Activities That Will Help Relieve Stress

Some people think that it’s almost impossible to find an outlet while under stress. Most stressed individuals think that doing fun activities will not reduce the effect of problems that they tackle under career, social or personal pressure – which is a very poor way to get cope or rid them of it.

Therapist around the world agree that certain activities like games, sports and art can great affect a stressed persons physical and behavioral problems. Some of them are even employed in stress management clinics and is part of the routine treatment in helping individuals cope with their stress issue.

Mind games

Since stress will first affect the mental functions of an individual, it is very important to teach the person focus his mind on positive thoughts rather than dwelling on negative ones. Mind games offer an alternative which will allow a stress person to divert this thought patterns to something more productive. These clinics encourage their patients to tackle crossword puzzles and sudoku to help them cope with stress.

Logical functions are put to the test by introducing the Rubik’s Cube, Scrabble, and Bridge, into their curriculum. If you have no plans of visiting these centers to deal with stress, you can easily incorporate these games into your daily routine to give your mind some diversion from problems.

Sports

Engaging in sports is a great way to relieve stress. The physical exercise that your body needs to balance biological and muscular functions can rejuvenate those muscles that are tight due to the effects of stress. Playing sports can also provide an outlet for emotional problems like anxiety, depression, irritation, anger, and so on.

There are two kinds of sports a person can engage on his or her own free time. They can opt for team sports like basketball, soccer or volleyball which provides socializing functions and exercise. Individual sports like badminton, golf and tennis can also be a great help in focusing your mind to win the game rather than feeling useless under all the extra problems.

Workout

A visit to the gym may prove to be beneficial to your emotional, mental and physical health when under the influence of stress. The routine exercise your gym instructor will give you can help your mind focus on the tasks at hand. The strenuous activities can develop your muscles which improves your body’s coping mechanism to stress, and allows the body to release chemicals and hormones that is beneficial to your physiological well-being.

Cardiovascular workout can improve your heart and strengthen it to avoid stress related problems like strokes, high-blood pressure, chest pains and rapid heart beat. Due to the steady circulation in your system will benefit your muscles because of the fresh oxygen supply provided by these hearty fluids.

Note however that working out at the gym needs proper diet as well since your physical attributes will be worked to the limit to help fight off stress. Fresh fruits and vegetables are necessary improves digestion and supplies the body with the required nutrients it needs. Red meat devoid of fat can give your muscles proteins that will strengthen muscle tissues for added flexibility.

A healthy dose of mental activities, physical exercise coupled with a balance diet can help a person avoid the signs and symptom of stress and will be on the road to recovery to a stress free life.

www.selfimageimprovement.com

Brazen Up Your Fears!

Admit it. You are afraid. There are things that give you goose bumps, as well as make your body tremble, your palms sweaty, and your heartbeats faster. These things do not necessarily mean to be real, because oftentimes, you fear things that are mere creations of your ingenious imagination.

Fears or anxiety, according to Freud, is a basic emotion that influences everyone’s life from earliest childhood. This influence shapes your life, as you grow old. Usually, the things that you fear in your childhood are still the same things that you fear even when you get older. This only suggests that it is never easy to conquer fears especially if you don’t have a willing heart and a focused mind.

Fears vary. Some of you may fear imagined objects; some fear real things and activities; and some have particular dreads (phobias). While there are some who are weird enough that they just suddenly lose out of control of their actions and reasons. You commonly know these startling out-of-the-blue-attacks of intense fear or terror as panic disorders. These usually crop up when we face danger, but sometimes, they occur without obvious reason. If that happens, you have to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist for you may be having a mental illness. Your doctor may recommend to you effective treatments like psychotherapy and behavior therapy.

Your fears, as mentioned by experts, are learned response but they can be unlearned. Doctors may expose you to your respective fears that may take place in real life or in your imagination. While there are those who will encourage you to talk with others who have the same fears as you have.

Yet the best and the most effective therapy in treating fears are not those that doctors can offer. Even the most erudite doctor (may he be a graduate of am internationally acclaimed medicine school, or has received prestigious awards) cannot give you this kind treatment because no one but YOURSELF can only give you this.

