8 Very Simple Steps to Free Yourself From Stress

This post is a sequel to my previous posts about stress management.

Never let stress disrupt your performance. Get over with it with these simple 8 steps:

1. Breathe

A long and deep inhale can help your mind and body relax

2. Have an Eating Pattern

Diets with high calories and fat can cause your body weaker and dysfunctional in the long run.

3. Exercise

Coordinated body movement can make you feel calmer, more controllable mood, and easier to handle pressure

4. Get a Good Quality Sleep

A deep sleep of 6-8 hours every night can raise your energy level. Making you ready to face any challenge the following day

5. See Bigger Picture

Don’t take your job as daily routine, instead, it is your pathway that leads to overwhelming success.

6. Empower and Delegate

You are neither Superman nor demi-God; learn to trust others to help you do your job. Only by this, then you can aim for a far more strategic role in works.

7. Perfection Can be Very Evil

If you spend most of your time trying to fix a working machine, you will never gain from that machine effectively. In short, you are wasting your valuable time.

8. Celebrate

Small reward to indulge yourself that comes in every accomplishment is a good motivation factor.

Office Politics

According to a research from University of Minnesota, Psychology effect caused by office bullying is far scarier than sexual harassment. Office bullying might consists of:

1. Attacking commentaries or looking down to others
2. Specific yells (even work related issues) – especially in front of many people
3. Disrespectful of job rank and our role
4. Disrespectful of our working results

If any of you ever experienced one of the above, you have to immediately confront the abuse right on spot. For example, when someone mocks you, look the person on the eyes and tell him/her that you don’t find it amusing and that you want that person to stop doing that. Tell him/her that you are a professional and you deserve to be treated politely.

Bear in mind, that when you say that, maintain your tone and emotion, because your emotional weakness is what that person is trying to proof. So, whenever you don’t think that you can control your wrath, you’d better stay away and calm yourself down.

However, if you think that everything is out of line and has gone from bad to worse, please write a written report, stating every detailed aspects, including places, time, type of abuse, plus eye witness of the harassment,

And know when to stop, if the written report is proven ineffective, instead, making things worse, it is time that you find a better working place. Never mind with the thought that the abuser will be thrilled to see you walk away that door, because your pride and mental wellness are far more important than what others might think.

Blessed Those Who Are Grateful Everyday

On Monday, December 1st 2008, I’ve managed to walk again without crutches. About 3 weeks ago I’ve suffered from a terrible knee injury during my routine Sunday sport. My left knee ligaments were torn bad and at that time I couldn’t even raise my leg. Plus it hurts like hell. If I have to illustrate how that happen, I can make it easy explaining to you that my body and thigh turned, while my calf did not because my foot was deeply ‘planted’ on the pitch. So, the knee joint sort of twisted 90 degree to the counter clockwise generating the sound of a smashed cracker inside my ears. I couldn’t stand up at that time until my friends helped me. The shocking thing was, I felt my lower leg can rotate like shoulders, which of course it wasn’t suppose to.I’m getting better now, even though I still can not bend my knee as used to be and it still feels funny inside.

Before this, I never ever imagine that I would be standing and walking with crutches for 3 full weeks and I feel that people are supposed to be healthy walking on their own feet. Not until the day it happened of course. Now, I look at people walking down the street, run forth and back, jogs, and the feeling was like ,”How lucky these people are with pair of healthy legs.” A sentence that never before reside in my head. It is a mystery how life can turn from good to bad to one person, vice versa. And still human can’t tell when those days would come.

I tried to analyze my feeling and had come to a conclusion that I’m not too grateful before. I always look for more and more. While never show enough gratitude for what I’ve acquired. Indirectly, this is also exhausting for my mind. I tried to practice myself of being more grateful these past few weeks and I have positive results from it. I feel more energized, more positive, better sleep quality, and I can ate more. Knowing this, I think that the wisest thing to do in my future is being more grateful for what I have in my life, while still being optimistic for the forthcoming days. The balance will be the key for a more life quality.

