De-stress your life: 12 Easy Ways (by Jonathan Lockwood Huie)

If you have put on weight, have a smoking habit, or otherwise feel your life is out of control, weight, smoking and such are probably only the visible symptoms of a common underlying cause and the real enemy - Stress. Stress is a truly sinister and cunning opponent.

Here are 12 ways to de-stress your life, and in the process to jump-start your battle with weight, smoking, and other behaviors you wish to change...

1. Get more physically active. If your doctor okay's strenuous activity, get out and work up a sweat. Digging in your garden for a few hours is a real stress-buster. Go for a hike in the woods, pick a steep hill. Remember what you used to love doing, or always wanted to do, and begin today. Dust off your old bike. Buy an inexpensive kayak and learn to paddle. Choose outdoor activities whenever you can. When you are limited by weather or time, choose aerobic dancing to compelling music that captures your whole being. Or just workout until you are tired. But whatever you choose, focus on your activity. Don't talk, watch TV, or think about anything except what you are doing at the instant.

2. Spend time alone in nature. Who can stress while walking barefoot on a lonely expanse of sand, watching the seabirds soar and dive, and listening to the waves break and the wind rustle through the beach grass. Combine physical activity with time spent alone in nature by hiking, paddling, or biking.

3. Release your attachments. Stress is caused by the fear that we will lose what we value. We stress because we fear that we will lose our health, our job, our home, our spouse or friends. We stress that we will have less tomorrow than we had yesterday.

By releasing your attachment to your possessions and your attachment to your relationships, you can eliminate most of the stress in your life. Make a daily practice of visualizing your life without those things you most value. Visualize yourself without a car, a computer, a cell phone, and recognize that those things do not define the true value of your life. If you are in a highly troubled relationship and fear that the other person may leave you, visualize your life without that person, and accept that your happiness in life comes from within, and not from any other person.

4. Simplify your life. Once you have released your attachments to your possessions, consider releasing those things physically as well. Search through your home for things you have not used in a year. Consider which of those items could be given away without loss to your happiness. Perhaps you want to ask yourself about the true value to your life of other possessions as well. What do you own that creates happiness and what creates stress? Would downsizing de-stress your life?

5. Reduce your obligations. Some people keep to themselves. Others thoroughly enjoy being president of their kid's school PTA and volunteering to drive seven girls to scout camp. But many others suffer with too many self-imposed obligations. If you don't enjoy a responsibility, and it isn't truly crucial, just say NO. Focus your volunteering on those activities that give you great joy and satisfaction.

6. Learn to love your job, or get a job you love. This idea for de-stressing your life is the most difficult one for many people. If your reaction is that you simply must continue with a job you hate for the sake of your family, think again. Your family loves and cherishes you for far more than the paycheck you bring home. If taking a different, more personally rewarding, job would make you a happier and more pleasant person, don't you think your family would appreciate the change? Turn the tables and ask yourself if you would want your spouse to work at a job they hated in order to bring home a few more dollars each week? Trust that they would make the same choice for you. Love and honor yourself enough to choose a career that brings satisfaction as well as a paycheck.

7. Begin a project you love. Give yourself a little time each day to work on something creative that you love doing and that makes you feel good about yourself. Knit a scarf. Play the piano. Take up woodcarving.

8. Know that you are not responsible for the whole world. If you are going to make a difference, take up a cause. Campaign for the candidate of your choice, volunteer in your local soup kitchen, write a big check to Doctors Without Borders. But then turn off the eleven o'clock news. Worrying and stressing about the state of the world, or the economy, or crime in your community, or the health of your Aunt Judy in Des Moines, or whether your adult child's marriage is going to fail, is a waste of your time and causes much unnecessary stress.

9. Give your time to others. It's hard to worry so much about yourself when you give your time to help those less fortunate. Consider becoming a community volunteer.

10. Forgive everyone, especially yourself, for everything that has ever been done or been left undone. Your anger and hatred hurt you. Forgiveness is the salve that removes the sting of past injuries. Resentments and regrets do not cure the past, but unconditional forgiveness does.

11. Have gratitude for everything that has ever happened or not happened. All of your life is part of a grand plan. You wouldn't be who you are today if you had missed out on any of your experiences.

12. View life as an adventure. Everything changes. The inherent nature of life is constant change. To fear change is to fear life itself. Once you accept that whatever you hate about your life will change soon, and that whatever you love about your life will also change, you can view all of life as the adventure that it is, and end your stress.

Once you are serene and happy, you are far less likely to feel driven to overeat, smoke, or bite your nails. Begin by de-stressing your life, and changing your behaviors will follow naturally

You Hold All The Keys To Your Future

I can give you all the principles and all the formulas to succeed in life, and show you how to change for the better. Yet only you hold the keys to your future, only you can change your circumstances and only you can make a positive difference in this world if you decide to do so. How you may ask? That is simple, if you don't act on the philosophies and principles in this article or in any article, for that matter, any motivational tapes or anything of like kind, there is no way you can change without action.