No one but yourself can cure your fears. If you are unwilling to be cured, then your fears will continue to linger. They will never leave your side, shocking you day by day, even in the quietness of your sleep.

What do you have to do then? Here are some advice given by people who succeeded in defying their fears:

- “They are all in your minds. Control your minds and you’ll be able to control your fears.”—Karen, 20.

- “Pray. It’s the best shield when you are frightened.”—Martin, 16.

- “Just be bold. As Amy Tan said: Anything that cannot kill you will only make you stronger. Live with that kind of thinking.”—Rom, 21.

- “Occupy your mind with happy thoughts. If you are happy, you’ll forget the things that you are dreadful of.”—Sarah, 32.

Your “healing” generally depends on you. It’s your choice whether you want to be cured of your fears or not. In making the decision to defeat your fears, you have to prepare your heart and mind, for their full participation is most needed. If your hearts and minds are not willing, your fears will not go away.

Freedom from your fears lies in your hands and in your hands alone. Defy your fears and be free!

Remember Live Your Life By Choice, Not By Chance.

www.selfimageimprovement.com

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Be Grateful to Your Problems!

Do you currently have a lot of problems in your life?

Do you think that it is too much for one person to handle all these problems?

Do you think that life is unfair?

If your answer is yes, then here is an important truth that you must know:

“Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.” – Nelson Rockefeller, U.S. vice president

The opportunities to grow and learn are hidden in your problems.

Your problems are your best chance to stretch your mind and take your life to the next level.

There are lessons you must learn in order to progress in your personal development quest. Problems and failures are your best teachers.

To see these hidden opportunities, you must develop the right attitude. You must be grateful to all that happen to you.

Everything that happens to us is happening for a reason. There is a purpose for everything. You must stop and reflect. Look for the lessons and the opportunities within your problems.

To solve your problems you must learn new skills, adapt new thought patterns, and become a different person than you were before that problem.

God has crafted you for success. In the middle of every adversity lie your best opportunities. Discover it, build upon it and move forward in your journey to live an extraordinary life.

You owe it to yourself to live a great life. Don’t let negative thoughts pull you down. Be grateful and open to learn and grow.

Life is full of abundance. You just need to align yourself with life!

www.selfimageimprovement.com

Be a Professional

You are, at any given time, a son/daughter, sibling, parent or friend to someone else and as such, you carry on a ‘role’ that suits your relationship. When you work for someone or with someone, you are expected to put on a different persona other than these existing ones – that of being a professional. It is not as easy to be one though as being a professional doesn’t come naturally.

Being a professional means that you carry a responsibility given by the company. It trusts you to do your job and to do it the best way that you can. Deadlines should be met. Work should be beyond reproach. Attitude and PR should always conform to the company’s standard. Keep this as a mantra whenever you have to do work regardless of your personal feelings. Say for example, your job is to answer questions on your company products and a customer kept on badgering you with endless questions on it. You have to be patient and answer the questions until the customer is satisfied; that’s part of your job. Retain a grip on your temper and find ways to keep your cool even if you feel like bashing the person’s head with a pipe. That’s what a professional should do.

A professional should separate his/her personal feelings when it comes to business. Our natural inclination is to try and get along with everybody but in business, teamwork and friendships don’t always come together. You must be able to separate your personal relationship from that of your function as a co-worker. Much more so, if you are a supervisor or manager. The primary goal should always be on how the business will benefit or get affected by your work and/or your group’s work. So you must draw a line on what you can allow as a friend from what you have to do as a professional. For example, your work is getting affected by another employee who happens to be your friend. You might try talking to him first as a friend but if the situation does not improve and the damage is spreading, you have to bring up the matter to a superior officer. You can’t cover for him anymore; it’s not right. Remember the line of friendship and your job. That’s what a professional should do.

There will be times when you will be called to task or be given more work than what you were expecting. Being a professional means that you must not take this as an attack on you personally. It’s not you, it’s the job. Use the lesson to improve yourself instead of delving in pity. That’s what a professional should do.

www.selfimageimprovement.com

Be the Change

Do you want to change your life? How do you describe your ideal life?

What are your dreams and aspirations?

Have you tried a lot before to change your circumstances and improve your life without any success?

