive affirmations to say:
- I feel secure with my new house alarm system
- The new door on my car is great.
- My daughter’s boyfriend has learnt from past mistakes and is now a better person.
- I look after my body by eating and drinking healthy things.
If Susan had used positive affirmations she would have become a happier person and this could have resulted in her living longer.
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How does stress affect health?
A friend of mine started teacher training full of enthusiasm and ambition. She told me that she wanted to be a school head teacher within 10 years of leaving teacher training college.
A caught up with her two years into her teaching career.
“So are you on track to be a head teacher in eight years time?” I asked.
“You must be joking. I never want to be a head teacher,” she replied.
Two years later she retired from teaching. She had carefully observed a few head teachers and came to the conclusion that their job entailed lots of stress caused by:
- Disruptive pupils
- Angry parents
- Local authority education bosses
- Government policies that kept changing the rules
- Long hours catching up with the bureaucratic burden of reports and forms that had to be filled in
My friend left teaching to save her health before she too suffered from stress.
So, how does stress affect health? Read more
Some self development teachers stress the need for a positive attitude to life. But maybe mindfulness is a better way.
A friend of mine was walking through the park when he began to have very negative thoughts that told him he was no good and unworthy. He came back from his walk in the park complaining how bad his mind was today.
I told him that his problem was that he took his mind too seriously.
“It’s only thoughts, its only your mind. Don’t take it too seriously,” I said.
He then exploded with anger.
“I have to take it seriously. It is serious. How dare you tell me not to take my mind seriously?”
I decided to leave his company before the situation got too ugly.
I was trying to get my friend to lighten up and get a more positive attitude. To someone in a dark mood just telling them to be more positive and less serious does not work.
So how do you deal with your mind when it is troubling you?
Do self help books work?
I used to go into large book stores and head for the self help book section where I stood before a few hundred titles. I start to browse the books that looked interesting. After about an hour of intense browsing I would decide on the book I wanted and wander out of the store with my new book and head for the nearest Starbucks to start reading it.
Almost every self help book that I read contained glowing testimonials by people whose lives have been transformed by it. I would start reading, full of expectations that I too would be changed by it. After I read it I would say to myself:
“That was a great book, but I feel just the same as I did before reading it!”
I met a friend who complained that she had a whole bookcase full of self help books but none of them had really changed her. I too felt short-changed by these books. This feeling lasted until the next time I visited the book store and stood in front of the self help goodies! Maybe the next book would be the one that would change my life forever.
So, do self help books work?
Can you let go using these stress management techniques?
Some time ago there was a loud knock on my front door. It was an angry neighbour complaining that I had parked in his space (even though that space was on a public street which he did not own). I calmly agreed to move my car and then asked him the question:
Why are you so angry?
This made him even more angry! The more I refused accept the conflict he wanted, the angrier he became until he threatened to hit me. As he was a Karate expert I decided to gracefully back away!
My neighbours anger was causing him considerable stress. What he needed was to learn the stress management tips in order to let go of his anger..
Can I choose self improvement? The answer may seem obvious.
“Of course I can choose to improve my self.” You say.
Here’s a Sufi story:
A young mouse fell dearly in love with an elephant. The elephant and the mouse soon sought permission to marry. Their respective parents, their entire families and friends warned against the marriage. The council and warnings fell on deaf ears as the mouse and the elephant decided to go ahead and marry anyway. On their wedding night the elephant suddenly died. The mouse started digging a grave for its partner.
The moral of the story—the mouse thought the decision was one thing when in fact it was the decision to spend the rest of its life digging a hole.
Most choices seem simple. Should I do:
- A
- B
- or C?
What may not occur to you is that there may be choices other than A, B or C. There could be D, E and then up to the end of the alphabet!
So ask yourself the question. Can I choose self improvement?
Some stress in life is beneficial, but too much can be dangerous. A relaxation CD can reduce your stress levels.
I live a busy and hectic life. Because of this I have to be able to cope with stress. A certain amount of stress is good for me. It stimulates and challenges me. If I spent my days on a couch watching television all day then I would not live a very fulfilled life.
In order to manage my stress levels I take frequent breaks. I have a good break at lunch and if I do watch television, it is usually at the end of the day when I can completely relax. I also have a dog and go for brisk walks with him. In ways like this I make sure that my stress levels are not too high.
But what happens if you experience long-term prolonged stress? The consequences to your life can be very negative. You may: Read more
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I love to laugh. Most people do. Laughter can be therapeutic and can help form bonds between people.
So to help you laugh here are some self help and self improvement jokes:
- I used to think I was indecisive, but now I’m not so sure.
- If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
- What did the zen-master say to the New York City hot dog vendor? Make me one with everything.
- I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
- How can there be self-help “groups”?
- The workshop on procrastination has been cancelled, as no-one got around to enrolling.
- I used to be a perfectionist, but I’m trying to improve.
Research has shown that the average kindergarten student laughs 300 times a day. Yet, adults average just 17 laughs a day. Why the difference?
