Maybe it’s the challenging economy. Maybe it’s anticipation for the holiday season. Or maybe it’s just your natural state of being. Whatever the cause, stress can feel overwhelming. And it may seem like you have no power over it.

You’ll always have bills, obligations, and people to please. You can’t change those things. But you can change the way you think and act to create a more balanced, peaceful life and environment. These tips are a good start:  

1. Put it in writing

Write in a journal, or pen a letter to someone explaining your feelings–even if you burn it instead of sending it. Research shows expressive writing is an effective method for reducing depression in people who tend to brood.

2. Change your thinking

The way you think about an event dictates how you feel about it. If you see your meeting as an opportunity to screw something up, you’ll naturally feel overwhelmed. If you see it as a challenge you can meet, you’ll feel more at ease with the experience.

3. Practice deep breathing

People often hold their breath when they’re anxious. This limits your oxygen intake, stressing your body further.

4. Meditate

Pull your body completely into the present moment, and perceive everything around you with all your senses. Meditation increases serotonin production, which influences mood and behavior.

5. Sweat it out

Studies show that people who go to a sauna at least twice a week for 10-30 minutes are less stressed after work than others with similar jobs who don’t.

6. Laugh it out

Research shows that laughter soothes tension, improves your immune system, and even eases pain. Give yourself a break to reminisce with a friend about a memory that made you smile. Don’t worry–you’ll have plenty of time to think about everything else when you’re done.

7. Complete a small task

According to Georgia Witkin, assistant director of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, completing a small task increases your sense of control and decreases your stress level.

8. Get mindful

Mindfulness means focusing your full attention on the present moment, instead of thinking about past or future events. When practiced regularly, mindfulness actually strengthens the areas of the brain associated with joy and relaxation.

9. Minimize stress triggers

Avoid conversations about topics that stress you out. Limit your time with people who continually get you going.

10. Reassess how you manage your time

Your jam-packed to-do list may contain unnecessary items. Your morning routine may be too full to allow prompt arrival at work. If you don’t overextend yourself, you will likely feel less stressed.

Article Source – Tinybuddha.com

Everyone wants to have a great work day.     You want to go to work, get the job done and head for the horizon with a smile on your face.   It’s easy to have a good day at work if you prepare in advance and keep a good running list of how to get through with the most happy day.

Here are the top 10 ways to have a happier workday -

1. Eat breakfast

If you skip breakfast, you won’t be at your best during the morning.   You will more likely gorge yourself at lunch and have a sleepy afternoon.   So eat something, anything (within reason) so you can ensure a smooth start.

2. Get plenty of sunshine

Sun in the morning signals the body and mind to wake up.   So instead of reaching for a big cup of Joe, put on your shoes and go outside.

3. Get Aerobic Exercise

while you are getting your sunlight, use it as an excuse to get a good walk or jog in.   Exercise lowers stress, gets your blood moving and wakes you up.

4. Avoid RSS, EMAIL or phone before 10 am

RSS, email and phone demand immediate attention.   Whereas your goals and work for the day can easily be brushed to the side.   If you can avoid the urgent and unimportant until 10 or 10:30, you’ve got a fighting chance at getting all of the important tasks done.

5. Think positive thoughts not negative

Seems simple, but many people never do it.   Instead of looking on the worst side, try to see the bright side.   Ask yourself “what is the advantage of this situation?”   “how am I benefiting from this?   What am I learning?”   These are all good questions that you can ask in all negative situations to turn them to the positive.

If you push on one task for too long you your work starts to suffer.   It’s easy to become tired and frustrated.   So every 30 – 45 minutes, take 5.   Get up from your desk, stop what you are doing and get your mind off your work for awhile.   You’ll find you’ll return with more ideas and renewed energy.

7. Go for a mid-day walk

again, I’m harping on the exercise.   Getting a brisk walk in over lunch (even if for only 10 minutes) will get you to feeling better about your afternoon.   Where most others are sitting around digesting, you can be energizing.

8. Avoid gossip

One drain on your day is gossip.   It may seem fun and exciting to learn some juicy tidbit about your officemate or boss.   But good gossip is always negative talk.   Negative talk starts the pendulum swinging toward negativity.

