This is so funny!!

How To Relax When Stressed And Feel Free Again

Let's face it, dealing with stress is a pain.

And although rubbing your ears humming "woosah" sounds good, it isn't going to be your best option.
Unless you're in your psychiatrist's chair.

I know how you feel and battle with this every day, but I've found certain ways to help ward it off.
One of my greatest experiences with stress was when I was managing a $550,000 order that seemed to be going well. The order was processed and all the material to fulfill the order was procured and allocated.
Sounds great right?

Wrong! Our customer called me frantic saying that the order they placed was for the wrong product. You can imagine my worry. I felt sick, nauseous and partially delirious.

After a few days of panic I decided to calm down, think it through and fix the situation.
Regardless of how this story started it ended with a great relationship with our customer and a more educated me on how to relax when stressed.
From then on I implemented a few ways to manage my stress and I know you can benefit from then as well.

Get a support group
By having a support group you'll be able to process your thoughts externally. It's fine to think inside your head, but once you verbalize it the vibrations will hit your subconscious and redirect your irrational thoughts. You will also receive valuable input from your support group.

Don't sit, get up
I've talked about this before but sitting slouched, hovered over your keyboard will only make things worse. Get up and move. I like to reach to the sky and then go straight into a standing hamstring stretch. It loosens you up and gets blood flowing.

Use a Stability ball
A stability ball won't be the "thing" that makes you stress free, but it'll help support proper posture. Proper posture makes you more confident, less tired and less irritable. This doesn't manage your stress but it'll help ward it off before it arrives.

Take deep breaths
By focusing on breaths, you'll briefly forget the worries that troube you. Take 15 deep breaths. As you inhale your diaphragm should expand and as you exhale it should contract. Focus only on your breath. By taking these focused deep breaths, more oxygen will reach vital organs. Nothing like a little brain boost when stressed.

Get some rays
Have you ever gone to the beach or laid by the pool and felt completely relaxed? The sun has a natural calming effect. Maybe it's being outdoors and getting fresh air or the absorption of the much needed vitamin D. It'll help calm you down which is the goal, right?

Office decor
Buy yourself a couple office plants. Plants are how we receive oxygen and by having them in your office they'll help filter and regulate your office atmosphere. And it doesn't hurt that it helps visually.

Workout when you get home
Going home and working out is the best way to loosen up and clear the mind. After you'll feel more relaxed and rational.

Tip - Bring a paper and pen in case any thoughts flood your mind. You want to get them out of your head and on paper. This way you can refer back and focus on you and your workout, that's it.

Clear your mind
Easier said than done I know, but clearing your mind has a powerful effect. It de-clutters your thoughts and grounds you. Your mind races all day long. Slow it down and think about nothing.
Get good at meditating each and every day.

Go to bed early
What? There is no way you can get to bed early. Spare me. Yes, you can.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 50-70 million adults have sleep or wakefulness disorder. The effects are HUGE. By reducing your sleep by as much as 30 minutes one night can reduce your day time alertness by 32%.
Getting more sleep will not only energize you, it will also significantly reduce your stress levels.

Eat well in the morning
Eat like a king, fight like a knight.
By eating a healthy well balanced breakfast you're preparing your body for the full day ahead. Getting these essential nutrients first thing in the morning are key to warding off environmental and office stressors.
Focus on quality protein and fat, with a side of berries.
You don't have to use all of these to reduce your stress level, but the max benefit is reached when their all used cohesively.
Once you know how to relax when stressed, your life will seem clearer. Your mind will be focused, your thoughts will be sharp and you'll be a better you.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7611763

How to Create Your Own Luck

"Luck is simply the end result of consistent, persistent effort towards a meaningful goal."
~Tristan Loo

Almost all the people I've interviewed who considered themselves failures in life, blamed bad luck as being responsible for their life's failures. Surprisingly, when I interviewed the most successful people I know, they also related similar stories of misfortune, hardships and tragedy in their lives similar to those who considered themselves to be failures. The difference between the two types of people was that the highly successful people saw their misfortunes as crucial steps closer in the direction of their goals, while those "unlucky" people chose to blame their misfortunes and not take responsibility for their lives. This article will discuss the concept of luck and how to attract more luck into your life.

