Meditation, Journaling and Other Ways to De-Stress

Are you ready to actively do something to reduce stress on a daily basis? If not, I would like to encourage you to pick up and develop a daily habit that helps you accomplish just that. Stress not only reduces your quality of life; it can also negatively affect your health. There’s a reason why they say stress kills. Start doing something about it and embrace life to the fullest with some of these simple techniques that help you stress less. 

 

Start Meditating

 

One of the best tools for reducing stress is meditation. You can start with a simple breathing meditation by getting comfortable in a quiet spot and focusing on relaxing and thinking about nothing but your breath. From there, give some of the free guided meditations a try. There are even some wonderful apps out there that turn your smartphone into your favorite new meditation device. Set aside a few minutes each day to meditate and watch the stress melt away. 

 

Keep a Journal 

 

This one may surprise you. A journal is an effective tool to help you worry and stress less. The simple act of writing about what’s on your mind can be incredibly freeing. A journal is also a great tool to help you look back and figure out what’s triggering or causing periods of high stress. This is valuable information to have since you can’t work towards reducing or eliminating a trigger if you don’t know what it is. 

 

Go for A Walk 

 

Another simple, but very powerful technique is to go for a walk. Get outside if possible, but if that’s not a good option, hop on a treadmill or pace around your house. It doesn’t take a lot of walking before you start to see the benefits. If you only have ten minutes, walk. If you have an hour lunch break, walk for 20 minutes and spend the rest of the time relaxing and eating. Make it work and get in the habit of walking regularly. 

 

Hug 

 

That’s right. Something as simple as a hug can help you relax and fight stress. Make sure the hug is genuine on both sides and for best results, hold the embrace for at least twenty seconds. You’ll start to feel yourself calm and those endorphins will flood your system. Don’t have anyone around to hug at the moment? Laughing out loud is pretty powerful too. Turn on a fun comedy that leaves you in stitches. 

 

Clean Up Your Diet 

 

Last but not least, take a look at what you’re putting into your mouth. A clean diet of mostly whole foods that’s low in sugars and preservatives will nourish your body and fight much of the damage stress causes. It will also help you feel calmer and more in control. Start making some small changes and see if you don’t start to feel better. 

Stress Less and Get More Done by Sleeping More

Do you know what one of the most effective ways to de-stress is? It’s sleeping. Yes, exercise is great and meditation is a wonderful tool, but the best thing you can do to stress less on a regular basis is to get a goodnight sleep. 

 

You already know this is true. Think about how much harder your job and your life in general feel after a night when you were up with the kids, or working until four in the morning to finish an important project. You get grumpy, it’s harder to focus, and every little problem suddenly becomes insurmountable. You feel a lot more stressed throughout the day and it only gets worse if you end up sleeping poorly for several days in a row. 

 

Now here’s the interesting bit. The average person doesn't get the optimal amount of sleep at night, and even when we do, our sleep quality often isn’t great. Too often our sleep is disrupted throughout the night, even if we don’t fully wake up and most of us struggle with falling asleep. 

 

Thankfully there are a lot of things you can do to improve both the quantity and quality of sleep you get. Before you tell yourself that you can’t afford to sleep more, realize that not focusing on sleep will cause you to be less focused and productive. You’ll actually get more done by investing time into a good-night sleep. 

 

Start by establishing a bedtime routine. Try to go to bed at the same time every night, even on the weekends. It helps your body get into a rhythm that makes falling asleep and staying asleep easier. Cut distractions from your bedroom. That means leaving your phone in the living room. If you need an alarm, go buy an alarm clock. You don’t want those alerts and notifications keeping you from getting into those all-important deep sleep zones. Turn off the lights and have a good look around your bedroom. Are there any small indicator lights or blinking lights? Try to remove them if possible. Listen for any sounds from electronics and the likes. Make your bedroom a calm, quiet, and dark place of rest. 