9. List your top 5-7 objectives for the day and break the list down to 3

It’s good to get in the habit of making lists, it’s bad to make long lists.   If you’ve got more than 5 items on your list, break it down to the top 3 things (you can always go back and edit in another task or two).   But with a list of 20 things, how can you not be overwhelmed? 3 is a manageable, magical number.   Break your list down to 3.   Anybody can do just three things right?

10. Be slow to react to other people’s “urgent” requests

When someone else asks you for help, to do a project or to meet some other urgent need, practice saying “what’s your deadline on this?   or when do you need this done?” Then schedule that day.   Most people when asked one of those questions realize it’s not as urgent and will set a future date.   That way, you can go back to working on one of your top 3 activities.

If you work from home then you know that sometimes it can be difficult  to focus. Here are 10 Top Ways to Focus at Home.

1. Use a Daily Planner

Use a Daily Planner of some sort, whether it is on your computer or in a book. This will help you remember what you need to do daily.

2. Plan your day the night before

Look at your planner and know ahead of time what the next day has in store for you.

3. Organize your time

If you are doing calls, writing, doing entries, etc, plan exactly how much time you need for each. This will help organize and fill your day.

4. Keep the TV Off

Cancel your cable even. If you work from home you need to treat it like a real business. Would or could you watch TV at the work place? I think not.

5. Get out of bed at a decent time

Yes it is great to work from your house because of the freedom , but sleeping in all the time makes for a groggy brain.

6. Avoid answering personal calls during work time

This could put a hiccup in your day. If you are anything like me one call from my mother and my head is spinning. Don’t get me wrong, I love her to bits)

7. Leave the cleaning or other chores for others

Get your family involved, hire a maid, do whatever you can to make the most of your time.

8. Have a list of Daily

and weekly goals and have them posted where they are visible. This will keep you on track and enable you to celebrate attaining these goals.

9. Get outside

If you are like most people we rarely get enough exercise and fresh air. Even though this maybe taking us away from our beloved computers it is essential in staying healthy. This way we can come back and have a fresh perspective on our work.

10. Keep your space organized

Every night quickly take 5 minutes to re organize your work space. This way you can come back in the morning and it is already and waiting for you to start being productive. I love clean spaces. A clean space is an un cluttered mind (hopefully)

I will add this one in because it has to do with having fun, which that is what Life is all about. If you are feeling frustrated at all during your day…Stop! Take a deep breath, put on a feel good song and get moving. Sometimes sitting in front of a computer hour after hour can cause bad posture, weak muscles and something I like referring to as "muffin top". I have been known to dance around my house, even if it is only for 5 minutes. This will lift your spirits and get your body moving.

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Handling stress at home can be very difficult, but it can be easier than at other places like your work. At least at home you have a certain degree of controlling it, though if you have children you probably laughed at the idea of control.

Here are some suggestions that can help you relieve stress at home –

1. Cry

Believe it or not crying can be very beneficial and can help calm the spirit. It is a great way to release strong emotions bottled up inside. It doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman – a good cry can be very stress relieving.

2. Meditate

This has become more of a trend but meditation, prayer, has been around for centuries. A way to relax and focus on the big picture while giving our body a needed rest.

3. Clean

This one came from someone who LOVES to clean, but cleaning can be a stress reliever for anyone besides the fact that you can have a clean house as a bonus. It helps you to physically work out frustrations and clears the mind (or was that the chemicals???)

4. Sleep

This is one thing we all need and for some reason believe that we can live without. Our bodies are designed to have a natural stress reliever is just closing our eyes and entering the world of REM (rapid eye movement). When we can get the amount of sleep that our individual bodies need, much of the stress around us is diminished. So sleep in tomorrow!!!

5. Communication

Be open with those in the same house. If there are problems and issues, be open to sitting down and getting it cleared up. The longer issues stew the worse it stresses everyone out.

6. Art

If you are one of those people with the talent of art (drawing, painting, sculpting, etc), then use that for your stress reliever. This can be a way to get out the emotions inside and do it naturally through your gifts. When all is done you’ll feel so much better.

7. Dance

You don’t have to qualify for Dancing with the Stars to use dancing as a means to relieve stress. Just turn on some music and let loose. You’ll be exhausted and ready for that sleep mentioned in #4.

8. Music

Just listen to some music and let yourself go. Listen closely to the words and follow the beat. You’ll be mellow in no time.

