Avoid the Post-Vacation Slam - Breathing Space Blog

Holidays are arriving... Would you like to minimize stress following your travels? Suppose your time away from the office is ending. Once back at work, you have a stack of messages on your desk. Your mail is eight inches high. There are memos, reports, and announcements all over the place. You experience extreme pressure to catch up. The moment you return, the whole world seems to falls in on you.

The Remedy? Plan your trips so that you return before you announced you would. Include a "decompression" phase in your plans; your trip is not complete until you comfortably reintegrate yourself. Also:

* Take one less vacation day and build in a day for transition and decompression rather than coming back too abruptly.

* Avoid returning to work on a Monday; it's already a high-pressure day.

* Instruct others to handle or reroute as many phone calls as possible; and to segment your mail and other papers that come in. Return to a clean office and a clean desk.

* Unpack all your bags quickly. You may be tired, but the task will only be more burdensome later. Put all notes and papers in their place as soon as possible if you ever intend to act on them.

Designed for Speed - Breathing Space Blog

A friend of mine recently asked, "How do you manage to read everything so quickly?" My answer was that I  had my Web guru design a page for me with dozens of my top Internet sites clickable via icons.  Here is a small segment of that page:  

Friends: Real and Imagined - Breathing Space Blog

Researchers from the National Opinion Research Center have found that people who watch a lot of television seem to be as psychologically content as people who have many friends. These disappointing findings stem from the fact that, "the human brain evolved long before television came along, so subconsciously it recognizes any face it sees regularly as a friend, even if it is on the screen," says Satoshi Kanazawa, Ph.D., author of the study.

Does the above explain why society remains in a stupor of overfed, undernourished, overweight, socially inept citizens? After all they are, indeed, getting their social and psychological strokes by tuning in to see their favorite "friends" each week.

As someone recently noted technology can certainly be an aid to human kind but if we are not careful it can greatly diminish of the quality of our lives. Technology distracts us from our own thought, daydreams, even our own imagination. When we fill in the time from the car to the elevator and the elevator to the office, or from lunch back to the office, with a beeper or cell phone, we interrupt the opportunity for people to marinate in their own imaginations.

Keep Your Lungs Young - Breathing Space Blog

Advice told to me: To keep your lungs young, do this simple exercise two or three times a day: Stand straight and slowly exhale until all your breath is gone. Then slowly inhale until your chest is completely expanded. This exercise takes your lungs to each limit, which combats the loss of efficiency and elasticity that come with aging.

The Optimism Advantage - Breathing Space Blog

Optimistic attitudes and actions support simple living! If you haven't added The Optimism Advantage to your simple living bookshelf of keepers, let me suggest that you buy it today. Dr. Terry Paulson's classic book, The Optimism Advantage: 50 Simple Truths to Transform Your Attitudes and Actions into Results," isn't just about managing your attitudes. It's about shaping your world in a way that promotes optimism, opportunity and simple living.

Taking a stand for simpler living, Dr. Paulson writes, "Far too many people spend years gathering more things to fit into increasingly bigger houses only to spend their later years getting rid of things and craving simplicity and satisfying relationships. Why wait? Claim a little more simplicity now; avoid the wasted cost and stressful aggravation involved in competing for who can own the most toys and the biggest mansion."

The Optimism Advantage deals with putting commitments into action. Optimists live "action imperative" and have a bias towards action. Instead of overanalyzing what to do, optimists get busy doing. He shared a housewife who was overwhelmed by the clutter and her commitment to bring sanity to her living space. She picked a room, set her kitchen timer for 5 minutes, and got started bringing order to her life. After the bell went off, she continued for another ten minutes and was proud of going beyond what she had planned. She was pleased with her results and kept increasing her time commitment. She took back her world one room at a time.

Optimism isn't motivational hype; it comes from a track record of overcoming adversity and challenges one day, one choice at a time. The more challenges you overcome, the more confidence you have that you can do more.

Sit up Straight! - Breathing Space Blog

Trainer Luke Richesson quoted in Men's Health magazine: "Your body adapts to the posture you most often assume. If you sit at a desk all day with your shoulders slumped and your neck protruding forward, then you'll inevitably have a posture that looks more like Neanderthal man than Superman. Want to be the best you can be...? Think about posture every waking minute.

Your mother was right, don't slouch.

Travel a Little Lighter - Breathing Space Blog

Plane travel tips for weary travelers:

* Ask for an aisle seat at the front of the plane so that you can to stand up with greater ease, stroll in the aisles, or simply stretch.

* It's easier to capture the attention of flight attendants for in-flight amenities from the front.

* Aisle seats are best for shorter flights, where you don't anticipate going to sleep.

* Travel with carry on bags only.

* Buy the roll-on carts to avoid toting your bags from the airport parking lot to the plane. Most tote systems are made to fit the airline aisles, the overhead seat compartments, or under the seats.