Monthly Archives: September 2008

The Health Effects of Stress and Why It’s So Important to Get a Grip on What’s Stressing You Out

Stress can kill you.  You already know that, right?  First there are the obvious health effects of stress: heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, chronic fatigue, hormonal upheaval, and so on, plus conditions like acne, even herpes breakouts, and — it can make your hair fall out.  As if you weren’t pulling it out yourself already. (okay, some of us maybe).

And that’s just for starters.  Other effects of stress include that it also muddies up our brain, makes it hard to focus, affects our ability to drive safely, and on and on, and those things can affect our very livelihood — or lives.

So it’s important to get a grip on stress and on what’s stressing you. But how do you do that?

There’s of course acute stress and how to calm yourself down to function right then and there, and more longterm actions, both in terms of making you more resilient to the stress in your life, making your body less reactive and calmer overall, and in terms of making your life less stressful.

There are plenty of people giving advice on the latter, yet depending on what our situation is like, it’s not always going to be easy.  Yet every little bit helps.  I just read a great suggestion about reducing clutter somewhere (probably one of the other self-help blogs I’m linking to in my resource box or in a post about it). I always envy people with those neat homes right out of architectural digest.  Mine is overrun with paper, and it makes me feel overwhelmed at times too.  This tip helps:

Take 10 minutes every day (or maybe more often…) and just do one of the following:

1) Grab stuff you don’t need anymore and put it in bags/boxes to be taken to your local Goodwill or other thrift store, or, depending on what it is, just throw it out.  I keep mine by the door and when I go somewhere, I take them with me to drop them off at their destination. Books for the local library or my favorite thrift store with a nice book section, clothes at the thrift store or the local consignment store, and so on.

Yes, it seems like just a drop in a bucket, but everything helps, and if you’ve ever had a dripping faucet, you know how quickly those buckets can fill up…

2) Alternatively, pick a corner, a drawer, a shelf, or something small like that, and straighten it up, clean it up, sort it, especially focusing on removing as much of no-longer-needed stuff as possible. And then move to the next one, for your next 10 minute increment. Repeat often.

If it is hard to let go of stuff, there are a few techniques that help.  If you experience symptoms of stress when trying to throw or give things away, the usual stress management techniques I discuss in my FREE report might help.

If you take advantage of these resources or others like them, you’ll find that they can reduce your stress and tension quite a bit.

Now just remember to breathe…  nice and deep breaths, slowly.  There’s an interaction with your nervous system, involving your Vagus nerve, that signals to your body that it can calm down now.

Have a very relaxed day.

Elisabeth

A very inspirational blog by Gail Goodwin with great stories/parables found thanks to Twitter!

A new Twitter friend and find:  Gail Goodwin, her inspirational blog and in particular her story “Just a little fog”  Loved it! And a great fit for my self help blog, which is all about feeling better and living a happier, more fulfilled life.

Find it here: Gail’s inspirational blog

Do check it out.  It really spoke to me — got a bit of fog of my own right about now, though it’s starting to lift again 😉

And while you’re at it, read the Jellyfish story too (I got my own jellyfish as well), along with her other stories.

Great stuff.  Enjoy!


Stress Relief and Marlon Sanders’ Promo Dashboard: Where’s the Connection?

I’ll tell you where.  You know how when you’re stressed, especially over a huge big project, or way too long a to do list, and so on, it can make things go into a tail spin.  How to relief that stress?  Do things one task at a time, and while each one is in progress, that’s where the focus is.  Same thing I told my student many times.  How to handle test stress: One question at a time.  Now what does that have to do with Marlon Sanders’ Promo Dashboard?

As it turns out, plenty.  Promoting a product launch, or even just getting people to sign up for a newsletter is a big project with lots and lots of details, and when any of the steps are missing or stump me or you, it all grinds to a halt.  And gets very stressful.

So Marlon took that prime stress management approach to making product promotion basically uhm, well, not entirely stress free, but much less stressful and overwhelming than it could be.

Of course just looking at the various icons — and seeing that once you click, there are multiple tasks to complete under each one of them, can feel pretty daunting too.  Yes, that dashboard has got a heck of a lot of stuff on it.

But it’s all organized.  One task at a time.  And thoroughly explained.  And all are pretty much in the exact order in which you have to complete them.

So you can just focus on each of the them one at a time and not worry about anything else until it’s done, and then go on to the next one, and so on.

Way cool!  And a great model for other kinds of projects as well (Marlon knows that of course.  After all, he has used that dashboard principle successfully with the Info Product Dashboard, the Marketing Dashboard, the Affiliate Dashboard, and the Design Dashboard, before he even got to the Promo Dashboard.

But back to other applications for the dashboard principle:  Whether it’s an elaborate Thanksgiving dinner for the family reunion or a house cleaning project or planning a long trip or writing a dissertation, the principle is the same.  Figure out in which order things have to get done, and then tackle them one at a time, and while you’re at one of them, don’t look at that loooooong list of stuff  you still have to do.

Although an occasional glance at all the ones you have already finished can be increasingly encouraging as you work your way through the project.

The result.  A whole lot less stress!

So, if you’re at all interested in internet marketing or making money online, you really should check out Marlon’s Promo Dashboard.  It’s simply great!  And heck, for the price you could even get it if all you need is a great model for how to organize a complex process.  It costs less than a one-hour consultation with one of those organizer people.  You can see it by clicking right here:

Marlon’s Promo Dashboard

Oh, and the best part — it’s like you have a tutor at your beck and call.  I just discovered a big thing I know I really need and wanted to learn but didn’t know how to do and felt very intimidated by.

And guess what.  The dashboard walked me right through it, step by step.  And I also found similar explanations for stuff I had only recently learned the very hard and sometimes expensive way.  I really wish I had had that dashboard sooner.

So take a look at my favorite stress reduction dashboard 😉

And if you’d like a freebie bonus 7 tips stress busting e-report, you can have that too.

And have a verrrry relaxing day!

Elisabeth


Interesting Stress Facts: Effects of Task-Related Stress vs. “Other” Stress

I just came across some interesting stress facts:

You know how when you have a deadline you almost feel inspired to better and faster work — as long as the deadline is within reason and not so impossible that you just want to throw up your hands in desperation and give up — or your mind goes blank.

Well…  I just read in Prevention Magazine they’ve done research on stress that showed the following:

when people feel stressed by the task they’re doing, that is actually often beneficial and it doesn’t cause too many problems if it isn’t excessive.

However, if people are trying to do a task under pressure and they’re ALSO feeling stressed about something unrelated to the task — personal finances, what their kids are up to, a sick child, marital problems, and so on, it actually hurts their brain and really affects their performance.

What do we learn from that?  For starters, to take stress very seriously.  It’s not just something that we all deal with that we’re just going to have to live with.

It’s something we have to LEARN to deal with proactively.  For example, if there is a way you can take care of the non-work thing that stresses you, you’ll be in much better shape.

If that’s not possible, or at least not in the moment, learn some techniques to calm yourself down and learn to put stress on hold.  Basically, this means, to compartmentalize stress.  Yes, it’s hard. And it takes some practice.  But it helps.

You’re welcome to my FREE stress-tips report.  It’s a start and will help you feel better.  Or, if you prefer, get my actual instant stress-relief strategies downloadable book.  It has some very powerful techniques that will help you tame some of your worst stress, and quickly.