That is when you need to reach deep inside yourself and find that little something that sparked you in the first place and gave you hope for the first time and that is the key to your happy and healthy future. You must move forward at a cost that we are at this point not sure what the cost is going to be.


Let me assure you if there is going to be progress, then there will be a cost. This cost may not be great it just depends on how fast and far you expect to go in a certain amount of time. If you decide that you only need to go and a little bit, then the cost will in turn be small. Please do not let the cost scare you, as there is a cost for everything in this life, if you want to be a better swimmer, then you need to practice in the pool quite a bit.
Without practice, you are not going to be a very good swimmer and without action, you will not make progress in anything you choose to do. I wish there was a simple easy way to get around this but there is not. Once you realize that you need to put time in to get from where you are to where you want to go, and then you start to realize that the equation is quite simple, thought plus action equals results.


Once you understand this simple equation and add time into it, then there is nothing that you can't accomplish. Then you understand that the world is yours for the taking and there is nothing that is out of your grasp and that you can't achieve.
Now that we've figured out the equation let's talk about how much time we stay on each task. How do I know that I am spending too much time in one area and not enough time in another? If your life seems to be lacking in a certain phase, then maybe you need to spend more time in one area and less in another. How can I distinguish which phase I am doing well in and which phase I am doing poorly in?

That's when areas of your life are going to be going good, and I am happy, healthy, Wealthy and do I get along with others. These are just a few of the areas that we need to focus on and there are many more, let's focus on the ones we listed. Can I truly be happier? Can I truly be healthier? Can I truly the wealthier? The answer is yes. You can truly be happier because happiness is a Choice and you can choose to be happy in any moment no matter what the circumstances are.

Once you learned that happiness is a Choice you will be surprised at the little ways and things you do those that make you happy that never before did. Now that you have happiness, mindset things are easier, things are finer and you'll see that you start looking for the good in life instead of all the negatives. That is one of the Keys, Learning How to Be Happy and to except Happiness as a Way of Life! Letting It Have the Upper Hand in all your decisions most of the day.

Will this really work here you are asking yourself? YES it will because happiness is what all seek after and try to find in this life, yet normally we have a self-defeating mode of self-destruction and negative thinking which is learned over our course of life. Therefore, what we now need to be willing to do is to change that course of thinking, to get out of the negative and leap into the positive world.

This is where life has meaning and purpose and this is where you can see that happiness truly is a Choice and that you may choose it at anytime you want. Results are yours and you can mold them and shape them into any form you so wish to do, the time is now, the future is yours, today is a gift, use it in anyway that you want, use it as long and much as long as it is in the positive nature.

Slowly the phase shall start to have meaning and you will see that you can make a difference in your life with just a little bit of hard work. Now you can truly see why only you can change your future and why you hold all the keys to all that you need for success and now you have a better understanding of how to use your minutes wisely and that is another key to your success. That people is in this world of ever-changing values, a another one of the keys to your success.

 

By Arthur Buchanan | Happiness | Unrated

How to Spend Money So It Makes You Happy

The debate over whether money can buy happiness just got more complicated. A new paper from two economists suggests that spending money on certain things – namely, leisure activities – does, in fact, improve happiness levels. Spending on more materialistic items, such as cars, food, and clothes, does not.

First, some background: Economists have long debated how money influences happiness levels. On one hand, people in richer countries report higher happiness levels. But after a certain threshold of wealth is reached, the link begins to weaken. That could be because people get used to higher incomes, so wealth doesn’t bring them as much pleasure, or because once people achieve a certain level of material success, they begin to wish they had even more. People also tend to compare themselves to others, and it’s always possible to find someone else who’s richer than you.

But no one doubts the importance of being happy. For starters, it feels good, but it also appears to improve health and even longevity.

Now, back to these intriguing new findings. By comparing consumption data from the national Health and Retirement Study, Thomas DeLeire of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ariel Kalil of the University of Chicago found that spending money on leisure activities, which include vacations, movie theater tickets, and hobbies, improve happiness levels. (Happiness was measured by asking respondents to describe how they felt about their lives.)

Expenditures on durable goods such as refrigerators, clothes, personal items, cars, and housing, on the other hand, did not have an effect on happiness.

The apparent reason behind the leisure spending – happiness connection is even more intriguing than the finding itself: Spending on leisure activities appears to boost one’s level of social connectedness. That makes sense, since when you go on vacation, engage in a hobby such as tennis or bridge, or go out to the movies, you are almost always doing it with somebody else. So spending on leisure might boost your social connectedness, which in turn improves your happiness level.

What does this all mean for the savvy consumer? Well, it suggests that we should be sure to budget some of our funds towards leisure. While the latest handbag or car might give us a short burst of euphoria, we might soon get used to having them around so the happiness provided is short-lived. But if we spend money on a once-in-a lifetime vacation with our families instead, then we might feel happier and more connected to our loved ones.

One caveat: The study is based on data from older Americans over the age of 50, so it might not apply to everyone but it is applicable to Nigerians. It’s possible, for example, that younger Nigerians get more of a happiness surge from keeping up with the latest clothing trends, and older folks get more pleasure from leisure. As the authors put it, “For a relatively older adult, an expensive vacation or box seats at the symphony may be happily viewed as the just reward of a long and productive life, something that was postponed until a stage of relative financial security and seniority in one’s position at work or in the community.”

