Stress Free Living – Move It Or Lose It

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight you know the mantra eat less and exercise more.  This same prescriptions can help you decrease the effects of stress in your life.  Here are a few helpful tips:

1. Aim for 30 minutes of exercise at least three days a week.  This includes simple steps and changes in your lifestyle.  Take the steps in a building instead of the stairs. Park further away from your office or the store.  If you have steps in your home make the trip up and down the stairs twice instead of once.  You’d be surprise how much more activity you can get by simple changes in your lifestyle.
2. Stretch – stretching can keep your muscles feeling relaxed and helps to relieve stress.
3. Accept the aging process- many people have trouble coming to terms with their body’s changes as they age.  Remember aging is a natural process.  But that doesn’t mean you don’t do things that will make yourself feel good and be happy. Your hair may turn grey but that doesn’t mean your muscles have to turn to flab.
4. Don’t just drink water, enjoy water.  It’s important to drink 8 – 10 eight ounces of water each day.  It doesn’t have to be a chore.  Put a slice of lemon or a few strawberry’s in your water it will not only be fun to look at but add a little flavor. 
5. Hide or throw away the scaleif you tend to weight yourself too often.  A scale can be an ingredient for disaster when it comes to self improvement and loosing weight.  The scale doesn’t tell all.  You can gain muscle mass and loose body fat although the scale won’t move because muscle weights more then fat you will be doing exactly what needs to be done and more. 

If  you liked these tips or want additional information let me know in the comment section below.

Stress Free Living with 10 Daily Management Tips

Time management isn’t a seminar you attend or a book you read. Time management is a process that must be engaged every day to be effective. Some of the most frustrated, disorganized people in any office are the ones with the most time management books on their shelves.

It’s not that these books were ineffective. Rather in their frantic workday, these people “didn’t have time” to read the time management books! In the interest of keeping it simple, these tips could set you on the way to getting serious about time management as you see the value unfold:

1. Get a day planner and use it faithfully. No more sticky notes with reminders and appointments scattered around your desk, car and refrigerator at home. Keep all appointments and reminder in just one place, your day planner.
2. Create a daily “to do” list. If you do this on your computer, you can easily move around items as you prioritize the day. If on paper, you can code the items with numbers or letters for: Urgent, Need to Do Today, Can Do This Week.
3. Read your To-Do list first thing in the morning. Don’t touch newspaper, open email or answer the phone until you see the road map for your day.
4. Review your To-Do list at mid-day and end of day to see what was accomplished and what remains to be completed.
5. At the end of the day, transfer the items remaining to tomorrow’s or Monday’s list. If possible, remove any items that are not significant.
6. Delegate as much as possible to an assistant, colleague or associate. If you work independently, consider hiring a Virtual Assistant for a few hours per week. The price is right and there’s no obligation as with hiring an employee. This is particularly effective if you travel or spend much time outside the office.
7. Attend only the meetings that are absolutely necessary to do your job. Avoid any meetings that you can. Unless a meeting is run well with an agenda, there is usually wasted time chatting.
8. Close your door when you are focusing on a task or put up a sign on your cubicle asking people to stop by later when you are finished with this work.
9. Let voice mail answer your phone while you are focusing on an important task.
10. Say “no” as often as possible when you have reached your work limits. That means saying no to overtime or taking work home. When you are mentally or physically exhausted you don’t do your best work and you need to say so.

It’s easy to stay on track with time management once you commit to changing your daily habits. Just put the above tips into action and you should see more free time throughout your day.

Stress Free Living – Wellness Tip

There’s no better place to begin self-improvement than with your health. After all, health is one of the most important aspects of life. Taking care of your health is the first step on the road to self-improvement.

1. Eat breakfast- start the day off right with a quick morning breakfast. Fruit and yoghurt, granola and milk or whole-wheat toast and peanut butter will ensure you start on the right foot.
2. Relax in the morning- get up a couple minutes early and savour that extra time. Enjoy a loving cup of coffee while watching the sun rise; take a few extra minutes to yourself in the shower; or go for a fast brisk walk around the block to get your heart pumping. There’s nothing worse than starting your day in a rush. A few minutes in the morning can make a world of difference.
3. Exercise with a friend- Exercise releases endorphins, which can lift your sprit as well as help you maintain a healthy weight. However, sometimes it can be hard to get out of bed and actually hit the gym. Combining your friendly chatter with exercise can make exercise much more fun. Working out with a friend, whether this is a morning stroll, a spin class, an evening run or anything else, can keep you motivated and revved for the rest of the day.

