Love your life without stress

My working hours is unpredictable.
Sometimes I can sleep really late and be very busy.. and sometimes I can be really jobless.
Most of my work is filled with pressure and stress… and since my second surgery on endometriosis, doctor suggests me to stay calm and relax and avoiding stress.

And starting 2007 I start to dealing with these thing that really works on reducing my stress.

Gardening
I started to grow few plants, and flowers, and grass and make a garden. Everything seems difficult at the beginning, but I learn really fast from internet. You may think im crazy, but I do talk with my plant, and they start to grow even more… plant is part of nature… and by talking to them, I don’t need any fertilizer.. plant has a soul. When you say, please grow, they will grow!

Fishpond
Fengsui say… it will better if you have fountain or pond in your house…so I made pond.. I love to watch the fish running and play in the water. I learn about fish from internet too. It’s a bit difficult to breed a fish. From 36 fish, now only left 5 fish… but the strong fish is my favorite fish…. We (me and my maid) like to make jokes and laughing with the fish… I can understand why that fish remain life. Sitting near the pond and watch the fish swim here and there is really relaxing your mind… especially when you feed them. Its great!

Pets
Hahaha, this is my favorite one…. I have 11 dogs stay with me….the are cute as ever! And playing with them really brighten my day. Dogs are very smart, and very funny too! To have them with me is like to have a big family with the kids… I love them all… and when im sad, the dogs will entertain me and make me laugh… when Im sing, they will sing with me… when im sleep, they will sleep with me..and when I go to shower, they will sit calm in front of the shower box and waiting for me…. They always know what time I get up every morning. To have them is the most amazing thing.

Karaoke
Some people don’t like to sing, some people ashamed to sing, and some other thinks its not fun to sing. But I love karaoke. During my stress, I do sing karaoke ( I even have a karaoke set in my house) and I can sing rock song and scream. That is so relief! Later on, my friends follow my step and found it interesting to sing and scream during their stress.

Write something
Okay… this is for woman who think that they have no place to talk. Lonely… during your bad time, why don’t you write on diary. If your think diary is stupid, why don’t you write blog, novel, anything, even just a note. That note is filled with everything pops up on your mind. Anything..just write it down… it really works too. Every where I go, I always bring a note pad and a pen. Just in case I found inspiration, or I thinking too much, worry too much. This is what I do: I start to write everything that I worry, scare, happy, confuse, even something that impossible that I want! And after that. I feel relieved.

Well… other than that, its up to you…. You can choose to do anything to reducing your stress. Sometimes I do puzzle, cooking, baking, sewing, make handy craft, cleaning the house, even play games! you can also go for shoping ( i know for most women, this realy works), just make sure you dont use a lot of money or your credit card.. to avoid you from another stress hehehe...

This is how you can love your life… without fear, worry and stress.

By: Veronika RJ

RELAXATION EXERCISE & STRESS RELIEF

Its been 3 weeks since i cant sleep every night.

my normal sleep is 5-6 hours. and i go to bed every night around 11-12AM. It starts when I had a 3 busiest month in my life, so I only have few hours to sleep. I start to get used to…until the busy time is stop, and all the work back to normal…and my energy has developed into a hard worker’s energy. And when I realize, I sleep every 3 Am then goes to 4AM, 5 AM and the last one…I only able to sleep after 5.30AM. and I get up around 12AM. Wow! That is really unhealthy, so I figure.. I must change! I must reordering my life again, I must physically and mentally healthy…then I bought books, video, and searching articles to overcome my problems… this is one of the worked one…. Happy reading….




A very effective 5 minute relaxation exercise for those on the go


It’s time to tense up! Purposefully clench every muscle in your body, including your fists, abs, teeth, cheeks, shoulders, ears and even your toes!


Hold on to the tension for a full 10 seconds.


Slowly begin to release each muscle one at a time.


As you inhale think of joy, peace, love and friendship.


As you exhale think of those things that cause you stress, one at a time and just let them all go.


FYI: When you visualize the things that you love as well as what causes you stress and then associate that with relaxation breathing, you are cleansing your body of the negative and filling with the positive.