What is luck?
Princeton University Dictionary defines luck as being an unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that causes an event, good or ill, to result in a person's life. I tend to disagree with this definition. I define luck as simply being the end result of consistent, persistent effort towards a meaningful goal.
A good example of this is in the 1995 movie Apollo 13. There is a point in the movie where things were going disastrously wrong for the crew of the spacecraft Apollo 13 and the NASA Director comments, "This could be the worst disaster that NASA's ever faced." NASA Flight Manager, Gene Kranz, played by Ed Harris overhears this comment and proudly retorts, "With all due respect, Sir, I believe that this is gonna be our finest hour." Both NASA command and the crew of Apollo 13 turned their "bad luck" into good luck with consistent, persistent effort towards a meaningful goal.

Case Studies of the Luckiest Unlucky People Alive
Arguably the luckiest person in the world, Evelyn Adams did the unimaginable. In 1985, she won the New Jersey state lottery for $2.4 million dollars. Then in the following year, she won the 1986 New Jersey lottery again for another 3 million dollars. Now ask any mathematician at the sheer statistical impossibility of this ever occurring. Adam's total winnings were $5.4 million dollars. With such luck like that, we would have thought that she'd be retired and traveling the world enjoying paradise, right? Wrong. Today, Adams is broke and living in a run-down trailer after having lost all of her money towards her gambling additions and to greedy friends and relatives.
Another lucky fellow is William "Bud" Post who won a whopping $16.2 million dollars in the 1988 Pennsylvania lottery. With that kind of money, he should have been stress-free for the rest of his life, but instead, Post is now broke and living off of a $450 dollar per month social security check and food stamps. After he became the lucky winner of the $16.2 million dollars, his former girlfriend successfully sued him, he got suckered into a bunch of bad business ventures with his siblings, and his brother hired a hit-man to murder him. In little more than a year's time, Post had lost everything and was one-million dollars in debt.
According to the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, nearly one-third of all lottery winners become bankrupt. The reason why so many lucky lotto winners go bankrupt is that they really never developed the mindset to accept wealth into their lives. They never developed any real money consciousness--the internal ability to create and sustain wealth. They weren't comfortable enough to accept their wealth and so their subconscious mind forced them to go back to their comfort zone, which in their case was based not in abundance, but rather in scarcity.

The Successful Create Their Own Luck
Herein lies the main concept of this article: Highly successful people create their own luck, while unsuccessful people wish, hope, and pray that luck will find them.
The truth is that highly successful people experience more luck that those who fail because they work hard to put themselves in the right place at the right time, rather than hoping that their life will somehow cross paths with fortune. Those who fail in life might fall into the right place at the right time, but they won't recognize it when they do and they won't be able to repeat it afterwards. To the outside world, it might seem that successful people appear to have all the easy breaks in life, but in reality, they work incredibly hard to put themselves in the path of those breaks.

Keep Firing and You're Guaranteed to Hit the Bulls-Eye
Imagine you're holding a pistol and you're pointing it at a target 100 yards down range. Unless you're an expert marksman, there's only a small statistical probability that you're going to hit the bulls eye the first time. But if you keep firing and correcting your aim, the law of statistical probability dictates that eventually you must hit the bull's-eye. Creating luck in your life obeys the same law of statistical probability--if you keep performing actions that lead towards your goal, eventually you are going to reach that goal. So luck in life is guaranteed, you just have to be willing to try enough times.

Practical Tips for Attracting Luck Into Your Life
Through my years of consulting and coaching clients, I have distilled some secrets about creating luck and success in life. The ability to consistently attract luck into your life is a way of life--a pattern of thinking that you must adopt for yourself. Once you integrate these secrets into your life on a daily basis, then I guarantee that you will attract a greater amount of fortune and happiness into your life as well.

