How balanced our lives are has a direct correlation for most people with their resilience and ability to cope with work pressures.

The following  exercise is a great stress reduction  and anxiety control exercise and will aid you to observe exactly what changes you should make in your life to attain your work  life  balance.

Draw a circle and then consider 6 to 8 really necessary parts in your life and also draw one line or spoke for each of these as well as label it. Firstly, think of exactly what significance, time and also focus these spots of your life would definitely take if you had your life in an excellent balance. You might wan tot relabel a couple of the spokes to match your  own life.

Nigel Marsh How to make work-life balance work

Make a  mark on each of the “spokes” of the wheel. The closer to the outsides, the more you value that place as well as the more important it is for you. The reduced relevance this area has , the closer your  mark is going to be to the center of the circle.
Draw a line in between the spokes to join up your marks. You should have a diagram looking something like a  simple cobweb.

Next step is to duplicate the activity with a different color, but this time place your mark on the line that demonstrates  how much time, relevance as well as importance that this area is currently receiving in your life. This time you are evaluating just what is happening right now! Again join up these marks and you should now have 2 cobwebs in different colors , one showing the ideal picture and the second one the “As is ” picture. You will definitely have an overall assessment from your 2nd plans of the ‘form’ of your life, and some idea l of the overall balance you have actually already established.

A considerable ‘indentation’ in the shape of your tire perhaps indicates a location where brand-new, even more fulfilling activities might be included, or unprofitable activities dropped.
If you have a relatively round– however extremely tiny figure, you are quite possibly receiving a bit as tiny compensations in all categories. If this holds true, you might want to set up modest goals for each area showed in the chart in order to raise your general fulfillment with your life.
Where there are gaps in between exactly what you need as the best balance your life, (your very first figure) and also just what you presently have, (your second figure), you may have indeed determined some origins of anxiety for you. To enhance matters you can set up yourself goals to assist you obtain a far better balance.
Select the facets you would like to develop further to sustain you through your worry administration and also foreseeable future modification.

Stress Management

Related Stress Reduction and Life Work Balance Resources

Stress May Be Tougher on Women’s Hearts Than Men’s Study

Stress reduction is important for anyone regardless of gender but this study shines a light on how stress differently affects the hearts of women potentially putting them at greater risk of a coronary event Ray said in an.…

Stress reduction helps control breast cancer Online Athens

OnlineAthens.com is the daily online edition of The Athens GA Banner-Herald.…

Work Life Balance Caroline Baxter

Getting Work Life Balance Right Many entrepreneurs I meet have made a conscious decision to start up a business with a view to improving their work life balance but often they find they are working more hours than they.…

Why taking work home CAN improve your work-life balance

Given that I am a work-life balance coach you would probably expect me to say taking work home is a bad idea. After all you should be spending your home time on non-work activities right Well not necessarily. It depends.…

Mindfulness psychology

Stress reduction Human response to stressors in the environment produces emotional and physiological changes in individual human bodies in.…

anxiety reduction

Technorati Tags: life work balance, stress reduction, stress reduction at work, stress reduction exercises, stress reduction kit, stress reduction program, stress reduction tips stress reduction techniques stress reduction activities

Stress is classified into two categories – acute and chronic.

Acute (short-term) stress is caused when the body’s instinct is to defend itself from a dangerous or threatening situation. The body’s physiological reaction reacts to the sudden danger by producing the appropriate hormones, adrenaline and cortisol changes necessary for the task at hand. This is known as the fight or flight response. This is usually short-lived and the body then returns to its normal physiological state.

Chronic (long-term) stress is when your body spends more time in the hyped-up fight or flight state. This type of prolonged exposure to stress can lead to problems such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, burnout and other medical disorders.

Chronic stress can often be a result from events such as ending a relationship, illness, death, and loss of employment, divorce or financial hardship. These stressors tend to take more time and support to overcome as they place more strain on the entire body.

The following are some symptoms and signs of stress: trouble sleeping, waking up in the middle of the night, lack of energy, feeling listless or apathetic, fatigue, headaches, stiff neck, upset stomach, nausea, high blood pressure.

Awareness is the first step in stress management. Observe your behaviors for any of these or other stress-related symptoms.  I have listed some stress management techniques below.

anxiety reduction

1-Learn to say “no” or “ I don’t have time right now” to outside obligations that cause you stress. Set boundaries at home and at work. If possible, act to change situations that trouble you; know when to face up to the things that are causing stress and when to let them go. Ask for support if needed.

2-Surround your self with positive uplifting people.

3-Visualize a safe haven to go to in times of stress. (Except when driving of course). Example: close your eyes and visualize a place in your mind that is peaceful or relaxing. While at this place notice what you see, what you hear and what you smell. If it’s the beach it could be the smell of the salt water or sun tan lotion. You may hear the waves slapping up on the shore, or hear the seagulls. Now take a deep breath with this visualization in mind. Stay there and continue to notice what comes up and how your body sensation feels. Is it relaxed, calm, and peaceful? This is the body sensation you are looking for. Do this visualization as often as you can.