Looking for a good night’s sleep
If you toss and turn at night, unable to empty from your mind, the contents of a busy day, this is a great relaxation exercise for you!


Bring a note book to your bedside.


Turn on slow, soft mood music.


Lie quietly and as thoughts come in to disturb your solace, write them all down.


When you are ready to fall asleep you will have “dumped” all of the noisy thoughts and clatter from your busy day that would serve to steal your sleep from you. Writing it all out helps you to empty your mind of it.


Reread all of your notes making a mental note to release all your cares down a sea of care. Envision each of your worries out on a raft about to hit the waterfall. Watch as the raft is eaten up by the falls and so goes your worries.


Return to your peaceful sleep listening to your peaceful music. You will fall asleep peacefully now.


Taken from:
http://www.solveyourproblem.com/

Stress Diary

Identifying the Causes of Short-Term Stress

Stress Diaries are important for understanding the causes of short-term stress in your life. They also give you an important insight into how you react to stress, and help you to identify the level of stress at which you prefer to operate.

The idea behind Stress Diaries is that, on a regular basis, you record information about the stresses you are experiencing, so that you can analyse these stresses and then manage them.
This is important because often these stresses flit in and out of our minds without getting the attention and focus that they deserve.

As well as helping you capture and analyse the most common sources of stress in your life, Stress Diaries help you to understand:

• The causes of stress in more detail;
• The levels of stress at which you operate most effectively; and
• How you react to stress, and whether your reactions are appropriate and useful.
• Stress Diaries, therefore, give you the important information that you need to manage stress.
  

How to Use the Tool:
Stress Diaries are useful in that they gather information regularly and routinely, over a period of time. This helps you to separate the common, routine stresses from those that only occur occasionally. They establish a pattern that you can analyse to extract the information that you need.

Download our free Stress Diary template and make regular entries in your Stress Diary (for example, every hour). If you have any difficulty remembering to do this, set an alarm to remind you to make your next diary entry.

Also make an entry in your diary after each incident that is stressful enough for you to feel that it is significant.

Every time you make an entry, record the following information:

• The date and time of the entry.
• The most recent stressful event you have experienced.
• How happy you feel now, using a subjective assessment on a scale of -10 (the most unhappy you have ever been) to +10 (the happiest you have been). As well as this, write down the mood you are feeling.
• How effectively you are working now (a subjective assessment, on a scale of 0 to 10). A 0 here would show complete ineffectiveness, while a 10 would show the greatest effectiveness you have ever achieved.
• The fundamental cause of the stress (being as honest and objective as possible).
• You may also want to note:
  How stressed you feel now, again on a subjective scale of 0 to 10. As before, 0 here would be the most relaxed you have ever been, while 10 would show the greatest stress you have ever experienced.
• The symptom you felt (e.g. “butterflies in your stomach”, anger, headache, raised pulse rate, sweaty palms, etc.).
• How well you handled the event: Did your reaction help solve the problem, or did it inflame it?

You will reap the real benefits of having a stress diary in the first few weeks. After this, the benefit you get will reduce each additional day. If, however, your lifestyle changes, or you begin to suffer from stress again in the future, then it may be worth using the diary approach again. You will probably find that the stresses you face have changed. If this is the case, then keeping a diary again will help you to develop a different approach to deal with them.
Analyze the diary at the end of this period.

Analyzing the Diary
Analyze the diary in the following ways:

First, look at the different stresses you experienced during the time you kept your diary. List the types of stress that you experienced by frequency, with the most frequent stresses at the top of the list.

Next, prepare a second list with the most unpleasant stresses at the top of the list and the least unpleasant at the bottom.

Looking at your lists of stresses, those at the top of each list are the most important for you to learn to control.

Working through the stresses, look at your assessments of their underlying causes, and your appraisal of how well you handled the stressful event. Do these show you areas where you handled stress poorly, and could improve your stress management skills? If so, list these.

Next, look through your diary at the situations that cause you stress. List these.
Finally, look at how you felt when you were under stress. Look at how it affected your happiness and your effectiveness, understand how you behaved, and think about how you felt.