1. Identify your target and keep firing. Rarely does anyone hit a bulls-eye on their first try and those that do hit it usually can't repeat those results. But if identify your target and you put enough bullets down-range, then by the law of statistics, eventually you have to hit the bulls-eye. It's guaranteed, so keep firing.

2. Keep a luck diary. At the end of each day, spend a couple of minutes reflecting back on your day and write down all the positive things that happened to you during the course of the day, whether or not you created it yourself, or it happened by chance. Everyday, just keep adding to that list. In a couple of months, you will see exactly how lucky you really are. It's a powerful motivating tool that I highly recommend as part of your life journaling practices.

3. Be someone else's luck. Luck doesn't work if you only wish it upon yourself. Be willing to be someone else's luck. Be the person to lend a helping hand. Be someone's hero. When you become someone else's luck, then it allows that universal energy to circulate and it eventually returns back to you in abundance. If you block that circular flow of energy by being selfish, then you'll prevent good things from coming back to you. Give from the heart and you will attract luck into your life.

4. Be willing to take risks. Those that consider themselves to be unlucky are stuck in their comfortable little daily routines that they can't break free from. They fear change and they fear anything that is new or different. On the other hand, those people who are "lucky" seek out new things, challenges and opportunities. They are prepared to take risks and they are quick to recognize new opportunities when they come along.

5. Believe that you are lucky. The law of attraction states that you will attract into your life that which you focus on. If you're in a constantly negative state of mind where you believe that the only luck you get is bad luck, then you'll attract even more negative luck into your life. Conversely, if you are constantly in a positive state of mind and look at the bright side of every situation, then you'll attract good things into you life.

6. Develop and trust your intuition. Lucky people learn to listen to and trust their intuition also known as their "gut feeling." They go with what feels right inside. They also spend a great deal of time developing and focusing their intuition through journaling, art, and meditation.

7. Know what makes you happy. This is a simple, common sense point, but surprisingly many people out there really don't know what genuinely makes them happy in life. Some might think that money makes them happy, when in reality it's healthy relationships that make them happy. If you don't know what makes you happy in life, then you will never recognize good fortune in that area when it presents itself. Remember that 80% of luck is identifying it when it comes into your life.

8. Create flexible plans. Planning and setting goals attracts good luck into your life, but improper planning or no planning at all will inevitably result in bad luck sprouting in your life. You have to expect that things won't go smoothly in your efforts to pursue your dreams and it's your ability to create flexible plans that accounts for these variables that produces success.
© Copyright 2006 by Tristan Loo. All rights reserved.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/380192

The Way to a Longer and Healthier Life

We all want to get fit and feel that we are enjoying a fulfilling life. However we are not all starting out from the same point. This will mean that it may take longer for some of us to reach that level of health with which we are satisfied.

Where ever your starting point is we all know that we need the right amount of nutrition and exercise for our lifestyle. The distance between your starting point and your goal fitness is measureable. The simplest, and in many cases the most significant, is the ratio between your body mass and your fat mass. Often referred to as your BMI, or Body Mass Index.

Just enter your height and weight into any of the free BMI tables on the internet and you can readily see if you need to lose weight.
Next, check your cholesterol level and you blood pressure. With these three results, exclusive to you, you can see the size (sic) of the problem.

Like most of us you may have noticed that every year, it becomes even more difficult to eat whatever you want and still stay slim.You may also have learnt that your Basal Metabolic Rate decreases as you get older. Depriving yourself of food in the hope of losing weight also decreases your BMR, foiling your best intentions. However, a regular routine of cardiovascular exercise can increase your BMR, improving your health and fitness when your body's ability to burn energy gradually slows down.
Having ascertained the goal that you wish to reach, if you are serious about a long and healthy life, you can now take action.

