Taking a Break
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Postings will be sporadic over the next three weeks since Marion is taking a break to recover from some medical treatments.
Are You Running Your life?
Is your life under your control or that of other people?
Believing that you have no control over your life can be a major source of stress and unhappiness. It’s difficult to see how to proceed when everyone else appears to be forcing the pace and pushing you along.
This may not be what really happens, although you may feel as though it does. It all depends on where you think the power of control lies. Some of you will feel that it always comes from the outside — from external forces and other people. For you, your life is only rarely subject to your control. Most of what happens relies on external events, other people, luck or fate.
For others, control is mainly an internal affair, driven by choice and personal beliefs. For you, there is a much greater chance to take things in the direction you want them to go.
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Do You Know What You Really Want?
Bad times present golden opportunities to re-assess your goals
When times are good we are busy rushing from task to task, expecting the future to be better than the past and looking forward to improving our own circumstances. We are fixated on materialistic gains and living the good life in a culture which tells us that work is the only highly valued activity. So much so that we don’t realize how this same culture is sucking us dry and making our lives a misery of stress and anxiety.
The times are probably not so good for many of us now, and the future does not look so bright. Perhaps now is a good time to look at whether still striving hard to reach that “nirvana” of achievement and acquisitions is a good idea? Why do we do it? Is it because we don’t know what else to do? Is it because we are programmed by our culture? Whichever it is, when we are anxious about the future we forget to live in the present.
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Save Yourself From Emotional Responses
Do you know what sets you off?
If you find yourself saying, far too often, “Oh no! It’s got me again,” this is for you. Many of us are tripped up by things that spark an emotional reaction. One moment we’re sitting, relaxed and content, and the next we’re being led by the nose by an advertising jingle, a newspaper headline, or some emotional slogan. If we want to lower stress—and stay in charge of our reactions—it’s a good idea to understand what catches us and why.
Throughout every day, we’re surrounded by baited hooks trying to snatch our attention and direct it where someone else wants it to go. Headlines on the television, articles in newspapers and magazines and advertising all play a large part in getting us worked up. We think we’re pretty smart about avoiding or ignoring them, but often our emotions kick in, our blood pressure gets critical, and we groan, “oh no, it got me again!”
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Thieves of Time
Dealing with the habits that steal your time and of peace of mind
When we look at how we manage our time, we normally focus on impersonal matters: prioritizing, organizing, various forms of distraction and loss of focus. These are all important, but can all be dealt with by training or some teachable techniques. There are also other thieves of time which are not so easy to deal with. These are personal behaviors which we use all too often without realizing how much harm they can do.
These behaviors waste time on a grand scale and they are notable stress producers. You can’t deal with them by techniques or skill training as they are too personal. The only way to deal with them is to bring them into the open and see them for what they are: bold thieves of time, attention, and — most destructive of all — peace of mind.
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Why Taking a New Direction Can Be Better Than You Think
Facing facts and making the best of things is essential to real learning
You’re probably feeling unsure about how to proceed with your life in these uncertain times. The road you chose to follow may no longer be open to you. The road you are already on may been blocked. What you thought of as a straight path, moving easily forward may now be broken up into side paths with many twists and turns. When you planned out what you wanted to do everything probably seemed certain. Now it is much more chancy. You will need to learn to adapt to suit the different circumstances.
Take care to make your own decisions
The people closest to you are probably also suffering uncertainty. Sometimes talking to others can help, but it can also mean that you may be tempted into pleasing them, rather than concentrating on what is right for you. You will be given advice and suggestions by all and sundry. Everyone will have their opinion of what you ought to be doing, where you should plan to go and how to get there. They are trying to help, but they will all have their own agendas — probably based more on their issues than yours. It is up to you to take a step back to look at where you are and to think how you can begin to regroup for an uncertain future.
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It’s Not Fair!
How to stop yourself from facing still more regrets
You are probably wondering how the present economic mishaps could have messed up your life so much, and feeling fed up and depressed at the loss of many of your dreams. Everyone else has problems too, but they are not your problems and you are really on your own when it comes to dealing with your situation.
Putting aside the big dreams and facing reality
Regrets are caused mostly by unfulfilled expectations—especially ones that you invested in heavily. If those go wrong, it hurts a great deal. You’ve not only lost something you wanted badly, you’ve lost the dreams as well.
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Don’t Add To Your Troubles
In times like this, you need to keep your head—even if all around you are panicking
The world is an unfriendly place right now, and there are many of us who are worried and dismayed at the effect if has on our lives. It’s all too easy to let yourself become overwhelmed with your problems, and then add to them by railing against the reality of the situation.
If you are able to accept what has happened, you will be able to distance yourself from some of the stress and anxiety you feel. Acceptance does not mean acquiescence. Most of you probably don’t feel at all like submitting to what’s happened. You’d like to rush off and do something, anything, to improve your situation and protect your self from any more harm. Sometimes, just being busy, even if what you do has little effect. gives you a sense of relief, but many times relief of this kind comes at the expense of quite thoughtful consideration.
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Why You Need a Well-Stocked Mind
“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea—
—especially if it’s the only one you have.”
~ ANON ~
Ideas are like tool kits. If you have too small a kit, you can be sure that you’ll never have the exact tool you need when something breaks down or needs repairing. Smart people keep a wide variety of tools handy, just in case. Smart people also keep their minds open to as many ideas as possible. This gives them the ability to step up to new situations and come out smiling.
I’ve always noticed that the least successful and most frustrated people have the fewest ideas. You can tell this because they keep using the same ones over and over again, regardless of how well they fit what’s needed. Like people whose tool kit has only one old screwdriver and a hammer, they haven’t any other choice. If whatever they have isn’t what they need, they do the best they can, even if that means messing up.
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The Importance of Trust
Trust is fundamental to life. If you cannot trust in anything, life becomes intolerable
You can’t have relationships without trust, let alone good ones. Intimacy depends on it. I suspect more marriages are wrecked by lack of trust than by actual infidelity. The partner who can’t trust the other not to betray him or her will either drive them away or force them into some real or assumed act of faithlessness.
In the workplace too, trust is essential. An organization without trust will be full of backstabbing, fear and paranoid suspicion. If you work for a boss who doesn’t trust her people to do things right, you’ll have a miserable time of it. She’ll be checking up on you all the time, correcting “mistakes” and “oversights” and constantly reminding you to do this or that. Colleagues who don’t trust one another will need to spend more time watching their backs than doing any useful work. The office politics would make Machiavelli blush.
Think of all the additional tasks and problems people face that are caused directly by lack of trust. All the worry and tension as people look over their shoulders, convinced that someone, somewhere, is out to ‘get’ them. Companies keep voluminous records because they don’t trust their suppliers, their contractors and their customers. Probably more than half of all the forms we are asked to complete everywhere are only there because of a pervasive sense that “you can’t trust anyone these days.” If even a small part of such valueless work could be removed, the savings in time and dollars would be enormous.
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