Link to Success

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Jan 29 2010

3 Powerful Secrets to Destroy The Chains Of Negativity That Are Holding You Back

Simple Steps To Self-Actualization

Problems can never be avoided and sadly, they can get the better of us. As much as we would like to pull our hair out and wail like a child, we keep all the anger bottled deep down inside. Then, we try to move forward and mask the issues with a calm facade. We all know that this is the last thing we should do.

Stress is everywhere and we cannot live our entire adult lives like children, free of cares and worries. As we enter into the real world and live our lives as adults should, we will encounter things that we may not always like, we will meet people that we may not take to, or we miss out on the fun simply because we have to take care of other needs first. Whatever the reason is, it’s not too difficult to find a reason to frown.

What most of us take for granted are the good things that we encounter as we move forward with our lives. We’re simply so preoccupied with the bad things that we often forget to look at the good. We count all our misfortunes; keep track of all our failures.

We need to remember what we live for, lest we become bitter human beings. Avoiding problems is all very well in theory, but many of us have worries that we simply can’t resolve, and statistics reveal that one in every twenty people suffer from panic attacks.

The idea here is not to attain permanent happiness. We all know that we will stumble along the way as we learn life’s lessons. What we need is a simple strategy to deal with the issues that we face so that by the end of the day we can still give ourselves a pat on the back and say that we are proud of ourselves and happy with our lives, despite all the negativity happening around us.

Here are just three things to keep in mind should we feel overwhelmed at everything happening to us:

1. Avoid situations that aggravate anger – this is a classic case of fight or flight. If we see ourselves heading towards a dark corner of the street, we simply have to turn around and take another route. Unfortunately, not every situation offers us a way out. When we have to deal with a difficult boss or a stubborn colleague, we cannot always solve the situation by going the other way. The best solution to this is to have something that helps soothe our nerves – a stress ball, some exercise, a few minutes to ourselves, or anything that gets us to shift our momentary unease.

2. Reprogram your mind – there are several books in leading bookstores that offer us guidelines. Advice and exercises from experts like Anthony Robbins and David Neagle have provided reassurance and help for many people.

3. Think positive – as simple as this sounds, the task can be daunting. It’s especially difficult when we come face to face with something that we simply do not like. The trick here is to exercise our minds. It is only through practice that we can perfect this skill.

In the end, we have to know that we’ll survive. Life isn’t always about winning. As Les Brown reminds us, most of the time it’s about getting up when we’re down. It’s the ability to continue and move forward as we go through life’s processes. Know that problems don’t kill us. We are in control of things of our destiny, and if we let these inconveniences get in the way, then we definitely will lose. We always have a choice, and we should always choose to be good to ourselves.

Best of Success!

Stephan

Tags: Anthony Robbins, Coping, David Neagle, Deal With Stress, Ferenc Gyurcsány's speech in Balatonőszöd in May, How To Relieve Stress, Human behavior, Mental Stress, panic attacks, Personal life, positive attitude, positive thinking, Positive Thoughts, Relieve Stress, Social psychology, Stress Causes, Stress Management, Stress Workplace

Filed in Happiness, Stress Management, Uncategorized, build confidence, personal power, positive attitude, self development, stress | admin | Comments (4)

Jan 02 2010

Warning! Every Breath You Take Is Wrong

When we begin feeling stressed, we have a tendency to also begin breathing faster and shallowly, which reduces the volume of carbon dioxide in our blood and causes blood vessels to constrict. More often than not, this can lead to hyper-ventilation, which throws our metabolism completely out of whack!

Coaches and athletes understand the need to practice good breathing habits to keep metabolism’s in balance and produce up to 99% of the body’s energy aerobically. Conversely, those of us who have poor breathing habits experience a drop to around 85%, which is a significant decline in aerobic energy production.

The physiological changes caused by poor breathing habits throws off our pH balance, the ratio of O2 to CO2 in the bloodstream, diminished energy and of course a feeling of anxiety or poor health in general. Although we naturally breathe autonomously, over the course of our lifetimes we actually learn to breathe incorrectly. It’s a behavior that can be unlearned given time and effort.

That said, we first need to become aware of our breathing habits, by actually listening to ourselves breathe. We need to time how many breaths we take per minute and if that number is much over 12 in a relaxed state, we need to think about how we can best re-learn to breathe normally.

The first step is to avoid holding the stomach in, preventing the diaphragm from working properly. Relax your stomach muscles and inhale slowly through your nose to a count of 3. Now hold that breathe for a second and then exhale to a count of 6. Repeat that three times and then allow yourself to breath normally. The entire exercise should have taken you 30 seconds.

Since a good 70% of your body’s waste is eliminated through exhaling, you’re going to always attempt to double the time spent exhaling compared to inhaling. This allows your body to balance its metabolism and pH levels and well as increase the amount of energy produced. In stressful situations, your body will literally relax as you do it and your fight or flight response will quickly recede.

As a quick fix, this type of breathing technique works wonders for calming yourself down, but does not address the larger issue of learning to breath this way all of the time. To do this, you need to remain aware of your breathing habits and continually remind yourself to stay in control of your breathing.

Over time, you will develop the habit, but meanwhile, you may need prompting. One solution is to set a timer (for example on a digital watch) to beep every 3 to 5 minutes as a reminder to check your breathing. This helps because as we submerse ourselves into a given task, we can easily lose track of our breathing without realizing it.

You may even find it helpful to repeat a phrase during your practice like, “I’m breathing in”, “I’m breathing out”, to help you establish the proper rhythm. Your goal is to allow your body to take over autonomously with proper breathing habits as a result of your practice.

If you condition yourself to breath properly, especially in stressful situations, you will alleviate the stress and anxiety of it and remain calm and rational. Good breathing habits are learned, so training yourself beginning today will get you back on track to a happier, healthier you!

Best of Success,

Stephan

p.s. here’s another tool to check out: Meditation for Optimum Health: How to Use Mindfulness and Breathing to Heal