Still, the findings hold a useful lesson for the rest of us, too.

Teaching your child money habits for life

Teaching your child money habits for life

For most adults, the first brush with money management came in the form of a porcelain pig. A nickel here or a Naira there for every chore completed or good deed. Financial responsibility, for the most part, stopped with the piggy bank. Many of the Echo Boomer generation—those born between the 1970s and early 1990s—agree that learning how to spend, save, and invest wisely just wasn't a part of life's lessons growing up. "I wish I understood the value and attributes of money at a young age," says Christopher Rogers, a 33-year-old, New York native and associate director at a financial services firm. "Although I grew up around a successful family, no one instilled the value of money in me until I began to do it myself, and fairly recently, too."

Indeed, piggy banks may not be enough to impress healthy saving habits in young people. Especially these days, many Americans are kicking themselves for being reactionary to the Great Recession, scrimping and saving only after things hit rock bottom. Now faced with a deteriorating job market, fragile housing market, and the threat of a double-dip recession, more consumers are reshaping their spending habits and are showing a renewed commitment to saving—behaviour we haven't seen in recent decades. The generation born during the Great Depression that went on to fight in World War II, which Tom Brokaw deemed "the greatest generation any society ever produced," had to pull itself up by its bootstraps to put food on the table. At the same time, they bequeathed to subsequent generations a life with considerable aplomb and privilege, distorting notions of what it means to work hard, survive, sacrifice, and value every Naira earned. According to a Fidelity Investments study, on average, Generation Y individuals hold more than three credit cards with one-fifth carrying a balance greater than $10,000 and 1 in 4 believing they will never be free of credit card debt during their lifetime. Parents nowadays are learning from their own mistakes, and finding themselves more mindful than ever of passing down solid financial habits to their kids.

It's clear that children today lead a more extravagant lifestyle—laden with trendy wardrobes, smart phones, video games, and other expensive gadgets—than their parents did. And it doesn't help when parents simply dole out cash with no strings attached. Upon graduating high school and flying the coop, many teenagers are likely to be walloped by exorbitant debts, making it extremely difficult to purchase a car or home down the road due to poor credit.

So, how can you teach your children the importance of saving, accounting for their spending, and self-discipline? Here are some money management strategies and tactics for parents that can help kids take control of their financial futures:

Be committed. "Like mastering a new language, developing athletic skills, or becoming a master musician, financial fluency requires time, practice, intention, the acquisition of financial language and values," says Joline Godfrey,who stresses the importance of being committed to your child's financial literacy. "This is a process, not an event, and parents who begin early find that good financial values and behavior are more deeply integrated into children's life skills and habits if they are as consistent and clear about their financial expectations as they are about brushing teeth and doing homework … Most parents understand that a couple of hours on the tennis court would not be enough to prepare a young person for competition. Similarly, a badly managed allowance and a few lectures on 'spending less' are not a financial education!"

Money does not grow on trees. Nor does it magically appear from ATMs. Children should learn from a very early age that they have to work to earn money. Ask them: "Do you know where money comes from?" If you go to the bank or withdraw money from an ATM, explain to your child that it is your money coming out of your bank account and that you worked for that money.

Provide a weekly allowance. Parents can pay their child a weekly allowance for completing household chores, whether it's doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, cleaning up their room, baby-sitting, or any other age-appropriate task. You can track chores or good behaviour on a chart, checking off what they accomplished that day. By week's end, you can pay them for their accomplishments. Divvy up the weekly allowance into different envelopes, such as "entertainment," "clothes," or "savings."

Show them your monthly bills. There's no need to get too granular with your personal finances, but showing your children bills such as mortgage, electricity, utility, cable, and car insurance helps them understand what it costs to run a household. You can even show them your banking statements. This will help them learn how deposits and withdrawals are made.

Go shopping together. The supermarket is a great way to show kids how to save money. You can use the items on your list and compare prices between products, to help children look out for less-expensive brands. For the little ones, use relatable items, such as chocolate chip cookies or milk.

Get a job, create a budget. Once your child turns Sweet Sixteen, require him or her to get a part-time job. The money earned can go toward things that they want, such as clothing, tech gadgets, or entertainment—but only if it falls within their budget. Your child may not have enough money to spend on an iPod because of, say, weekly transportation or car-related expenses.

Start a savings account. Get your kids into the habit of saving by starting a savings account, to which they contribute a set amount each week. Set realistic goals and work with them on how they are going to achieve the goals. The account will teach them to save regularly. And reviewing monthly bank statements will help them to understand the concept of interest accrual.

Develop their entrepreneurial spirit. Landing a job and making the most of it will allow your child to stand out from the pack. "Twenty-first century kids will approach careers with the notion of 'making a job; not just taking a job,'" says Godfrey. "With unemployment for teens and 20-somethings running well into the double digits, entrepreneurial skills and outlook will be a competitive advantage."