Stress Reduction Tips for Parents
October 12, 2007
The best way to reduce your stress is to really know what it IS, that is making you stressed! So sit down for a minute and think about last year. You can look at a calendar to remind yourself of events, or appointments. This may jog your memory, such as realizing that taking your kids to the doctor can stress you out. Stress can also grow from your surroundings. Are you disorganized? Are your drawers and closets filled with clutter? Do you waste a lot of time searching for items?
? Determine your stressors (flip through last year’s calendar, talk to your spouse, look around your house, etc) ? List them (if you can) in order of what stresses you the most ? Divide them into categories (related topics, i.e. meals, errands, carpool, clutter) ? Determine how often a particular thing makes you feel stress (daily, weekly, monthly).
Now you should have a pretty good idea of what makes your blood boil. So your next step is to:
Get proactive
20 Ways to Shift Worry Into Attractive Energy
September 27, 2007
Worry, big or small blocks positive vibrations from entering your realm. The longer the behavior, the deeper the roots, the harder to override. Staying in its merry-go-round places the person in a form of trance. And like all trances, the person in the trance isn’t aware that they are there. If told they are in a trance, they would simply deny it.
A self-mirror change requires persistent external feedback or shaking event before noticeable by a person in a trance. Even with strong positive feedback, it may take years before the person is open enough to accept the feedback as truthful. This is because when our internal dialogue makes a choice it closes that file and changes that belief to their truth. Because we don’t lie to our inner dialogue, it automatically accepted it as truth. And to open it up to reconsideration is taking a risk. The common reasoning, everyone has worries, is a perceived truth, yet it is an incorrect filter.
The good news is that as a belief it’s replaceable. To start, the person in the trance needs to allow themselves to see their status and with a distorted vision, it isn’t easy. Where the behavior stems from doesn’t really matter. Because worry is an easy path of least resistance, it is painless to stay on its carousel.
Beyond the Stress of Success - Access Your Thriving Zone
September 13, 2007
Genuine enthusiasm…real feeling of accomplishment…sense of satisfaction and fun. Welcome to your thriving zone!
How do you gain quick access? Simple…take 3 easy steps.
Pause to Refresh…Given the relentless demands of nonstop 24/7 lifestyles, it is easy to forget we are human beings, not human doings. Yet performance experts agree. Constant doing without real downtime impairs our ability to perform at our best. And this also keeps us from being in our thriving zone.
Need proven and manageable ways to incorporate regular pause-to-refresh intervals in your work day? Try these:
- Pause every hour and a half to consciously recover from the physical, mental and emotional pressures of work.
- Get up from your desk for a few minutes. Take several deep breaths. Stretch. Take a short walk around the office or inside the building.
- Leave the building to breath some fresh air. While outside, gaze up at the sky, pay attention to a tree or a plant. Staring off into the distance without any particular focus actually relaxes the brain and the body.
Stress & Burnout: The Adrenal Factor
August 29, 2007
I was a psychotherapist for years before I got involved in the holistic movements….before I became a shaman. I had a strong interest in psychosomatic problems. The popular approach at that time, which is still common, was that many body problems, pains, etc., were all in the head. That there was no actual medical basis for many human problems. I also accepted that as a fact, and saw many clients ….trying to resolve their mental / emotional issues so they would no longer have these false medical complaints, or painful symptoms. [ Many were helped to live better lives with the therapy….but that is not the point of this article. ]
To make a very long story much shorter, let me just say that a range of personal experiences followed by years of personal research led me to become an expert in psycho-physiology. Where psycho-somatics assumed that ‘ it is all in your head ‘, psycho-physiology assumes that there is something actually going on in the body causing the symptoms. Then my research / experience took me one step further. I began to realize that many problems were actually comming from the environment, effecting both the mind and the body!
Stress Causing People to ?Super Size?
August 14, 2007
Stress Causing People to "Super Size"
by Georgianna Donadio D.C., M.Sc., Ph.D.
It is currently reported that two out of three adults is either overweight or obese, and the numbers continue to climb. As a result, statistics demonstrate that a significant portion of our population is being diagnosed with chronic conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease. Even more shocking is that we are experiencing these conditions at earlier ages than previously reported. It is not unusual today, to hear about a young person in their 20’s diagnosed with mature onset diabetes, normally developed during middle-age.
On May 7, 2004, a controversial and award-winning movie aimed at exploring the obesity epidemic hit theatres. In "Super Size Me", a tongue-in-cheek look at the legal, financial and physical costs of our hunger for fast food, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock explores the horrors of school lunch programs, declining health education and physical education classes, food addictions and the extreme measures people take to lose weight. As a centerpiece of the film, Spurlock puts his own body on the line, living on nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days following three rules:
Overcome the Top 10 Causes of Workplace Stress
July 29, 2007
Workplace stress is on the rise and it’s costing corporate America a fortune. Some estimate that 80% of health care costs are stress related, and these expenses go right to the bottom line.