5 Ways To Move On With Your Life

Ever experience fatal mistake for once in your lifetime? So tremendous and caused many damages? Felt like there’s no cure and nothing we can do to amend it? The fact is, you are not alone. Everybody messed up big time at least once in their life. Think about one of these examples. Perhaps it rings a bell.

1. Drug and/or booze addicts
2. Money laundry
3. Cheating on spouse
4. Public lies
5. Murder
6. Burglary
7. HIV infected from free sex or drug needle
8. Misconduct in workplace, demotion
9. Being laid off out of no reason
10. Hit someone with your vehicle
11. (The case could add up infinitely as different people has different encounter)

Usually, people messed up because of poor character. Because people choose to compromise over than to show their true character. Chances are, people with stronger character, provided they have a positive values, won’t mess up so easily. It is always a good investment to work on your character.

So, it’s done. Now what? There’s nothing we can do to change it, no matter how much time or resource we take to remorse or to amend them. This is something, that even many times have been said, that “we will never be able to change the past”. Forget those sci-fi movies with time machine and time traveler in them. Chances are those will be unlikely to happen in centuries ahead.

If we can not change the past, then the wisest thing to do is to ‘forget’ it. Each time after a huge disaster, there’s always an aftermath and mostly this is the painful part. We deal with our losses, with our loved one’s losses and it hurt, very bad. The 9/11 tragedy in NYC, the Aceh tsunami, onto the latest Mumbai attack. These left wounds. Wounds to be dealt with.

How can we forget such tragedy? Usually, time heals everything. Human has this very unique traits of slowly letting things go as time goes by. It doesn’t, however, cure the wound completely. But it will get better if given some time.

Here are few tips so we can overcome the feeling quicker and get on with our life.

1. Be Positive.

To the universe, we are only a particle of a dust. So if you think, you have a BIG problem. Think again. Try to think this way. Pull yourself away from your complicated thoughts and see if this is what you called a big problem. Other people might have had worse ones. So, instead, count yourself lucky. Only by being positive thinking, you can actually see there are lights at the end of tunnel and that this is not the end of the world.

2. Embrace Your Current Condition.

I know that you probably still haven’t accept your current condition. You don’t accept yourself being sacked unfairly, being robbed, being cheated, or diagnosed with deadly disease. But hey, this is a world where everyday people run forward. And they won’t stop even if they know your condition. This is the world where the fast outran the slow. The strong take out the weak. So unless you stop regretting what you shouldn’t have done or feeling so bad of mis-treated by someone and start to accept that this is your ACTUAL condition, you will never be able to move on. A book by Jim Collins “Good to Great” has revealed on a “Stockdale Paradox” whose held captive as Viet Cong prisoner in Vietnam war and he managed to survive because he (1) accepted that he was indeed a prisoner, living prisoner’s life, with no guarantee getting out from there alive, but at the same time he also (2) believed that one day, he will be out from there and reunite with his families.

3. Start Get Your Life Back.

When was your last time before the tragedy; hang out with your friends, went out to the bar, catch a movie, go skiing, eating out with your spouse, go bungee jumping ?(if this is what it takes of course). Anything that could get your lifeline going. You need sparks to light up your life. If you think you have been sitting too long, then you probably are correct. So stand up, make a plan on what to do this weekend, do it, and have fun with it.

4. Forgive Them, No Matter How Hard.

This is to some people probably the hardest part, especially when you are the victims. However hard though, forgiveness is needed in order to accept your current situation. Forgiving is not and never about losing. If you let things go and forgive those who has betrayed or treated you bad, you will be much more relaxed and you will have no chance of being the person you once hate. This is of course very possible because you have minimized the chance of retaliation to zero. If you think you can’t look them in the eyes and forgive them, then don’t force it. Give it sometime. Forgiveness is meant to be sincere. It has to be done and it has to be sincere. That simple.

5. There’s Always Reason Behind Everything.

Yes there is always a positive reason behind every tragedy. Unfortunately, we can only guess what it will be and will never know until we get it in the future. We can only connect them backward, not forward. Each of us has a noble role in this world, from the day we’re born. So this is our responsibility for God, our loved ones, and the society we live in.

