ain’t got no satisfaction

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
― Seneca

 

How would you describe your life right now?   Satisfied, happy, joyful, content or would it be more like stressed, overworked. anxious, unhappy, confused, bored, consumed, or angry?

What would you say about your life today?   What do you want to say about your life?

Ponder those questions, give them some thought and really try to determine where you are in life today.

If you are satisfied, content and enjoying life you’re probably one of a few that do.  Many people are finding themselves more stressed and more discontent than ever before.   If you are one of the many who find themselves highly stressed what are you doing about it?   What steps are you taking to lower the total stress in your life?

To de-stress consider eating better, getting eight hours of sleep and adding exercise to your daily routine.  At work, get up and move every hour for a few minutes, do some deep breathing and stretch.   Schedule time each day to relax and do something enjoyable.   For some people de-stressing includes doing something for others (volunteering) and for others a long quiet walk will do the trick.

If you are stressed take action to lower that stress load.  The impact of negative stress over time can impact your health and well-being.   Notice the warning signs of stress – fatigue, increased anger, impatience, depression, or sadness and take action to lower the stress in your life.

If you’re not satisfied with your life as it is – take action to make some changes.  Take action to lower the stress that may be impacting our quality of life and start today.

 

Life style

“Relaxation is… a state between waking and sleeping, where the body is completely still and the mind is allowed to flow freely from one thought to another, or alternately, a state in which the mind becomes inadvertently calm.”
― Gudjon Bergmann

Green River, Utah

When was the last time you took a sustained break from your daily routines? When did you take time to relax and step back from the normal pattern of life?

With employee engagement hovering around 37% companies are losing a majority of their productivity to time wasting events. People are stressed and stress doesn’t necessarily improve output. Vacations are being taken by fewer people as the feeling is that vacations only serve to increase the amount of stress in their lives rather than reducing stress.

What are you doing to restore engagement in work and life?

What is your level of stress? How are you dealing with it?

Stress reduction can begin with:
1. Breathing and relaxation
2. Practicing gratitude – journaling what you are grateful for.
3. Being mindful – paying attention to the day and not letting it just go by.
4. Disconnecting from TV, computer and electronic devices.
5. Taking a real vacation.

Stress is often related to a lifestyle that is demanding more from you than you can provide.  Sustained stress leads to burnout and less satisfaction with life.  Choose to change your lifestyle so that you can experience greater happiness.

a summer challenge

“Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.”
― José Ortega y Gasset

Stress.  It is an issue.

Stress is a result of a conflict with your values.   When you live a life that is inconsistent with what you value your emotional triggers are stirred.  At some point some issues presses you just hard enough.  You’ve had enough.

What do you value?

What are your values?

How would you write your value statements?

Are you honoring your values?   If not, why not?

When you experience more of what you want out of life then you’re likely living in a way that is consistent with what you value.   If there is something you value highly and you’re unable to satisfy that value then life isn’t going to be as good as you’d like it to be.

What is your level of stress?

What are you doing about it?

Advance confidently – surrender

“Now is the only time you have. Change is happening. Give up your desire to control the world”
― Kelly Martin

How many times have you tried to take control of your life or someone else’s life and it just didn’t work?   Perhaps you took control of a project that you were working on and things didn’t turn out the way you expected.   In order for you to get the things you want you had to be in control and that worked until it didn’t.

The more you try to control things the less you really do.   Control is like pushing against a brick wall with the hope that it will soon give way to your urging.  The wall doesn’t move and you use up a lot of energy in the process.

The path to increased control is through surrendering.   Eliminating the need to control all aspects of your life will permit you achieve more in less time.   If you’re stuck in traffic and no one is going anywhere getting upset and desiring control won’t get you moving.  Surrendering your emotions to the moment allows you to have some peace even at zero miles per hour.

If control creates stress and it usually does when things aren’t going the way you want then as the stress increases your ability to think clearly and rationally decreases.  When stress moves into anger then even more of your cognitive abilities are compromised.  Releasing the anger and tension restores your ability to deal with the situation.  In other words you are surrendering to the moment to respond to the issue.