Having analyzed your diary, you should fully understand what the most important and frequent sources of stress are in your life. You should appreciate the levels of stress at which you are happiest. You should also know the sort of situations that cause you stress so that you can prepare for them and manage them well.

As well as this, you should now understand how you react to stress, and the symptoms that you show when you are stressed. When you experience these symptoms in the future, this should be a trigger for you to use appropriate stress management techniques.

Click here to find out more about The Stress Management Masterclass, and here to visit the Stress.MindTools.Com site, which has many more articles on stress.

Retrieved from: www.mindtools.com

What Is A Body Treatment?

By Anitra Brown, About.com

Body treatments are essentially a facial for your whole body. It is just as important to cleanse, exfoliate, and hydrate the skin on your body as it is the skin of your face.
The most popular body treatment is a salt glow or sea-salt scrub. This is an exfoliating treatment that takes place on a massage table covered with a sheet and a large, thin piece of plastic.

As you lay on your stomach, the massage therapist rubs a mixture of sea salt, oil, and aromatics like lemon into your skin. This exfoliates the skin and leaves it feeling velvety soft.
Once your whole body is scrubbed, which takes maybe ten or fifteen minutes, you shower it all off without soap, leaving a nice coating of oil. It's an invigorating treatment, and it's a good idea to get your scrub before your massage if you're having both.

Variations can come from the essential oils or scrub materials: you might get an orange blossom/peppermint salt glow or a cucumber salt glow, or a body scrub done with coffee grounds, finely ground pecan shells or Napa Valley grape seeds.

A body mask and body wrap often takes place after a scrub. After you rinse off the salt you return to the treatment table. If you're slathered with mud, algae, or seaweed and wrapped in a thermal blanket, it's a "detoxifying" treatment that stimulates your metabolic system, speeding its ability to carry away waste products. If the product is cream or lotion, it's a "hydrating" treatment.

A body wrap can also be a wrapping treatment used to treat cellulite. It sometimes has a diuretic effect that aids in temporary weight reduction.

Fight Stress With Healthy Eating

Whenever we get too busy or stressed, we all tendto make poor food choices that will actually increase stress and cause other problems. To getthe most of your healthy eating and avoid stress, follow these simple tips.

Always eat breakfast

Even though you may think you aren't hungry, you need to eat something. Skipping breakfast makes it harder to maintain the proper blood andsugar levels during the day, so you should alwayseat something.

Carry a snack

Keeping some protein rich snacks in your car, office, or pocket book will help you avoid bloodsugar level dips, the accompanying mood swings, andthe fatigue. Trail mix, granola bars, and energybars all have the nutrients you need.

Healthy munchies

If you like to munch when you're stressed out, you can replace chips or other non healthy foodswith carrot sticks, celery sticks, or even sunflower seeds.

Bring your lunch

Although a lot of people prefer to eat fast foodfor lunch, you can save a lot of money and actuallyeat healthier if you take a few minutes and packa lunch at home. Even if you only do this a fewtimes a week, you'll see a much better improvementover eating out.

Stock your home

As important as it is to get the bad food out ofyour house, it's even more important to get the goodfood in! The best way to do this is to plan a menuof healthy meals at snacks at the beginning of theweek, list the ingedients you need, then go shopfor it. This way, you'll know what you want whenyou need it and you won't have to stress over whatto eat.


Submited by : RSI - group View all RSI - group 's articlesAbout: RSI Group has a free online article directory where you can read, submit and import articles. Website: http://free-online-articles.info/Article added in category Healthy Eating

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Introduction to Stress Management

A lot of research has been conducted into stress over the last hundred years. Some of the theories behind it are now settled and accepted; others are still being researched and debated. During this time, there seems to have been something approaching open warfare between competing theories and definitions: Views have been passionately held and aggressively defended.

What complicates this is that intuitively we all feel that we know what stress is, as it is something we have all experienced. A definition should therefore be obvious…except that it is not.

Definitions
Hans Selye was one of the founding fathers of stress research. His view in 1956 was that “stress is not necessarily something bad – it all depends on how you take it. The stress of exhilarating, creative successful work is beneficial, while that of failure, humiliation or infection is detrimental.” Selye believed that the biochemical effects of stress would be experienced irrespective of whether the situation was positive or negative.