 

Last but not least, watch your screen time at night. Our eyes and the way they process light, including the light waves from our screens have a big impact on how alert the body is. One of the worst habits we’ve all developed is to look at our phones while trying to go to sleep. Biologically it’s the equivalent of watching the sunrise. Stop telling your body it’s time to get up while you’re trying to go to sleep. Instead, focus on calming activities like reading, talking with your partner, or meditating for an hour before going to sleep. Reduce screen time for a few hours before bed or at the least invest in blue light filtered glasses or install an app that changes your display at night.

Review and Release - Stop Trying to Do All the Things

One of the main reasons why we are so much more stressed than let’s say our grandparents were, is because we are taking on a lot more. We have families where each partner is working a full-time job and possibly a side hustle as well to make ends meet financially. That leaves all the hard work of keeping house and raising a family, which needs to be done during “off” hours. Most of us no longer mentally clock out at the end of the workday. Instead, we take our work home, and are reachable at all hours via text message or email. Add to that the stress constant connectivity and social media creates and it’s no wonder we’re more stressed than ever. 

 

It’s time to do something about it. It’s time to stop trying to do all the things all the time and focus on reducing stress in your life. Start by reviewing everything you do in a given day. A great tool for this is a time log. Keep a simple piece of paper or a small notebook with you at all times. Set an alert on your phone to go off every 30 minutes (during waking hours), and quickly jot down what you’re doing. Be brutally honest. No one else needs to see this log and you can burn it after you’re done. After a week of logging, you get a pretty good idea of where you spend your time and mental energy. 

 

Now comes the fun part. Look through your data and decide what you can let go off. What can you stop doing? Open up some time for yourself to exercise, meditate, or to take a nap so you can catch up on much needed sleep. 

 

Next, it’s time to review and release all those worries, questions, and “should-dos” that are stressing you out. Get out another sheet of paper or two and start to write down anything and everything on your mind. All the stuff you’ve been thinking about doing. All the stuff that’s been worrying you. Get it all out. Walk away for a few hours and then come back to your list. Cross out as much as you can. Things that are out of your control and you decide to mentally release. Tasks that you feel like you should do, that you really don’t need to do. Then rewrite what’s left on two different lists. One will be things you can do, or have someone else do for you. This will become your master to-do list for the next few months. The other is a list of worries, or concerns. Notice how much smaller and shorter those lists are and how much lighter you feel just getting it all out of your head. 

 

Last but not least, go burn that master brain dump list. Doesn’t it feel good?

Stress Kills - Isn’t It Time You Did Something About It?

Are you feeling stressed? I’d be surprised if you weren’t. Between the growing demands of our jobs, raising a family while working full-time, and the increasing need to stay connected all day every day, most of us feel stressed out more often than we like to admit. Add to it a chronic lack of sleep and exercise and you have a recipe for disaster. Stress kills and that’s no joke. Let’s look at some of the worst negative side effects of stress and what you can do to stress less and relax more. 

 

Stress will cause your blood pressure to rise. You’ve experienced this when you found yourself hot and with a raging headache when you were in a particularly stressful situation. Feeling that way from time to time is no big deal. The real danger is in the lower-level stress we all feel on a daily basis. It can lead to hypertension and a higher risk of suffering from a heart attack or stroke. 

 

Next, let’s look at sleep. When you’re stressed, you don’t sleep well. You may even find it hard to sleep at all. Insomnia is a common side effect of living a stress-full life. It doesn’t take long before you start to feel the negative side effects of not getting quality sleep. You feel drained, unfocused, and things spiral downward from there quickly. Your body can’t function well and recover without at least a few good hours of sleep per night. For optimal health, destress and shoot for at least six to eight hours. 