In some sense surrender means giving up your need to be right to accept the truth in the current circumstance.  More internal peace provides more positive energy to change plans, think more clearly, make better decisions and improves conflict outcome results.

Think about ways surrendering could help you lead a more satisfying life and see how you can advance confidently along your chosen path.

create a stress free zone

“Stress level: extreme. It’s like she was a jar with the lid screwed on too tight, and inside the jar were pickles, angry pickles, and they were fermenting, and about to explode.”
― Fiona Wood

 

Wouldn’t be nice to have a stress free zone where none of the pressures of the world or of your own mind would invade the quiet?   There is without doubt more demands on people’s time than ever before.  Everything is rushed and hurried and that only serves to build stress.   People work more hours in the hopes of staying ahead of the tidal wave of work and they can’t keep up.

I know of people who are working so hard that they give up the only thing left in their day to give, sleep.   The lack of sleep only increases their stress and it boils over into relationships that start feeling the toxins of living in a time compressed week.  Only if there was a way out of the tension and pressures that each day grip us in a tightening vise.

With so much to do and little time to do all that needs to be done it doesn’t seem like there is any way to take time away to restore and revitalize your life.

There are ways to create small quiet zones and little bit of peace in a noisy day.

1. Go for a walk alone – it can be as short as 5 minutes.

2. Sit in your chair, close your eyes, relax and take in some deep breaths and exhale slowly.  Do that for 5 minutes – focus on letting the stress go.  You can say to yourself, “Let my stress go”, just repeat it as you breathe in and out.

3. Get away from electronic devices – phones, screens, texts.  Take a technology break and step away from what those devices say to you.

4. Take a piece of paper and draw or scribble – just do some freehand movement.   Think about your stress and draw it out – let it emerge from you without any direction or control.

The important thing is to take time out to get the stress out.  You might have a bad manager that creates stress for you and the best way to manage that is to “get away”.   Take some time to “get away” from it all.   Even a few minutes can have a powerful and lasting impact on the reduction of your stress.

OK.  Now go try it.  Find a stress free practice that helps you destroy stress in your day.

 

the anxiety epidemic

“If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.”

― Brené Brown

Anxiety is a problem in the US.   The stresses of career, life, family are taking their toll on a lot of people.    Anxiety is worrying about a future that has not yet come, and yet it seems that many people are worried about tomorrow to such a degree that they need help controlling their emotions.

Too much stress, too much pressure to succeed can lead to anxiety.  Pretending to be the person you aren’t can lead to stress and anxiety.   Are you one of millions taking anti-anxiety medications?   What do you think would help you manage your anxiety better?   What do you do today to manage stress?

2013 Rank	2011 Rank	2009 Rank	2005 Rank	Brand name (generic name)	Used for…	U.S. Prescriptions(% change from 2011)
1.	1.	1.	1.	Xanax (alprazolam)	Anxiety	48,465,000 (1%)
2.	3.	4.	2.	Zoloft (sertraline)	Depression,Anxiety, OCD,PTSD, PMDD	41,416,000 (11%)
3.	2.	17.	11.	Celexa (citalopram)	Depression,Anxiety	39,445,000 (5%)
4.	5.	5.	4.	Prozac (fluoxetine HCL)	Depression,Anxiety	28,258,000 (15%)
5.	4.	3.	5.	Ativan (lorazepam)	Anxiety, panic disorder	27,948,000 (3%)
6.	7.	6.	NA	Desyrel (trazodone HCL)	Depression,Anxiety	26,242,000 (17%)
7.	6.	2.	3.	Lexapro (escitalopram)	Depression,Anxiety	24,920,000 (5%)
8.	8.	7.	16.	Cymbalta (duloxetine)	Depression,Anxiety, fibromyalgia, diabetic neuropathy	18,573,000 (5%)
9.	13.	22.	10.	Wellbutrin XL (bupropion HCL XL)	Depression	16,053,000 (30%)
10.	12.	9.	6.	Effexor ER (venlafaxine HCL ER)	Depression,Anxiety, Panic disorder	15,796,000 (26%)

activating personal peace

“Many people think excitement is happiness…. But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh

When was the last time you experienced personal peace?    In our high tech, high results world we tend to experience more stress than peace.