All three of these areas can be improved by changing your dietary habits and daily exercise regime.
Your diet will now have to exclude convenience foods. Many of these, when combined with an indolent lifestyle, will increase the amount of free radicals in the body. Free radicals can be very harmful and are especially linked to a reduction in longevity.

Decreasing the free radicals in your system is accomplished by the intake of antioxidants. Whilst antioxidants are of great value, those taken as supplements can be counter-productive. In the event that you take too many supplements, particularly those high in vitamins A and E, the surplus is unused and is stored in the liver. This initially causes the liver functions to become impaired and in severe cases can cause harm. Some antioxidant supplements are claimed to become carcinogenic in the body.

Antioxidants are best taken in the form of fresh fruit and vegetables. They will need to be included in your daily diet. Include as wide a variety as possible but not tinned or cooked. Cooking vegetables or fruit not only spoils the taste; it destroys all most all the health giving properties.

Just by simply increasing your raw fruit and vegetable intake whilst reducing your reliance on convenience foods will dramatically reduce your cholesterol level.

You may find that for the first few weeks of changing your exercise and dietary habits that you feel tired. Don't worry about this as you will be sleeping more deeply and in a few days you will awake feeling more invigorated than you have for years.
If we have dealt, at least in part, with diet, nutrition and vitamin supplements, we must turn our attention to exercise.

There is no need to groan at this point, I am not going to force you into life-long gym membership or turn you into a galley slave. The point about exercise in this case is its purpose to help in improving or attaining a good BMI, cholesterol level and blood pressure.

It is most likely that you need more exercise or, in many cases, some exercise.
Whilst it is true that some is better than none, never the less we don't want to embark on an exercise routine that can cause harm.

Start slowly, build gradually.

The most useful piece of equipment that I have come across for general health improvement is the elliptical machine. It does more than the old treadmill in that it also allows you to work your upper body.
The primary reason for my recommending an elliptical machine is that it gives a low impact level. If you are to start physical activity after any period of inactivity we shall need to be gentle. It is a safe assumption that you are overweight and to subject your joints to doing anything more that carrying you from the dining table to the sofa must be done gradually.

In addition to being more up to date than the old treadmills the elliptical trainers now include a LED or LCD display. This gives instant feedback and monitoring of your progress. There are usually recommendations of workout programs that you can follow.

There are many makes and models available and I would suggest that you take your time and try them out at your local store or stores. Do be sure that you select a model that has those heart or pulse rate monitors, always useful when starting out. Your initial enthusiasm may outweigh your early abilities.
Talking of your local stores, there is an important consideration when buying any type of gym equipment. Since safety is of prime importance with these pieces of equipment they will of necessity be robust and substantial. Therefore they will usually be of considerable size and weight.

Once having selected the make and model of your choice you may search the internet for a supplier. Before you dismiss your local store do take into consideration the delivery cost. Your local store will frequently deliver free which may make him a better purchase than what at first appears an internet bargain.
Once you find your general level of health and fitness being restored you may wish to move on to a higher level of health.
Whether this includes weight training or any of the other activities than can be considered extreme I would urge that you only undertake them with some professional guidance.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7490000