Since then, a great deal of further research has been conducted, and ideas have moved on. Stress is now viewed as a "bad thing", with a range of harmful biochemical and long-term effects. These effects have rarely been observed in positive situations.

The most commonly accepted definition of stress (mainly attributed to Richard S Lazarus) is that stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that “demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.” In short, it's what we feel when we think we've lost control of events.

This is the main definition used by this section of Mind Tools, although we also recognize that there is an intertwined instinctive stress response to unexpected events. The stress response inside us is therefore part instinct and part to do with the way we think.

Fight-or-Flight
Some of the early research on stress (conducted by Walter Cannon in 1932) established the existence of the well-known “fight-or-flight” response. His work showed that when an organism experiences a shock or perceives a threat, it quickly releases hormones that help it to survive.
In humans, as in other animals, these hormones help us to run faster and fight harder. They increase heart rate and blood pressure, delivering more oxygen and blood sugar to power important muscles. They increase sweating in an effort to cool these muscles, and help them stay efficient. They divert blood away from the skin to the core of our bodies, reducing blood loss if we are damaged. As well as this, these hormones focus our attention on the threat, to the exclusion of everything else. All of this significantly improves our ability to survive life-threatening events.

Not only life-threatening events trigger this reaction: We experience it almost any time we come across something unexpected or something that frustrates our goals. When the threat is small, our response is small and we often do not notice it among the many other distractions of a stressful situation.

Unfortunately, this mobilization of the body for survival also has negative consequences. In this state, we are excitable, anxious, jumpy and irritable. This actually reduces our ability to work effectively with other people. With trembling and a pounding heart, we can find it difficult to execute precise, controlled skills. The intensity of our focus on survival interferes with our ability to make fine judgments by drawing information from many sources. We find ourselves more accident-prone and less able to make good decisions.

There are very few situations in modern working life where this response is useful. Most situations benefit from a calm, rational, controlled and socially sensitive approach.
In the short term, we need to keep this fight-or-flight response under control to be effective in our jobs. In the long term we need to keep it under control to avoid problems of poor health and burnout.

Managing Stress
There are very many proven skills that we can use to manage stress. These help us to remain calm and effective in high pressure situations, and help us avoid the problems of long term stress. In the rest of this section of Mind Tools, we look at some important techniques in each of these three groups.

Keeping a Stress Diary or carrying out the Burnout Self-Test will help you to identify your current levels of stress, so you can decide what action, if any, you need to take. Job Analysis and Performance Planning will help you to get on top of your workload. While the emotionally-oriented skills of Imagery, Physical Techniques and Thought Awareness, Rational Thinking & Positive Thinking will help you change the way you see apparently stressful situations. Finally, the article on Anger Management will help you to channel your feelings into performance.
This is a much-abridged excerpt from the ‘Understanding Stress and Stress Management’ module of the Mind Tools Stress Management Masterclass. As well as covering this material in more detail, it also discusses:

Long-term stress: The General Adaptation Syndrome and Burnout
The Integrated Stress Response
Stress and Health
Stress and its Affect on the Way We Think
Pressure andPerformance: Flow and the ‘Inverted-U’
These sections give you a deeper understanding of stress, helping you to develop your own stress management strategies for handling unique circumstances. Click here to find out more about the Stress Management Masterclass and here to visit the Stress.MindTools.Com site, which has many more articles on stress management.

The first of these articles shows you how to keep a stress diary - an important technique for understanding the most important sources of stress in your life. To read this, click 'Next article' below. Other relevant destinations are shown in the "Where to go from here" list underneath.

Warning: Stress can cause severe health problems and, in extreme cases, can cause death. While these stress management techniques have been shown to have a positive effect on reducing stress, they are for guidance only, and readers should take the advice of suitably qualified health professionals if they have any concerns over stress-related illnesses or if stress is causing significant or persistent unhappiness. Health professionals should also be consulted before any major change in diet or levels of exercise.

Taken from: www. MindTools.com

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