More and more people are in the grips of stress and it is affecting their health, their outlook on life and it is affecting their emotions.   You’ve probably have seen people who are too stressed, too angry and depressed.  Those people aren’t experiencing much in terms of personal peace.

It is hard to cram all of what life demands into a 24 hour day and yet people try.   They take shortcuts on their exercise, their diet, and their sleep and wonder why they have a short temper, are gaining weight and feel physically ill.

Lissa Rankin has written a book about her personal question for personal peace.   One of the remedies getting free of the stuff that creates a lot of stress.   For Lissa it was getting away from a stress producing job and creating a less stressful way of life.

Lissa’s process can help you manage stress in your life.  Healing starts with a lifestyle that is less hectic.

Because stress impacts our ability to think and keep our emotions intact, here’s another resource that can provide you with information to improve the quality of your life.

Increasing compassion in your life will help you improve your ability to relate and develop relationships with others.   Being more generous sends a positive message to others and reduces tension.  Kindness will do more good in a tense situation than staying angry.  Take charge of your emotions and become more compassionate.  Express kindness and see if it increases cooperation with others.

Imagine shifting your language to get better personal and professional results.  Perhaps your interactions with others is stressed and it feels uncomfortable.  Maybe the relationship with your co-workers or associates isn’t what you want it to be.   There are ways to build better relationships.  One way is with the words you use (take a look at the short video clip below).

Another way to increase personal peace is through meditation.   Just spending a few minutes each day meditation can bring about positive emotional health benefits.   To learn more about meditation practices take a look at “How to do Mindful Meditation”.

Learn how to activate personal peace in your life, to reduce stress, increase emotional well-being and to live a happier life.

job related stress

“I was a little excited but mostly blorft. “Blorft” is an adjective I just made up that means ‘Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.’ I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.”
― Tina Fey

Are you among the many who are feeling overwhelmed by the expectation of work and home? Do you feel there is never enough time to complete all the things that are being asked of you? Do you feel like you are only able to do mediocre work? If you are you are not alone.  More and more people are feeling like work expectations are growing ever higher.   Employers are demanding more from their workers, more time, and more results without any new forms of compensation.   Employers  realize that they can squeeze more out of each person especially when there are so many people looking for work.

Fear drives the actions we take in many cases.   Stress increases, frustration increases and life satisfaction decreases with each  new thing that is being asked of us to take on.   When will it all stop?

Where does stress show up at work?

The Wall Street Journal (March 5,2013) shows the following:

32% of women and 30% of men find that there isn’t sufficient opportunities for advancement.

33% of people are challenged to balance work and life.

31% of women and 27% of men don’t think employers have plans to help manage    stress.

39% say that there is too much to do.

38% of women say they aren’t compensated well for their work.

Stress is rising.    Stress is taking a toll on women at greater numbers than ever before.      Some people quit their jobs rather than having stress create health issues.   Some people move to places where there is less stress, jobs with less stress and perhaps lower pay.

Pay helps reduce stress to some degree, but if the work demands are too great the pay doesn’t compensate for the stress.   Look at your life.  What is working for you and what isn’t.   What is the cost of stress in your life?

Understand what works for you.  Know what you are good at.   Know your purpose and live that out.  You’ll find that happiness is worth a lot more than a big paycheck in the long run.