 

Since stress is so hard on the body and mind, what can you do to reduce it? Quite a bit actually. The most obvious solution is to go to the source of the stress and cut it out of your life. Obviously, that isn’t very practical, or desirable when you’re having a few rough weeks at the job you rely on or your kids are driving you nuts. Instead, try things to actively relax and destress when and where you can to counterbalance the unavoidable. Go for a walk outside. Hit the gym for some exercise. 

 

Meditate. Learn some breathing exercises to help calm yourself down whenever you feel particularly stressed. Get plenty of quality sleep. Eat a healthy diet and cut down on sugar and caffeine. 

 

We’ll talk more about how you can stress less and love life in future blog posts. Being aware of the stress and how it is affecting you is a great first step. Now take a deep breath and go for a stroll around the block. Notice how much better you’re feeling already?

The Power Of Writing Your SMART Goals Down And Reviewing Them Regularly

 
Studies show that putting your SMART goals into writing and reviewing them regularly will increase your chances of success. In fact, some studies show that you are as much as 42% more likely to follow through with your goals if you write them down. Writing your goals down will help you get a clear picture of your plan and what you want to accomplish. Logging your goals will also help motivate you to complete the tasks needed in order for success of your goal. Frequently reviewing what you’ve written will aid in reminding you of your plan, as well as remind you of your “why,” in turn, boosting your motivation to keep progressing toward your goal.
 
Writing your goals down as you set them; will help your brain encode the plan, further solidifying your goal. The mere act of writing an idea down makes it more likely you will remember it. This is the reason college students take notes in lectures, note taking provides a much higher probability of remembering the information. Similarly, when you draft your goal in writing, you have a better chance of success. After writing out your goal, be sure to place it somewhere that you can see it easily. Places like on the fridge, on your phone, on a mirror, at your desk are all excellent areas, where you can easily visually access your goal. Seeing the words you wrote serves as a reminder and as motivation to continue with your efforts.
 
Not only will you be reminded of your goal by visually seeing the words written, you should also take the time for an active review of your goal. Regularly, actively reviewing your written goal will increase your chances of successfulness. An active review of your goal should include contemplating the reasons behind your motivation of the goal, your “why.” Thinking about the reasons you set the particular goal will boost your motivation by reminding you why the goal matters to you, why you set it and what you expect to gain from it. Reviewing your goal will aid in renewed purpose and incentive, ultimately bumping up your likelihood of success.
 
Countless studies that find that writing out your goals produces higher success rates. Placing the words you’ve written in an easily accessible spot and reviewing them often will also help ensure that you follow through with the SMART goals you set for yourself. 

Did You Set Yourself A Deadline?

Deadlines are important motivators in goal setting, that’s why the T, in SMART Goals, refers to the term time bound. Time bound means the time you allocate for you to complete your goal. An obvious start and end date for your goals are a momentous piece of your goal-setting plan. When you set start and end times for yourself, you are better able to stay on track, give you the ability to focus on your goal and give you something to work toward. Mini-deadlines will help you keep up motivation because you will celebrate your smaller successes along the way. Deadlines will also help with time management, making your goal more easily accomplished. Managing your time well will help you allocate your time where needed, toward achieving your goal. Parkinson’s Law states that work will expand to fill the time allotted. So, unless you must carefully distribute your time, your goals may fall to the wayside and become overtaken by everyday tasks.

 

Time-bound goals have start and end dates. Setting a time frame for yourself in whom you expect to complete your goal, will give you a sense of urgency. Time bound goals also keep you focused on the task you have laid out for yourself by helping prioritize your everyday tasks. It’s easy to get caught up in the things we have to get done in life, work and family obligations often take over. Parkinson’s Law states that work will expand to fill the time allotted; meaning that other tasks will take over, if you let them. But, when the goal is time bound, it helps keep the goal in the forefront, with a sense of necessity.