According to CNN-Money.com, Americans spent more than $17 billion for anti-depressants and anti- anxiety drugs in 2002, up 10% from the year before and nearly 30% over a two year period.
The Institute for Management Excellence reports that American industry spends more than $26 billion each year for medical bills and disability payments with another $10 billion for executive’s lost workdays, hospitalization, and early death.
In addition to these staggering figures, stress takes its toll through the added costs of quality control, legal challenges, lost opportunities, poor performance, bad attitudes, and training.
We cannot do much about the skyrocketing costs of medical care and prescription drugs, but we can take immediate action to control the top ten causes of stress as identified by The Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health.
The countdown is:
3 Kinds of Workplace Stress
July 14, 2007
Workers across America will tell you that stress
levels are increasing. The demand for anti-
depressants is up. Doctor’s visits are
increasing. Stress-related ailments are shooting
up like a rocket.
There are many stressors behind all these
problems, but the gurus generally classify the
stress itself into three categories.
Understanding the major types is the first step to
controlling stress and improving productivity.
1. Acute Stress. This kind of stress is caused
by recent events. It is significant but
temporary. Small doses can result in positive
reactions: the adrenalin rush and feelings of
elation can motivate achievement. Too much, too
often results in headaches, backaches, upset
stomach, and other tension-related responses.
2. Episodic Acute Stress. This type stress is
caused by frequent exposure to stressors. These
people are generally over committed, lack the time
and ability to accomplish everything, and they
often find themselves at odds with coworkers.
This is much more serious than the first kind.
Irritability turns to anger, occasional tension
headaches become frequent migraines, heart
palpitations lead to chest pain, and high anxiety
13 Stress Reducers & Profit Boosters
July 1, 2007
The United Nations declares workplace stress to be a worldwide epidemic. In the United States alone, forty-six percent of workers report that their job is very stressful. This adds up to a million stress related workplace absences each day.
Individual stress control techniques are important. Meditation, soothing music, biofeedback, and other techniques work well to help people cope with the stress of our modern workplace.
The real solution, however, is to recognize that stress control is a leadership responsibility. Leaders and managers can do more to control stress than all of the individual stress relief techniques combined. Leaders who implement stress control strategies see the results in reduced absenteeism, medical costs, health care insurance expenses, workers comp payments, accidents, complaints, and so on.
The following 13 stress control strategies minimize costs such as these and productivity soars. The workplace is improved. Employees and their families are happier. Business owners make more money.
Management can control stress by:
++ Eliminating unreasonable expectations
++ Positioning people in jobs that use their
skills and abilities
++ Adjusting pay for the level of responsibility
assigned to individuals
++ Correcting vague and arbitrary promotion
policies
10 Ways to Benchmark Workplace Stress
June 13, 2007
With almost 50% of workers complaining that their jobs are very stressful, it is no surprise that more than two-thirds of all medical problems are stress related.
Each day, workplace stress is credited with more than a million absences and at least 40% of all personnel turnover. Studies show stress is a primary cause of accidents, quality control problems, medical claims, and lost productivity.
Some people debate the exact percentage of stress related costs in each catagory, but few can object to the raw data or the results you see as you take action to control stress and improve productivity throughout your company.
Here are some practical ways to benchmark current stress levels and monitor future conditions.
1. Absenteeism - Require strict reporting of absences for any reason. It isn’t unusual for people to shade the truth to get a day off. Some research indicates that 54% of illnesses phoned in are actually for reasons other than medical. Compare your numbers with the same period last year. Chart how absences coincide with business cycles.
Control Stress with High Morale
May 30, 2007
When Army leaders fail to control battlefield stress, they lose as many soldiers to combat stress as they do to enemy bullets. Even when they are well trained, these soldiers are more likely to collapse in the face of great stress.
Units with high morale and esprit de corps, however, lose only 10% as many troops to stress. The training and preparation are important, but the high sense of teamwork makes all the difference.
This same sense of teamwork and belonging is important in the corporate environment. Where teamwork, morale, and esprit are good, the companies find improved productivity and increased profits. Employees are willing to sacrifice personal gain for the sake of the team.
Some of the bonding is so great that employees brand themselves the same way as the elite soldiers, wearing, wearing visible ID tags, logos, and apparel wherever they go.
Where morale and esprit are weak, employees refuse to wear these identifying symbols — and productivity suffers as unmotivated employees pay more attention to personal gain than to the team effort.
If absenteeism, early departures, accidents and other problems make you think employees need a morale booster shot, you can try some of the following successful techniques.