Tis The Season To Be Jolly, Sober and Clean

Holiday times can be challenging for families and for someone in recovery.
For the families, there is that dreaded fear that the planned occasions will not go as planned. They want the family celebrate, but are fearful of those who do not know when enough is enough. In some families, there is good old Uncle Jack who gets belligerent after a few and causes a scene, or cousin Patty who just makes a total fool out of herself at every family get together as she is either drunk or stoned, and then there is the beloved elephant in the room... someone hasn't shown up for the festivities again, but no one wants to say anything about it, or it might draw attention to their absence.
For the one in recovery, it may be the same scenario, however his/her motivation, is to make it through the holidays still in recovery with no relapses under his/her belt and therefore they want to avoid these types of situations without looking like they are anti-social, judging others and acting holier than thou.
Either way, it can be tough. Either way, my suggestion would be to protect you first and foremost. SELF CARE is so important. It is the one gift you can give yourself.
When you practice self-care, you essentially become better mothers, fathers, brothers, daughters, spouses, and better company. When you surround yourself with like minded people, you can breathe over the holidays and actually enjoy the festivities. The food will taste better, the music will sound nicer, and you will relax about what might or could happen.
You are now in control of what you will allow to happen. You will dictate who you want to be with and who you do not want to be with. If someone else has an issue with that decision, then it is their issue, not yours. If you are truly practicing good self-care, you will be doing your best to ensure that you are creating an environment that supports your well being too.
Look for support around the holidays. Part of good self -care is surrounding yourself with good people, who understand your concerns and your commitment to your self.
Go to functions that support your self-care too or organize your own party and include the people who are dear to you and make you feel comfortable and relaxed.

Good company, good food, good belly laughs and good memories.
Remember: Tis the season to be Jolly... Falalalalalala!

You can have a great Holiday season, if you plan to have a great holiday season. The choice is yours.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7412495

How to Relax

Although stress is actually an important motivating factor in our lives, sometimes the stress can build up to a point where it becomes unhealthy and overwhelming.  Finding way to relax and relieve stress is vital for us to maintain our sense of physical, mental, psychological, and emotional wellbeing.  Whether it is through breathing exercises, relaxing music, relaxing videos or even yoga, learning what works for you is an important step in the relaxation process.  Are you the type of person who needs a calm quiet place? Do you thrive around others? Do you need the stimulation of a long drive?  This article will examine different ways to relax yourself and the usefulness of each method.
One of the most common ways people choose to relax is through breathing exercises.  While it is true that we are constantly breathing, it is rarely done at a pace and manner that is conducive to relaxation.  This tenant becomes quite apparent when we are placed in a stressful situation.   Our focus becomes lost while both our breathing and heart rate become increasingly rapid.  The key to managing our breathing is to breathe from your diaphragm and not your chest.  At least of 70% of people do not use their diaphragm for optimized breathing.  The best way to tell if you are breathing successfully is to place your right hand in the center of your chest and your left on your diaphragm (3-5 inches above your bellybutton.) If both hands are moving in tandem with one another, you are breathing in the most optimized manner possible to increase relaxation.
Another excellent way to relax that many people take for granted is sleep.  Most of us simply do not get enough sleep to operate efficiently.  The average adult needs about 8 hours of sleep to perform at peak efficiency.  Most of our sleep deprivation can be attributed to distractions that we take for granted such as having a television or too many distracting lights in your bedroom.  A bedroom should exist as a room for sleeping only.  You should not eat, read, or engage in other such tasks bed. Spending too much time in bed tricks our body into thinking that we do not necessarily need to sleep in our beds and can lead to many restless nights.
Music can be a great way to relax.  If you’re feeling stressed go to a quiet secluded place, put headphones into your ears, and play some relaxing music or even soundscapes.  The type of music that will relax each individual best differs from person to person.  One person’s relaxing music might only irritate another.  Soundscapes are regarded as highly relaxing and will generally work for everyone.  There is something about the sound of waves crashing on a beach or a calm thunderstorm in the distance that seems soothing and will serve to eliminate your stress.  Other white noises that are not necessarily music or soundscapes can help to soothe and relax you as well. For example, an oscillating fan in your bedroom can provide a great background noise on restless night.
Many religions also include ways to relax. Buddhism promotes meditation, which people often site as one of the best way to relax.  Meditation includes all three of the aforementioned tactics.  The meditative state that is reached can recharge our bodies in a similar fashion as sleep and the controlled breathing throughout helps to regulate blood flow and lower stress.
These simple techniques ease the mind and evaporate stress.  Although these are not the only three ways to relax yourself, many people benefit from practicing these common relaxation techniques.