4-Identify which tasks in your day you enjoy doing and mix them with more mundane tasks.

5-Distinguish between high and low priority tasks and eliminate less important ones.

6-Delegate any tasks you can that are less important.

7-Stop “perfectionism” it breeds unnecessary stress-and perfectionism is a myth anyway.

8-Practice relaxation exercises, for example: belly breathing. This is a powerful and simple technique. You will learn to breathe slowly from the diaphragm or your belly. This will relax you and help to relieve stress.

Lie comfortably on your back, place one hand on your belly, and inhale while you slowly count to four. Expand your belly as much as you can like a balloon. Then exhale from your mouth to a slow count of four while letting all the air out of the balloon. Feel yourself releasing the tension. Repeat about 3 times and try to build up to 5. You can do this before feeling stress, as it is a good prevention tool.

9- Do something nurturing and beneficial everyday for yourself. I have listed some suggestions.

*Pamper and nurture yourself.

*Spend some time laughing with a friend. Watch comedies and read humorous books.

*Exercise.

*Get outdoors-regular exposure to outside light combined with fresh air can be beneficial.

*Express your creativity-painting, drawing plant flowers or journal fond memories.

*Learn how to meditate-calming your mind is another great stress reducer.

*Get a Massage-massage therapy is an excellent stress reducer. It relieves tense muscles and also evokes the opposite of the fight or flight response.

*Spend some time with your pets-they help keep us in the present moment.

It is extremely important to keep areas of work, personal leisure, and relationships with others in balance. It is sometimes difficult to keep all areas of life in harmony at the same time. However, if you consciously make an effort to strive toward this it will help you decrease stressors and help lead you to a more complete life.

In peace and happiness!

Mary South Florida Gay News

Stress Management Articles 

Stress can be good or bad but moderation is the key The Scribe

Stress can be good or bad but moderation is the key. The Scribe. By Aaron Collett It should come as no surprise that this time of the year tends to be the most stressful for us students. Spring finals are coming up quickly seniors are preparing for graduation and everyone has a list of assignments that are due.…

Try an In-Depth Free Stress Well-Being Survey Care2.com

Care2.com. Try an In-Depth Free Stress Well-Being Survey. Care2.com. As part of HeartMath’s Nourishing the Heart column for April’s National Stress Awareness Month we want to offer you a free Stress Well-Being survey developed by the Institute of HeartMath that you can take. This short science-based survey will.…

Women and Stress The Reiki Stress Management Activities

You would think that with all the articles on how to cope with stress in popular magazines newspapers and medical literature that we would have a better handle on it. Yet the annual survey on stress in America conducted in.…

No Is The New Yes Stress Management  Tips

Productivity and stress management isn’t about figuring out how to do more it’s about deleting what doesn’t fit. Tips from wellness speaker Eliz Greene.…

Stress Management

Technorati Tags: anxiety reduction, stress management, stress management activities, stress management articles, stress management tips

Mindfulness Practice 1: Deep Breathing

It as simple as breathing really. By focusing on your breathing and breathing deeply from your lower abdomen can calm you down and really focus you on the moment . It is a simple technique that can be used anywhere.

 Mindfulness Practice 2 Meditation

There is no surprise that our top CEO’s in our biggest companies are flocking to mediation to help them deal with their many pressures. Meditation builds a degree of mental discipline and over time allows yo to better direct your thoughts  and become detached from your worries. It has a  huge range of health benefits on blood pressure etc..

Mindfulness Exercise 3: Observing Your Thoughts

Our worries generally focus on what has already happened “I’m worried about what others think of me following my outburst in the meeting”  or what might happen in the future “ What will my Boss think when he hears?”  Sometimes holding off the onslaughts of thoughts can be difficult. It can be like trying to cross a fast moving river sometimes the current is too strong and yo get swept along. Of this sounds a little lie yo then the habit of mindfulness might be worth trying for you. So what you do is listen and sit back to your inner dialogue “your thoughts in your head”  You observe them rather than be absorbed by them as you practice this detachment technique you may find your thinking starts to quieten down a little . If you want to accelerate this process write down yor main thoughts in a journal and then reflect upon them afterwards.

Useful blogs on mindfulness

How Mindfulness Transforms Ordinary into Extraordinary Goodlife Zen

When the mind is neither in the past or the future and we are completely present, our experience changes in a significant way.

Suddenly life seems more spacious and more peaceful.

The Mindfulness Path

Mindfulness is the practice of moment by moment awareness. This practice is a careful and continual observation, where we directly experience the changing nature of the mind/body process

Why We Need To Teach Mindfulness In A Digital Age

Think of sitting quietly in a spartan room. There are no TVs, computers, smartphones, books, magazines or music. If you’re like most people, this probably sounds like a recipe for boredom. In our culture, we avoid moments of “not-doing” because we don’t associate boredom with having any value.

anxiety reduction

Reducing anxiety, Sowing and Growing—NazarethCollege (Flickr.com)

Here are a few practical  tips to help you reduce your anxiety and better manage your stress

Every one gets nervous on occasion but its only when those nerves seem to grow and we feel powerless to control that normal nerves becomes a a acute or chronic level of anxiety .