Information Overload – Downside Of World Wide Web

Are you a web surfer? Do you spend most of your times, at home, at work, sitting in front of 12 inch monitor doing stuffs?

I’m asking you to take a look back around 20-30 years ago, when the world was a quieter place to live. When people went to bookstore to find about informations, or send a postmail when in need to communicate with others.

Then all of a sudden, you are surrounded with information. Informations that you have no idea whether it’s right or wrong and they just keep coming whether you want it or not. Yes, thanks to the world wide web and the internet. The once conventional method of browsing for information; that could took hours to complete, now only a matter of minutes.

However, please be careful that what we do everyday in our life is divided in two.

1. The value added work
2. The non value added work

Vilfredi Pareto, an Italian scientist revealed that most of us spend 80% of our time to complete only 20% of important tasks. That’s the reason why many people end up being mediocre; because they couldn’t differ the value added and the non value added. This is later known as ‘The Pareto Principles’.

I’m not saying that being overwhelmed by information is a bad thing. Hey, I like information as much as you do, especially free information. So, don’t get me wrong. Many have said that whoever has the most information win in this time of era. True!

But bear also in mind that if our head is congested with information and ideas; chances are; we got stuck, not knowing what to do, or to be too considerable for everything. Suddenly, the world become so noisy and complicated and it is much easier to complicate things than to do the other way around.

Imagine you need to go from dot A to dot B. How can you reach B from A in efficient manner? Anybody will answer “Just go straight”. In fact, it’s true. But to theoritize and to practice is two different thing. In my previous article about self purpose, I wrote that we gotta have some sort of direction. Point B is our direction, assuming we’re at point A.

Now, information overload can only hinder you and get you confused. You may get to point B, but the time you need will be much more. Or worse, you get lost.

To wrap things up, I will make it very simple for you, my valuable readers;

1. Have a clear self purpose
2. Get information only you STRICTLY NEED, no more, no less.
3. Get going!

That’s it for now. Hope you can reach dot B in no time soon. Have a nice day!

Image by tina_manthorpe

10 Things You Should Know For Managing Stress

This happened several days ago when we’ve just got back from our holiday and things were just started to be hectic once again.

We had a terrible situation of which the whole company operation could probably ceased because of the material shortage. This wasn’t because of poor planning, but it’s problem at the custom that caused it to happen.

I was at the center of the problem at that time and was actually, in a lot of stress – without knowing it. I couldn’t sleep and eat well thinking of the problem. I felt fine really, but somehow my boss saw me different.

Then he said to me “Live things day by day. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, and it is tough and also consuming to guess what will come the next day. Today we have today’s issue; we deal with it, then that’s it. Tomorrow? Come what may.”

Short sentences, but I felt relaxed after hearing those. To put it simple, problem occurs. Everyday, every hour, every minute, and there’s nothing we can do about it. They just come to you. Some can be identified, but many others can’t.

If we realize this, that problems are in fact integral part of our lives, then don’t bother worrying about them. Lift a glass of water with your arm straight up. Hold it for a minute, you won’t feel a thing, hold it another hour, you will encounter spasm, hold it for a day, you will need an ambulance. It is the same glass full of water and it weighs THE SAME, but if we lift it longer that we should, it will harm us in return.

Here’re 10 useful tips you can consider doing. You can combine this or do it one at the time:

1. Get out and get a fresh air, take a deep breath.
2. Think of something cheerful, the day you got married, your birthday, your promotion day, the old days when you picking up on girls/boys
3. Do three minutes of stretching.
4. Laugh and make fun of yourself.
5. Smile even if you don’t feel like.
6. Whenever possible, donate, it feels much better if you give to others.
7. Spend more time doing your hobbies.
8. Share your load with loved ones.
9. Consume chocolate – researches revealed that somehow chocolate reduce stress
10. Go to somewhere else new, do something different, don’t be lazy!

I hope your life improve. Have a nice day!

Image by Bitterroot