Stres Free Living With Five Effective Steps for Handling Anxiety

Have you ever been in a situation that brought on sweats, rapid heartbeat and shortness of breath? You probably weren’t having a heart attack but an anxiety attack. If you suffer from anxiety disorders, learning to manage it is the first step to overcoming it.

Anxiety is characterized as extreme reactions to fearful situations. When someone follows you into a dark alley, those anxious feelings of a racing heartbeat and sweaty palms gives way to heightened senses and a rush of adrenalin that can save your life. This is the fight or flight syndrome.

Everyone experiences panic or anxiety in small ways. Like the fight or flight example, it can save your life. In new situations, we get panicky but when the outcome we fear fails to materialize, the anxiety stops. For someone with chronic anxiety, this is not the case.

Every situation that brings anxiety is not life-threatening. More than likely it is an extremely stressful situation that has brought on the anxiety as a way of dealing with it. Unchecked anxiety of this type can lead to depression.

If you suffer from anxiety attacks on occasion or a more frequent anxiety disorder, there are steps you can take to keep your anxiety under control.

1. Get a good night’s sleep. During the sleep cycle, your body repairs itself. You feel more rested after several hours of restorative sleep, reaching the REM stage. Most people need eight hours a night which varies within an hour or two each way.
2. Exercise on a consistent basis. Exercise helps you to use oxygen more efficiently. It helps to get more oxygen to the brain. It also increases focus which may help you see solutions to problems rather than simply worrying about them.
3. Meditate. Meditation is more than chanting mantras. Yoga is an exercise that involves quieting the mind and controlling your breathing. Simple mediation such as taking 5 minutes to clear your mind everyday can work wonders in the fight against anxiety.
4. Manage the worry. When you feel your pulse start to quicken, count backwards from ten. As you count, focus on the situation. What has actually happened? Resist the urge to read anything more into the situation.
5. Find some relaxing activities. Stress can rob you of your energy. On a regular basis, do something you like such as gardening, painting, reading or listening to music.

Anxiety can come into your life at any time. It’s normal. When the anxiety becomes frequent you could be at risk for more serious conditions There is no need to suffer this terrible condition in silence.

Natural Stress Relief Remedy – Aromatherapy

A natural stress relief remedy that most people never think about – aromatherapy.  The first part of the term aromatherapy is just a little misleading. Aroma is usually connected with the sense of smell but aromatherapy is more than that just smell. Although it is true that one method of delivering the therapeutic properties of the essential oils used in aromatherapy is through smell, they are also delivered by being massaged into the skin. Sometimes…VERY rarely….they are ingested. Ingestion of an essential oil should never be undertaken except under the direction of a trained aromatherapist.

There are over 500 different essential oils that are extracted from the leaves, stems, root or bark of various flowers, trees, plants and shrubs. Each essential oil is different and useful for fighting different diseases or different physical and emotional situations. Some essential oils, for example, promote healing by reducing swelling or fighting fungal infections. Other essential oils are used to relieve depression, anxiety or fear. Some essential oils calm while other essential oils stimulate.

The essential oil that is derived from oranges contains a very large quantity of ester which has a calming effect. An Orange blossom bouquet carried by a bride represents the peace and harmony that she will bring to her new home.

Research is being conducted but there as yet is not a definitive answer as to just how aromatherapy works or why. The sense of smell is one of the five senses that most humans are born with but it is also the one that is the most underdeveloped and underused. Researchers have concluded that certain aromas affect our brains in various ways. It is easier to see why aromatherapy that is applied by the means of massage into the skin has a direct effect on the body than why inhaling the scents has such a direct effect. But it is a fact that both methods of delivery have proven to be effective even if the reason remains elusive.

Almost all modern day medications have some basis in ancient herbal medicine. In our modern world, scientists have learned how to reproduce the properties of herbal plants that have been used successfully for thousands of years artificially. They can make synthetic copies of the elements that make herbs work. The problem with these copies is that they often cause many unpleasant or even dangerous side effects that the natural versions do not cause.

In our very modern twenty-first century world, many people are returning to the use of the herbal versions of the synthetic medicines prescribed by physicians in order to avoid the undesirable side effects. Aromatherapy is one of the ways that these herbal remedies can be used.