We are not for a second saying that some our experiences can be challenging and that life has a habit of putting us under loads of pressure at times.

Pressure and worries are very real but it is what you deal wit them afterwards that matters and we simply differ in our response to these pressures which of course impacts on how well we deal with them in our everyday life.

A key cognitive technique that can be very helpful in anxiety reduction is mindfulness. It is particularity helpful when you have to be able to perform at a high level but are feeling anxious. The video below talks about test and exam based anxiety times when you definitely need to be thinking straight! but the concepts apply to a host of potentially anxiety inducing situations.  So what do we mean by mindfulness?

Lets take the test based anxiety as an example:

Anxiety in a test condition can result in “going blank” Mindfulness is about paying attention to the current moment . The current moment we mean how your body is feeling, the noises, sounds and smells going on right now. Sentimentally we distract our brains for worry and ruminating by bringing our thought back to the present. We anchor it there by focusing our attention in an emotionally detached way on the present experience. This may seem strange but trust me this is a powerful technique that improves greatly with some practice and is great for reducing anxiety.

So how can you practice mindfulness?

We’ll talk more about that in our next blog entry .

In the meantime here are some useful links to anxiety reduction and stress management blogs

anxiety reduction

 2 Things You Can Do Right Now to Decrease Anxiety

Stress, anxiety and depression are often consequences of the combination of uncertainty and pressure.In one study focused on reducing anxiety and depression in college students, physical exercise and relaxation techniques were found to be valuable remedies for depression and anxiety (Cai, 2000).

When Reducing Anxiety Perfect Solutions Don’t Exist

The distorted stories we tell ourselves can amplify our anxiety — which, ironically can occur when we’re trying to reduce the worry, jitters and angst. One of the most damaging of distortions is the desire for perfection.

Quality Advice On Reducing Panic Attacks Dealing With Anxiety

Try to be aware of the feelings that signify that an attack is imminent, so that you can try to ward it off. Knowing what types of situations elicit anxiety can help you find methods for dealing with them.

Technorati Tags: anxiety rdcuction, dealing with anxiety, Mindfulness, reducing anxiety

Rapid breakthrough taught by Mr. Sanders at MIT for easily lowering blood pressure and easing stress for enhanced mental potentials and greater happiness (as presented by Mr. Sanders at Massachusetts Institute of Technology). More information at www.freesoul.net and in Mr. Sanders book – You Are Psychic!

Technorati Tags: Free, Pete, Rapid, Reduction, Sanders, Soul, stress

Anger management is about trying to harness your emotion and anger in a more constructive manner.
Anger can be a real source of commitment and motivation to do something practical.
But it has to be balanced and be based on the right decisions that work for others as well.

Part 4 of 6. John Schinnerer Ph.D. on free online anger management class. For FREE 216 pg. book on managing anger, visit www.siteproweb.com

So anger management can be learnt

• Learn to forgive yourself and others
• Learn to visualize what you want in terms of an outcomes
• Use techniques to control your emotional responses like breathing and relaxation.

Technorati Tags: Anger, anger management, CLASS, Management, Online, Part, stress management

Technorati Tags: Guided, Meditation, relaxation, Relief, stress

Technorati Tags: Hala, Khouri, Reduction, stress, Trailer, Yoga

Technorati Tags: Laughter, Relief, Simple, Solution, stress, Yoga

Technorati Tags: Dreams, Moonlit, piano, Relief, stress

Technorati Tags: Relief, stress

Technorati Tags: Guided, Meditation, Relief.wmv, stress

So this person believes stress needs to be present and balanced in order for them to be more productive . Yeah right!

Personally I think this is faulty thinking. Yes many of us we do need a degree of pressure in order to motivate us and get us going.

Many of us are deadline “junkies”  having lots of time to complete the task but only get really focused and in the groove when the deadline is near. I would call this pressure not stress. Pressure is inevitable in most workplaces .

BUT I really believe that stress is at least in part optional. 

We can be focused working under pressure , “be in the groove”  but  in my view this is not necessarily being under stress. Many of us quite enjoy the focus pressure can bring. It may not be the best or wisest choice but self-condfidant individuals may have already picked up the bad habits of last minute cramming it or simply “winging it”.

Isn’t that what some of us learn from taking exams at school?

Stress is more self induced and negative and bad for our health and is quite different from pressure in my view.

Back to stress management.

Technorati Tags: Answer, good, Interview, Manage, stress, stress management, tips, working under pressure

Homework, term papers, midterms, tuition fee, on-campus job, greek life activities, extracurricular activities, boring professors, messy roommates….What can possibly cause student stress?

College appears to be the best time of an adolescent’s life but look closer, so much is going on physically, mentally and emotionally that it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what causes the stress.

Wella actually I think the kids cause their own stress having learnt how to do that from their families and by having a lower resilience to stress.

Back to stress managment anxiety reduction

Technorati Tags: Causes, causes of stress, Really, School, School Stress, stress

Technorati Tags: Austin, better, Body, Emotions, Nutrition, stress, tips, Wellness