9. Work out

This is another means to release physical and emotional stress and help your health out. A good walk, run, or intense workout will work depending out you personally and your stress levels.

10. Deep breathing

This works great for my son who deals with severe anger issues. His therapist taught him to go into his room where there would be no additional stress factors and take very deep breaths. After a few minutes he is able to talk and work out issues. If you have ever been taught Lamaze breathing, you’ll remember how beneficial it can be.

Personally, taking a walk is the best way for me to relieve stress. I go out into the woods and just walk and walk. Before I know it I’m paying attention to the trees, mushrooms, and flowers and leaving all my worries behind.

1. Stop taking so much notice of how you feel

How you feel is how you feel. It’ll pass soon. What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking. It’ll go too. Tell yourself that whatever you feel, you feel; whatever you think, you think. Since you can’t stop yourself thinking, or prevent emotions from arising in your mind, it makes no sense to be proud or ashamed of either. You didn’t cause them. Only your actions are directly under your control. They’re the only proper cause of pleasure or shame.

2. Let go of worrying. It often makes things worse

The more you think about something bad, the more likely it is to happen. When you’re hair-trigger primed to notice the first sign of trouble, you’ll surely find something close enough to convince yourself it’s come.

3. Ease up on the internal life commentary

If you want to be happy, stop telling yourself you’re miserable. People are always telling themselves how they feel, what they’re thinking, what others feel about them, what this or that event really means. Most of it’s imagination. The rest is equal parts lies and misunderstandings. You have only the most limited understanding of what others feel about you. Usually they’re no better informed on the subject; and they care about it far less than you do. You have no way of knowing what this or that event really means. Whatever you tell yourself will be make-believe.

4. Take no notice of your inner critic

Judging yourself is pointless. Judging others is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Judging others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Who cares about your opinion anyway?

5. Give up on feeling guilty

Guilt changes nothing. It may make you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anything new in your life. If you feel guilty about something you’ve done, either do something to put it right or accept you screwed up and try not to do so again. Then let it go. If you’re feeling guilty about what someone else did, see a psychiatrist. That’s insane.

6. Stop being concerned what the rest of the world says about you

Nasty people can’t make you mad. Nice people can’t make you happy. Events or people are simply events or people. They can’t make you anything. You have to do that for yourself. Whatever emotions arise in you as a result of external events, they’re powerless until you pick them up and decide to act on them. Besides, most people are far too busy thinking about themselves (and worry what you are are thinking and saying about them) to be concerned about you.

7. Stop keeping score

Numbers are just numbers. They don’t have mystical powers. Because something is expressed as a number, a ratio or any other numerical pattern doesn’t mean it’s true. Plenty of lovingly calculated business indicators are irrelevant, gibberish, nonsensical, or just plain wrong. If you don’t understand it, or it’s telling you something bizarre, ignore it. There’s nothing scientific about relying on false data. Nor anything useful about charting your life by numbers that were silly in the first place.

8. Don’t be concerned that your life and career aren’t working out the way you planned

The closer you stick to any plan, the quicker you’ll go wrong. The world changes constantly. However carefully you analyzed the situation when you made the plan, if it’s more than a few days old, things will already be different. After a month, they’ll be very different. After a year, virtually nothing will be the same as it was when you started. Planning is only useful as a discipline to force people to think carefully about what they know and what they don’t. Once you start, throw the plan away and keep your eyes on reality.

9. Don’t let others use you to avoid being responsible for their own decisions

To hold yourself responsible for someone else’s success and happiness demeans them and proves you’ve lost the plot. It’s their life. They have to live it. You can’t do it for them; nor can you stop them from messing it up if they’re determined to do so. The job of a supervisor is to help and supervise. Only control-freaks and some others with a less serious mental disability fail to understand this.

10. Don’t worry about about your personality. You don’t really have one

Personality, like ego, is a concept invented by your mind. It doesn’t exist in the real world. Personality is a word for the general impression that you give through your words and actions. If your personality isn’t likeable today, don’t worry. You can always change it, so long as you allow yourself to do so. What fixes someone’s personality in one place is a determined effort on their part—usually through continually telling themselves they’re this or that kind of person and acting on what they say. If you don’t like the way you are, make yourself different. You’re the only person who’s standing in your way.