Learning to prioritize is one of the biggest challenges for people today. It doesn’t matter if you work in or out of the home, prioritizing is extremely important in your daily life. Someone who does not prioritize tasks and their daily schedule will likely feel overwhelmed, stressed, and unhappy throughout the day. These feelings can affect every aspect of your life. By prioritizing your life, you can learn what really needs to be done immediately and what can wait until later. Use these tips to help get you started with your new organized schedule.
Learn To Say “No”
A problem that many people have today is the inability to say “no” when asked to do something. If someone asks you to do something for them, it does not automatically mean you must commit to doing it. Of course, you should help others out when you have the time, but if you don’t have time, politely pass. Unless the matter is urgent, you should never rearrange your schedule for a request from a co-worker or friend. If you do this once, they will assume they can call on you as much as they want. By not being able to say “no” to some tasks, you will likely over commit yourself. Over committing will leave you completely overwhelmed. There is no reason to get your self in this type of situation. If you simply do not have time in your schedule to help with the task, just be honest and tell them so. Perhaps they will be shocked at your rejection, especially if you have never said “no” to them before, but it is worth it for your own personal happiness and health.
Make Lists
Experts will say that you should spend most of your day working on important tasks. To do this, you must choose which tasks are important to you and which tasks can wait. This can be tricky. The best way to prioritize your tasks is by making a list. Write down everything you think you need to accomplish. Then number each by importance. Something that may be important to you, may not be important to someone else, so this step is about personal preference. Display your daily list in a place that you will constantly see. This will help you stick to your daily plan. List making may seem juvenile, but making lists actually takes the stress out of jobs. Many times when you see a task written on paper, it looks much less intimidating then when it is only floating around in your head.
Time Management Skills
Prioritizing your life also involves the use of time management skills. Time management skills can help you accomplish more in a day, without feeling the stress of working harder. By using simple tactics like making your phone calls while waiting to pick your child up from school, you will accomplish more. Multi-tasking is a great way to get more done. Some people get more stressed by multi-tasking, so if you hate the thought of it, don’t even try it. If you feel confident with multi-tasking however, go ahead and get as much done as you can. You will be surprised what you can do waiting in a doctor’s office or at soccer practice.
Put Family First
When you plan your day, be sure to use your morals and personal judgment. Prioritizing your life does not mean not including the most important aspects of your life. You should always make time for your family first. It may seem difficult to do this, with a million other things going on in your life. When your family is happy however, you will find that you are happier. Happiness makes for a more productive person. So, be sure to add family time to your daily schedule. Even if you can only schedule enough time to sit down together to eat dinner, you will see the rewards.
By getting your life in order, you will become less stressed in general. Making lists and sticking with them is a major part of the formula. Crossing off tasks as you complete them will help you feel like you are accomplishing a lot and push you to do more. Using your time management skills will help your day flow smoothly, allowing you to get the most out of your time. Putting your family first will help you stay grounded and remember what really matters in life.
Labels: Personality Development, Self-Improvement
Meditation is undoubtedly one of the simplest and most effective ways to handle stress, and it’s easy enough that anyone can do it and begin enjoying the benefits immediately. In fact, most people find that regular meditation helps them prevent stress from building up in the first place.
If you have ever wanted to start a meditation practice but kept putting it off because you didn’t know how to get started, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s probably easier than you think.
Try these two easy steps for starters:
Quiet your thoughts.
One of the most helpful aspects of meditation is the way it shifts you to a state of being, rather than thinking or doing. This is accomplished by finding a quiet place to be alone and simply focusing on emptying your mind of all thoughts. That may sound impossible at first, but “emptying your mind” doesn’t mean you won’t still have thoughts moving in and out of your mind.
What it means instead is that you won’t be attached to any of these thoughts. You simply step back mentally and observe, rather than engaging with any particular thought. You will still be aware of your thoughts, but you won’t be “in” them, if that makes sense. You want to get to the place of being fully detached from your thoughts so they aren’t dominating your focus any more. Simply sit back and allow your thoughts to flow effortlessly by, while you keep your focus on nothing. Slowly inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale - and you’ll feel stress and inner conflict begin to melt away almost immediately. If you do notice that you have latched onto a thought and you’ve begun thinking again (you probably will do this several times, just out of habit), let go and gently return your focus to nothing. It does take practice to master, but you’ll be amazed by the peacefulness this technique can inspire.
