My Favorite Self-Help Stuff

If you travel frequently or even just every now and then, especially across lots of time zones, here’s a tip that’ll save you some grief:

I learned it the hard way (very hard) years ago when flying back and forth to Germany and discovering stopovers in Iceland (courtesy of Iceland Air):

It seemed like a good idea at the time to stop in Iceland on the way to Germany, but I’ll never do that again. Why? Compounded jet lag and sleep deprivation:

I left in the evening from Baltimore (meaning I left MUCH earlier in Richmond, got to Iceland at something like 5 a.m., and then had a whole day of “fun” in Iceland ahead of me. Problem: I can’t sleep on airplanes and I don’t function on no sleep.

So really, I was sleepwalking through Reykjavik for hours, waiting for my hotel to allow me to check in. I did take a nap when it let me in at long last (so this is what I spent my stopover doing, mostly), then went back out etc. What with the time difference and me being a night person anyway, I went to sleep very late, only to have to get up again at 4 a.m.!

Needless to say, I felt horrible for several days once I arrived in Germany, much worse than usual (and I don’t do too well going that way to start with).

The conclusion I drew from that experience: if I ever stop over again in Reykjavik, I’ll do so on the way BACK! I’ll get there in the afternoon, and leave in the afternoon the next day. Full value from the hotel and a good night’s sleep, and I’ll arrive well-rested back home.

Fast forward a few years and to flying in the other direction — to New Zealand. It seemed like a good idea at the time to stop in San Francisco for a couple of days each time I came through. I could buy two sets of tickets, didn’t have to shell out the whole amount all at once, and I got to spend time with my friends in San Francisco, which also happens to be one of my favorite cities.

Well… I didn’t feel too good when I got back home last year after doing that particular routine. But I was too busy to really think about it (started teaching the VERY next morning), so I did it AGAIN.

This time, as I mentioned in my last entry, I was still recovering from the flu. Well… Here’s compounded jet lag and how it works going from NZ to Richmond:

Leaving in the afternoon in Wellington.  Leaving in the evening in Auckland.  No sleep on plane (12 hours or so) (though I did doze off a little a couple of times), arriving in San Francisco around lunchtime.

I totally crashed the first night, but the second one I was kept awake by non-stop hacking cough. And THEN, I had to get up early to catch the plane to Richmond (short night), and got stranded in Chicago (little sleep due to no luggage and no ear plugs AND due to having to get up at 6 to catch next plane). I got really sick all over again once I made it home.

I’m only now starting to feel better. And I have definitely learned another lesson:

When doing stop-overs on the way to New Zealand, do them going West the next time, and NOT going East. Same lesson as from the Iceland Air experience: Going East, go direct, going West, stops work great.

Maybe I’m a bit fussy when it comes to quality of sleep, but so what? Sleep is important, and I don’t think even I take it seriously enough, or this sort of thing wouldn’t have happened. I know I feel better, stay healthier, and function a heck of a lot better when I get enough of it and at the right time too.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments section

Elisabeth

Remember the empty plate club? Nowadays, what we really need is the too much on my plate club…

I wrote a book about how to stay sane under stress, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t also find myself in way over my head situations. Too much on my plate club indeed.

What to do? Step one: calm down. And yes, you can find out how in my ebook, “Instant Stress Relief Strategies,” and also on this blog if you browse around some… Or if you go look up my ezinearticles.com articles, which you can find by clicking on that cute little ezinearticles.com Expert Author button on the right.

Or you can go to http://www.elisabethsarticles.com.

And then, there’s step two: take stuff off that plate!

Yes indeed. Just because it’s on your plate doesn’t mean you have to eat everything on it, empty plate club rules notwithstanding! You can take some and pass it on to others (delegate) and you can also renegotiate deadlines.

If worse comes to worst and you really just can’t get everything done, you can still practice damage control. Which of these things will cause you the least trouble if you skip or postpone it?

One VERY handy tool here is Abraham’s Placemat Process (see the Abraham-Hicks section in the Categories list).

That will help you pick out the ones that absolutely MUST be done now, and increase your chances that you actually get those done and will feel good about it. Then repeat the process with the next batch the following day, and so on and on.

And soon enough, you’ll find that things may get done without you. You’ll find out that some of the stuff has become moot. Or someone else already did it. Or it didn’t need to be done after all. I remember a letter I was supposed to write and it just got lost in the shuffle. I felt guilty about it for quite a while, until I got an email from that person that said that the other letter hadn’t actually been necessary, but now would I please write one. So I did. Funny how some of these things work out.

And in a worst case scenario? What will happen if you really can’t do it? What would happen if you fell over with a heart attack? They’d cope, right? Well… you DON’T have to get a heart attack first.

So learn to practice portion control when you allow stuff onto your plate (yeah, I know, I find it a challenge too). And if there’s too much on it already, take some of it off the plate

And yes, sure, if you like, there is this handy dandy ebook I wrote on how to calm yourself down instantly (or very quickly anyway) when you’re so stressed that you can hardly catch your breath anymore.

You can find it at Instant Stress Relief Strategies. Those strategies work. I’m using them myself and they’ve helped me (and my friends, and some of my students) through some very rough times.

I hope you have a very relaxing day!

Elisabeth

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Guess what. Here’s what I want for Christmas and the New Year:

I would like to reach more readers. So if you know someone who might enjoy my blog and/or my e-musings and e-tips, please invite them over for a visit. If they sign up, they get freebie ebooks too!

Oh, and I’m going to give away a prize (what exactly is still to be determined — stay tuned for updates) to the person who invites the most people to sign up. Just send me an email with the name and email address of the friend who has signed up and I’ll keep a tally. I might send everyone who refers someone a little gift too. But the winner gets a bigger, better gift. More about that soon. The tally starts now though.

You can ask them to go right here to sign up.

Oh, and by the way, I will NOT add the email addresses you provide to my mailing list. They will just be used to verify that they were YOUR referrals. In order to be added to my mailing list, your friends will have to subscribe themselves AND confirm their subscription, which they can do by clicking this link right here.

Meanwhile, here’s where you can send your emails with your friends’ names:

support AT myfavoriteselfhelpstuff.com (and obviously, replace “AT” with “@”.

Thanks a bunch! And I hope your holidays continue to be very merry!

Elisabeth