 

Mini-deadlines are another way that time-bound goals help ensure success. You can set yourself some smaller deadlines within your primary goal and reward yourself for those mini successes along the way. For example, let’s say your goal is to walk for 30 minutes, 5 times a week for 3 months, in the evening when you get home from work, to get healthier. The deadline here is 3 months. An example of a useful mini goal could be at the 1-week mark. If you check in with yourself every Friday evening and you have followed through with walking for 30 minutes every evening after work for that week, you have successfully completed your mini goal. If you allow yourself a small reward for achieving the mini goal, you will further solidify success.

 

Time sensitive goals are an important part of the SMART Goals method. Setting deadlines will increase your productivity and help ensure your success.

What’s Your Why?

In goal setting, “your why,” refers to the relevance that the particular goal has in your life. Relevance is the R, in the SMART Goals method of goal setting. This part of setting a goal for yourself is crucial because it’s about ensuring that the goal is important to you. There’s little point in putting time and effort into a goal that truly doesn’t matter to you. Goals should drive us forward towards something significant. Relevance of the goal you are setting should also align well with your other life plans. Decide the relevance of a goal by answering a few questions pertaining to the goal and your current life. Questions like:

 

• Does this goal seem worthwhile? 
• Is the tradeoff of time and effort worth the result?
• Does it align well with my other efforts and goals? 
• Are other aspects of your life driving forward in the same direction?
• Is this the right time for this goal? 
• Does this goal fit in with your personal goals? 
• Does it make sense financially?
• Am I the right person for this goal? 
• Is this goal attainable? 
• Do I have the skills and ability for success in the goal?

 

Coming up with answers to these questions will help you determine the goal’s relevance in your life. Some of these questions are not necessarily straightforward, black and white. You will need to dig deep to answer some of these questions to find the real “why” of your desired goal, to know if it’s relevant enough to move forward.

 

An example of a goal relevant to one’s life might be for someone whose goal is to be promoted in their field, to take available online courses, to gain knowledge and experience of their desired position. This plan is worthwhile because it provides professional experience. They offer the courses online, so you can take them at a time convenient for the subject. Online courses are affordable, so most likely they will make financial sense. The online courses will ultimately propel the subject forward, toward an even bigger goal, the eventual promotion. 

 

Relevance of a goal is an important part of goal setting. Deciding if a goal is relevant helps you match your goals to the rest of your life, helps you know if the goal matters to you, and if the time is the right time to achieve the goal. Sometimes, one must truly examine themselves and their life to determine relevance of a desired goal.

Why Reaching For The Stars May Be A Bad Idea

The A, in SMART Goals, represents attainable. When setting goals, be sure to choose a goal that is attainable - your goals should be within reasonable reach for you. Although the goals you set should stretch you out of your comfort zone and excite you, your goals should remain within reach. If a goal is impossible to achieve your efforts are futile. It becomes unproductive to put your time and energy toward a goal that will never come to fruition. You will end up losing motivation and feel like giving up if you aren’t able to succeed or celebrate your milestones along the way. Instead, be sure to set a goal that you can accomplish, this way you will keep focus and motivation, and have a chance of greater success. Along with your goal being unattainable, be sure that when you draft your goal, it’s written in a way that allows you responsibility for your goal. You should state your goals in a way that gives you control over the outcome. No one other than you should be the subject of your goal.
 
You should state attainable goals with success in mind. For example, let’s say you feel that you would benefit professionally from reading more books that pertain to your business. So, your goal might be, “I will read a business-related book every night before bed for 20 minutes, with my goal to be to read one business book per month, for 6 months.” This goal is attainable because what you’re asking of yourself is reasonable and achievable. The goal also only involves one person, you, who follows through to ensure success. 

Another way to assist attainable goals in being successful is through setting milestone goals. Milestone goals are small goals that you can set along the pathway to your goal. For example, in the instance above, a milestone goal could be to check in with yourself once a week. Checking in on your own accountability is a great way to stay on track. If you have followed through with your goal for the week, in this case, read your business book for 20 minutes every evening, you will know you are making progress toward your goal. As we already know, tracking or measuring your progress helps secure a greater success rate for your goal. Keep your goals challenging yet attainable and you will be on your way to being successful with your goals.

