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A Great Teacher of Life: Stress

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Yes, yes, I know. I’ve been away for a little while. But it’s not because I don’t love you guys! It’s really not. It’s just that I had some personal stuff happen that I’ve been dealing with… namely my mom (read: best friend) passed away the the morning of New Years’ Eve. Frankly, I’ve been all over the place emotionally since then. But I’m doing pretty well a month and a half later. And my plans of world domin… er my career path has definitely been solidified. This site and everything that I believe that it can be (as a resource of helping others start their paths of discovering who they are and what they’re meant to do with themselves) is more part of the plan than ever before.

In the past month, I’ve realized what in the end kills so many people including Mom. It’s stress. Particularly, stress from work. Today I saw an episode of Royal Pains that elaborated on this fact even more. A guy who was really no older than myself was working on Wall Street as (I’m guessing) a stockbroker. Well, there he was walking with his best friend down the street and suddenly without warning, he collapses. We soon find out that it was from an aneurysm. As for my mom, the stress came not from being a high Type A kind of stress, but from a workplace that had transformed over her career. One that used to be truly about teaching to one that became more so about the dollar bill. And we all have been touched in our lives by this change – especially since the crash of 2008.

But what does one do outside of what they know to be the norm? Going to a workplace day after day that more or less doesn’t seem to appreciate them? Doing things that they know that anyone could do. Not doing things that make them in the end… happy? Well, they find their purpose. They find the work that does make them happy. They retire and teach at a local college. They buy back their life and teach airplane lessons. They teach others how to find wealth on the net.

Conclusion

More so than ever, I believe that my goal in life is to help others learn that there are alternative ways of living their life. That they don’t have to work for someone else and do things that they’d rather not be doing. That they can really do anything that they put their mind to. It is the truth. It’s just that someone needs to show them the right direction and not simply be the person that says “Hey, you’re good at Math. You should be an engineer.” Nay. Someone should say to them: “Hey. It seems like you’re passionate about this. Have you ever considered doing…?”

If your reading this and you want to join me, I would love to hear from you!! Tell me what you think.

Where to Start in Your Search for Health and "Self-Help" Knowledge

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“How Old Would You Be if You Didn’t Know How Old You Wuz?” – Satchel Paige.

More often than not, whenever I have gone to the gym, I see people typically running on treadmills. Some of them are watching TV, others are just listening to their iPod’s while others are reading. When they are reading, many times they’re reading a self help book. Most of the time it’s for health, but other times it’s been for other topics. One time, I was curious about a particular book I saw and struck up a good conversation with the reader. Obviously, I was surprised that she was able to keep a conversation going on the treadmill as well as she did. But what was really astonishing was how we ended up talking about how most men are not interested in self-help. Ultimately we determined that men tend to not pursue self help because they don’t want to show signs of weakness.

I mean, this kind of makes sense because for the most part. Because everyone is in charge of their own lives. However, most of the time people, especially men, find themselves in a state of denial. The problem is that, “He who buries his head in the sand leaves even more open to vulnerability”. Think about it, whenever you see an ostrich putting its head in the sand… it’s still vulnerable, right? It’s not realizing that its far greater at risk now because it’s a.) not moving and b.) it can see the danger now.

Are you an ostrich or are you going to seek help? To acknowledge the problem right away and recognize ones’ vulnerability is not only a powerful means of self-protection, but it’s also showing strength in that you’re realizing that the solution is better than the current situation. Especially if it’s health related as the solution might mean for you to have a longer and more prolific life than not seeking help.

First Steps In Seeking Help

Now that you’ve chosen to seek out help (congrats), where do you start? Well, obviously it depends on what you’re having issues with. Many of us have problems with confidence, general people skills, and all kinds of health issues. These are just a few of the topics, obviously, but it will definitely get you started. However, with so many books out there with “so-called” experts, where do you turn? Well, here’s some criteria:

1.) Read material from people recognized as experts. Don’t put all your faith in someone that hasn’t been declared as an expert by other sources or isn’t highly recommended.

2.) If you have mentors in your life and want to be like them in that aspect of your life, find out what their sources are. Let those be a guide.

3.) Do your own research. Combine what multiple experts say. Draw your own conclusions – not what others tell you the answer is.

4.) Time tends to verify information. Just like bad theories are thrown out over time, so is bad advice. Just like new theories, new advice hasn’t had the time be proven. Self Help books that have stood the test of time (such as “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie which is going on 80 years old) are more often than not still the best practices. Remember that humans really haven’t changed that much for at least 2000 years. Health information changes more often, so make sure you check with newer resources that has older information as its foundation.

Three Failure Diseases of Successful Time Management

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What do you want, when do you want it? That’s often a question I ask people as I’m starting to work with them. It’s a very simple question, but many times very hard to answer. The main reason for this is simply the fact that people in today’s world have so many distractions that they lose focus on what they really want. Simple time management practices are key in getting any long term projects done. But even with knowledge of these principles, at times things don’t get done.

In his book, the Magic of Thinking Big, Dr. David J. Schwartz suggested that there are three key diseases that affect effective time management. It is as true today as it was 50 years ago when he wrote about it:

The first disease, Excusitis, is simply the disease of having what seems to be valid reasons for not achieving a particular goal. For example, say you’re looking to increase your income by searching for a higher paying job. A person suffering from excusitis might blame the economy, or suggest that the person who is in The White House is the sole reason they have not been succeeding. When you focus on areas that you have absolutely no control over, you might as it’s like suggesting that it’s not the team’s fault they lost the game, it was yours for not watching. There’s two questions that you can ask yourself. Think, “What does this really have to do with the current state of my current situation?” Are the economy and politics a factor? Absolutely. Are they the deciding factor to the success of whether you get that next opportunity? Absolutely Not. Focus on the solutions, nothing else.

The second disease, Detailitis, is I think definitely the trickiest of the three diseases. I know I have problems with this one myself and I always have. Detailitis infects those people who get frozen on making decisions because they don’t feel they have enough information. Me being a very analytical type person, the more information I have about a given subject, the easier it is for me to make that decision. However, if you feel like the information is trickling in or if you’re waiting for all your ducks to line up in a row, sometimes a mental paralysis occurs that will get stronger over time. Uncertainty turns into frustration which eventually turns into fear. Action is what cures fear, not more and more information. Get the vital pieces to make a sound decision and then move forward. Let action, not indecisiveness control your results.

The third and possibly the most powerful of these diseases is Procrastination – aka “Why do it today when you can do it tomorrow?-itis”. I covered this disease in the initial post for NI, but I’ll mention it here again. This is a major killer of getting things done. When poor time management and lack of knowledge come to a head, this is the ugly outcome. Again, if you hear yourself say this, tell yourself: “What am I saying? Today’s as good a day as any to get this done! It won’t take forever. Plus, I can have a break if it starts taking too long.” Personally, I relate it to this statement: “When do you tell your parents you appreciate them? Before it’s too late and you can’t anymore.” The catch is this: if you want to position yourself for continued success in the future, you need to learn how to gain control over your time management by avoiding these 3 failure diseases. The future is yours. Grab ahold of it today!

So What Do You Think? Are there any other failure diseases that you can think of that get in your way of achieving your goals?

Handling Your Bad Memories and the Emotions They Trigger

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Recently I’ve been studying NLP (Neural-Linguistic Programming) as a way of controlling my senses. There’s multiple reasons reasons why someone might want to control their senses, but let’s just say that it helps in a lot of situations. These can range from communicating with others better to improving first reactions. One of the things that I have learned through NLP is what is called the New Behavior Generator.

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