Create a peaceful haven in your mind.
Another great technique is to create a soothing, imaginary haven in your mind. This can be a real place you have visited before, such as a beautiful botanical garden, an ocean beach or lakefront, or a place that exists only in your own mind. This mental haven does not have to conform to the usual laws of physical reality, either. Your haven can be a serene oasis nestled between an ocean, a forest, botanical gardens - and even an amusement park! You can make it as fun, beautiful and whimsical as you like.
Spend some time “creating” this mental haven and put as much detail as you can into it. What does it smell like? Are there beautiful flowers that give off a pleasant fragrance? Can you hear birds singing? Is the breeze warm or cool on your face? Keep going until you’ve made it seem as real and rich as possible, and then begin spending a few minutes there each day. You want to become very familiar with the sights, sounds, scents and essence of this place, and spend enough time there that you automatically relax the moment you call up the mental image.
Then, whenever you find yourself stressed or in need of a little nurturing simply close your eyes and mentally flee to your peaceful haven for a few minutes!
Labels: Personality Development, Self-Improvement
Of all adults dealing with low self-esteem, women seem to be the ones who suffer the most. Even women who seem to have it all together and know who they are and want they want tend to be among those who suffer from low self-esteem.
The media has exploded so much in the last few decades that it has lent itself to an increasing demand for women to look perfect: a perfect body, perfect hair, perfect smile… The media has exploited the female population by displaying this false illusion of a perfect woman. It tells women that they will be liked if they wear the right clothes, smell just right, latch onto the perfect mate, etc.
The thing that most women do not realize or understand is that this confidence comes from within. It’s not something that can be handed to you. It’s not something that you will experience after you’ve reached a certain level of perfection. Self-esteem is something that you must cultivate from the inside. Then and only then will you be truly happy and confident in yourself.
If you are a woman struggling with self-esteem issues, here are some tips to help you:
- Stop seeking approval from your peers.
- Discover everything you like about yourself and build upon those positive attributes.
- Be honest about why you don’t feel good about yourself. Then work on changing that.
- Walk away from negative situations or people who make you feel bad about yourself.
Click here to overcome your poor self-image and self-worth and develop amazing self-esteem starting today. You can do it. I believe in you! It's my SolveYourProblem recommendation.
Labels: Personality Development, Self-Improvement
Life is so unpredictable.
One moment your face is beaming with a ray of happiness and then the next day you suddenly feel weak, with low energy, and unable to accomplish anything. If you are experiencing the latter, then you are suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
Long ago, the feeling of sadness was closely associated with changing seasons. The transition from summer to winter to spring leads to mood swings. A person switches starts off their happy mood then becomes depressed and tense.
No person is immune from feeling sad, men or women, young or old, rich or poor, people will always experience sadness.
Here are five helpful tips that can help you combat sadness:
1. Soak up the morning light. Natural light occurs early in the morning between 6:00 am to 8:00 am. Walk or sit by the window between those times. Staying indoors will keep you from getting natural light. Indoor lights at home or in the office represents only about a tenth of the natural light.
2. Avoid too much alcohol or caffeine. People make the common mistake of drinking alcoholic beverages or coffee when they feel sad. While it can provide temporary relief, coffee can cause anxiety, muscle tension, or a gastrointestinal disorder. Alcohol, on the other hand, is a depressant. Alcohol can aggravate depression. As much as possible, refrain from using these drugs as a remedy for your sadness or depression.
3. Get regular exercise. While experts admit that there are no concrete studies on the effectiveness of exercise on sadness, there is no harm in trying. The moment you feel depressed, you become less involved in doing things which intensifies as time wears on. With regular exercise, you keep the momentum of having happy disposition.
4. Eat lunch outside. If your lifestyle does not allow you to enjoy morning light, try to do it during your lunch break. While
natural light in the morning is most effective, getting it during lunch is better than none at all.
5. Eat foods containing the amino acid trytophan. According to medical experts, people with SAD have decreased secretions of serotonin. Trytophan is a precursor of serotonin and eating food rich in this amino acid can help elevate the production of serotonin. Foods rich in trytophan include turkey, milk, and egg white.
If all else fails and you are still suffering from sadness, then it is time to seek professional help.
Try these five tips and you will no longer feel the urge to sit and pout in one corner of your room.
Labels: Personality Development, Self-Improvement
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