How Are You Going To Measure Progress

Measuring your progress for the goals you've set is the second part of the SMART Goals method. After all, you won’t know if you're making progress or gaining on your goal without a way to measure it. When progress is measurable, you can track how far you’ve come, keep focused and stay motivated by celebrating the small milestones you complete along the way. In order to facilitate assessing your progress, you’ll need a set of criteria for measurement of progress. 

 

Similar to the Specific step used in SMART Goals, you will need to answer a few questions regarding your goal as a criterion for measuring progress data:

 

• How many?
• How much?
• What is the indicator of progress?

 

How many or how much refers to progress as an indicator of what success for your specific goal looks like. The indicator of progress signifies the way in which you decide to track the progress you have made. This varies significantly depending on the goal. If it’s a business goal, maybe the indicator of progress is gross sales. Or it might be the number of pounds lost per week, if your goal is to get to a healthier weight. Tracking how far you’ve come within the goal is important because it will keep you focused on your ultimate goal. Motivation will be gained by ability to celebrate the milestones of the progress you have along the way. 

 

Using the same goal as above, to lose 10 pounds by exercising more. More specifically stated, “I will go to the gym to work out for 45 minutes every day weekday morning before work, in order to lose 2 pounds per week.” Now not only is the goal specific and clearly stated, we have added the quantity of measurement for the goal, 2 pounds per week. In this case the indicator of measurement would be the scale. In the arena of business, an example might be, if the goal is, “I will build brand awareness through social media, to increase gross profits by 20% per month.” The quantity of measurement and the indictor is the profit increase in comparison to previous months.

 

Putting the SMART Goals method to use has proven to produce a higher success rate for goal achievement. Measuring your goals is an important part of this process. When you track your progress, you will have the ability to stay more motivated towards your goal and keep a stronger focus.

How To Make Your Goals Specific

Specificity is crucial as it relates to mapping out the goals you set for yourself. Overly generalized goals will produce a lack of direction and ability to focus on what’s important. Goals that are too vague will end up setting you up for failure. For example, let’s say you want to drink more water per day. “I will drink more water every day,” is far too general. Lack of specificity will enable you to make excuses. The wording doesn’t hold you accountable; it is not enough of a detailed plan to follow through with. Instead, clarify the specifics. Answering some questions about your goal will pinpoint your intention and narrow down the specifics. You must answer what’s known as the “5 W’s” of basic information gathering; Who? What? When? Where? Why? Answering these five questions will help you develop specific clarity and motivation towards your goal. 

 

Answer these five questions to draft your goal:

 

• Who will this goal involve? 
• What exactly do I want to accomplish?
• When do I want to accomplish this goal?
• Where will you achieve this goal?
• Why is this goal important to me?

 

After filling in the blanks to the five information gathering questions, your goal will look something like this: “I will drink 8 glasses of water every day - 2 glasses of water in the morning before breakfast, two glasses with lunch, two glasses after the gym and two glasses before bed to become healthier. This goal is specific and direct. It explicitly states what your expectations are for yourself and enables accountability.

 

Another example of a goal without detail and focus is “I will exercise more.” This goal is positive and relevant; however, it lacks specificity, and therefore it becomes a setup for failure. Answering the 5 w’s will provide the specifics you need to set meaningful, constructive goals that will give a higher rate of success in achievement. After answering these questions, you will end up drafting a goal that sounds more like this, “I will exercise at the gym for 45 minutes, every weekday morning, before I go to work.” This statement is a detailed plan for what, where, how and when you intend to follow through with your plan. Its details will ensure a higher goal success rate than that of the first, vaguer statement.

 

S stands for specific, in the acronym, SMART goals. Drafting specific goals is the first step in coming up with goals that stick and are successful.