Take time to smell the flowers.   Take time to look around and observe the beauty.  Be kind to yourself and stress less.

overtaken by stress

“One channel is the Stress Channel and the other is the Peace Channel. We really do have a choice about what we listen to. The Peace Channel can only be heard when we are present in the moment, when we are in the now. To tune in to the Peace Channel, all we have to do is be, experience,notice, and naturally respond to what is arising in the moment. To tune into the Stress Channel, we just have to start believing our thoughts again. […] Eliminating stress is just a matter of tuning out the negative and tuning in the positive and just being, experiencing, and dancing to that music instead of the mind’s chatter.”
― Gina Lake

The tension built and grew until the language went foul.   I was listening to a person unload his stress through the use of language that wasn’t beneficial to his cause.   It was just more frustration piled upon frustration and the stress overwhelmed his ability to control his emotions and language.   The storm started small and just grew and grew and the more he talked the louder and more angry he became.   His anger didn’t solve the problem.

Anger is an outlet for stress.   It is a way of releasing the energy produced by the hormones that are leaking into the body.   In most places the sudden eruption of anger is not welcome or seen as a positive event.   This person is going to be looking for a job and his past haunts him.   Nightmares wreck his sleep, and tide of anger swells as he confronts images of a war he participated in.   The images won’t leave him alone.  What does stress really cost?

Others are swimming in a sea of work, unrelenting tides of email, and urgent issues build into a wave of stress reducing confidence, results and energy.  Imagine trying to go to sleep when thoughts of unfinished business race through the mind begging for some kind of answer.   Where is the joy in that kind of work?

What is your stress level?   What are you doing about it?

Your work or events in your life come to you four different ways

1. Urgent and important (get it done now or else)

2. Important but non urgent (this is the sweet spot )

3.  Urgent and unimportant (much of the email you get)

4. Unimportant and not urgent (maybe TV)

What is eating at you?   What is stopping you from getting what you want out of life?

To learn more about how stress impacts life, take a look at this video clip.

managing conflict … how do you do it?

“Its complicated, on one level. On another, it’s the same old stupid story – we aren’t enlightened. We disagree, fall in love, and hate each other, the whole spectrum of human experience. We have differences of opinion, and sometimes, we can’t resolve those differences peacefully. If a disagreement goes for long enough, and is important enough, people start to take sides. Once people start to take sides, conflict is inevitable.”
Zachary Rawlins, The Academy

Conflict – a difference of opinion?  A difference of values?

What is conflict?  Certainly conflict involves your emotions and causes something to trigger a response in your body that creates a physical change.   Some conflict is beneficial if that conflict results in creating positive outcomes.   Far too often conflict results in negative outcomes where people find themselves unable to create an inner story that is peaceful.

What do you do when you find yourself in a situation which creates conflict for you?

At first conflict may look like irritation, where you start feeling a tenseness in your body, perhaps your stomach is starting to tighten and the muscles are preparing to take an action but you don’t know what that will be.  There is a threat, yet unidentified you sense that there is something wrong.  If the pressure continues your body not only senses a threat it starts producing in quantity the hormones that are going to provoke an action.  Just one more thing and the body says, “Enough” – “get out of here or react”.

Let’s look at the five phases of managing internal conflict.

1. The initial reaction – something happens and the body wants to react.  Your first step should be to announce the feeling, the emotion you are experiencing.   Say out loud the emotion you are feeling.  “I’m scared that something is going to happen”.

2. Release the energy – After you acknowledge the emotion the next step is to discharge that energy and you can do that by taking in a deep breath and releasing it.  Focus on relaxing and continue to do deep breathing until that wave of emotions has subsided.

3. Get back under control – Downshift your energy/emotions so that you can get the nerves and energy under your control rather than being under the control of your emotional center.

4. Refocus – This is when you can ask yourself the question, “What needs to be done next?”   When you have regained control and released the emotions shift the internal conversation to a cognitive one and look for a positive action.

5. Action – Take an action, this may be re-engaging with the situation and bringing a sense of logic and control to your whole body.

With practice these five steps can be done in a matter of seconds.   When you are in control of your emotions in a conflict you are in control.

How does conflict start? Take a look.

What could have been done differently?