What approach were you taking?

Here is the best way to embrace the change you want to see in your life:

“We must be the change we wish to see” – Mahatma Gandhi

Work on yourself. Become the person who deserves the position that you want to be in.

You want more money… Do you have the required wealthy and abundant mentality?

You want better relationships… Are you the person who people would enjoy being around?

You want a better job… Do you have the skills and qualifications required for your dream job?

You want better health… Are you thinking in terms of a healthy life style? Or do you just focus on diet?

You can’t be rich while you have negative thoughts and beliefs about money.

Whatever you aim for, you must first be the change you wish to see.

You must tune yourself and be ready to receive the change you wish to see. Change starts from within. Live your life from the inside out.

You must be the change.

Feed your mind with positive thoughts. Develop everyday. Work on yourself. Learn and grow.

You are the key. Change to see the change! Success is a journey that needs a lot of patience along the way.

Remember Live Your Life By Choice, Not By Chance.

www.selfimageimprovement.com

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Tips for Students who Want to Overcome Procrastination

Take this quiz to find out if you-or any students in your family-need to get serious about overcoming procrastination:

Do you put off assignments until the last possible hour because you like to think of yourself as the type of person who works best under pressure?

Do you write down your priorities before you start projects? Do many things seem unimportant when you look at them in the light of these priorities?

Do you ask yourself which of several tasks is the most important one before you rush into an assignment?

Do you concentrate on finishing an assignment when you’re in danger of missing a deadline, rather than complaining that you never have enough time to get your work done?

Do you make sure your friends know when not to disturb you?

Do you turn off the TV and your phone when you need to work on an important assignment?

Do you concentrate completely on what you’re doing now, rather than dwelling on what you did in the past?

When you’ve done the best you can, are you content to wrap up a project and hand it in as it is?-Do you generally make good estimates of how much time it will take to finish an assignment?

If you answered “no” to any of the above questions but the first one (I hope you answered “no” to that one), you can develop better study habits by getting serious about procrastination. Try doing the hardest assignments first. Sandwich a difficult assignment between two of your favorite ones.

Most students dread writing assignments, putting them off to the last possible minute. Writing is one of the most important skills a student can develop. Here are some tips from great writers that can help you conquer the procrastination monster:

Winston Churchill wrote about 5 million words in his lifetime. That’s the equivalent of ten thousand 500-word articles, so he must have enjoyed writing very much. And he wrote well-well enough to win a Nobel Prize for literature. Churchill once said: “When you’re going through Hell, keep going.” To paraphrase that advice for all students struggling with a writing assignment: When you don’t know what to write, keep writing.

Don’t be a bleeder. (Journalists who agonize over every word they write are known in their profession as “bleeders.”) The faster you write, the more you’ll enjoy writing. Jack London, one of my favorite writers when I was a student, said that “you can’t wait for inspiration; you have to go after it with a club.”

Another Nobel Prize Laureate, John Steinbeck, said: “Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.” In other words, rewriting before you finish a first draft is an excuse for procrastination.

Remember Live Your Life By Choice Not By Chance.

Tired of Putting Things Off? - Put an End to Procrastination Today

I’ve been planning to write a novel for the last twenty years. I keep putting it off. Best-selling author John Grisham wrote his first novel while working full-time as an attorney; he was as busy as the rest of us, but he found a way to accomplish his dream. How did he do it? He beat procrastination by forcing himself to get up earlier every morning so he could work on his book before he went to work.

Take this quiz to find out if you need to put an end to procrastination:

Do you write down your priorities? Do some things seem less urgent when you look at them in the light of your priorities?

Do you ask yourself which of several tasks is the most important one before you decide what task to tackle next?

Do you accept full responsibility for missing a deadline, rather than blaming it on forces beyond your control?

Do you focus on finishing a job on time, rather than looking for excuses to explain why you’re going to miss another deadline?

Do you make sure people know when not to disturb you?

Do you have a habit of turning off the phone when you need to concentrate completely on a job? Do you focus on the job at hand, rather than fretting over what went wrong in the past?

When you’ve done your best, do you know when to wrap up a project?-Do you feel that spending more time on it will only keep you from starting your next job?

If you answered “yes” to all of the above questions, congratulations-you’re in John Grisham’s league. If you answered “no” to any of the above questions, pick one and make a commitment to do something about it today. Ask yourself if you have really considered all the consequences of procrastination. Do you want to live with them forever? Do you have a legitimate reason for postponing jobs? And after thinking about these questions, ask yourself if you delay tasks for justifiable reasons-or if you just make excuses to procrastinate. Here’s what I’ve learned to do:

Always remind yourself that you have as much time as people who do great things.

Make your best estimate of how much time a task will take.

Write an inspirational phrase on a 3 x 5 card and use it whenever the procrastination monster pops up.

Shakespeare said, “Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.” You’ve taken the first step to defeat procrastination by reading this article; now take the next step and tackle a job you know you should have started a long time ago. I took my next step this morning-I got up earlier than usual to start my novel.

The Best Cure for Procrastination - Your Vision

Have you discovered your purpose in life? Do you have long-term goals? Finding and focusing on your long-term goals is a powerful cure for procrastination. A vision is simply a statement of what you want to achieve in life, and how you plan to achieve it. Without a vision, it’s easy to fall into a lifestyle of procrastination. And without a clear statement of your vision, you’re more likely to give up on projects in the face of difficulties.

If you haven’t written your vision, you need to make this your No. 1 priority. Your goals and your attention will shift from one project to the next, year after year, if you don’t have a vision to guide you.

? Make a written list of your lifetime goals. Wishing won’t make it happen-writing down a goal is the first action you can take to conquer procrastination. One research study discovered that people who write down their goals earn ten times more than people who don’t. You may think you have a goal, but if you haven’t written it down, research suggests your chances of accomplishing it are small.

Break down your long-term goals into measurable tasks. This is the only way you can stay focused enough to keep moving toward your long-term goals. Without a series of clearly-defined milestones to measure your progress, you can delude yourself into thinking that you’re moving toward a goal when in fact you haven’t taken the first step yet. Do you constantly miss deadlines? Do you make up reasons to justify why you didn’t finish an important task, rather than tackling it and getting it done? Are you sincere enough to recognize the real reason why you missed your deadline? Do you have a written plan of attack for finishing the job without further delay?

Perfectionism is one of the main causes of procrastination. Recognize the difference between striving for excellence and getting stuck in a vicious circle of perfectionism. Ask yourself what type of work demands perfectionism. If the job you’re doing is not the type that requires perfectionism, then remember that your goal must be excellence rather than perfection.

Always keep a journal or idea book with you. Use spare time to jot down ideas about how you plan to attack your next goal. When you’re working on one project, what do you do when you get random ideas about other things? Do you write them down? Writing is a great way to use spare time and unleash your creative thinking and problem-solving skills. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar-just get your thoughts down as quickly as you can. If you need to show what you’ve written to someone else, you can revise it later.

Remind yourself that every task you face today is part of a divine plan for your life. “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,” Shakespeare wrote. You were created to accomplish more than you think you can-do some “rough hewing” on your life’s goals today.

Jim Rohn

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Be the Best!

Are you complaining that your life style is not good or that your income level is very low?

Let me ask you…

What are you doing to develop yourself?

When was the last time you read a book? When was the last time you attended a seminar?

Continuous self improvement is vital for your success.

You must become more to achieve more. It is very normal that you stay where you are as long as you are the same person.

When you learn something new and develop new skills, you will position yourself to reach a higher level in life.

Always strive to be the best that you can be. Set self improvement goals and take action to achieve them.

Continuously, work on yourself. Don’t stop your personal growth. Your personal growth should be a life long journey.

Learn from the experts, study success and life, and make it a habit to read 20 minutes everyday. And the most important thing is to apply what you learn.

Everyday take an action to expand your mind and develop yourself.

Make this statement your personal philosophy…”Be the best that you can be”. Grow and your life will grow.

Your current level in life is corresponding to your personal capabilities.

Improve everyday and increase your potential and personal value.

Your potential is unlimited and you can do whatever you want. You just need to commit yourself to the continuous improvement journey.

Make the decision today to do whatever you can to be the best that you can be.

A good program to help you is Success University.

www.successuniversityworld.com