Breaking Your Back?

Your Word?  Someone’s Heart?

Did you know “STRESS” costs employers over $300 Billion a year?

After 35 years of teaching stress management to business and healthcare professionals, I believe ALL suffering comes from some form of self-induced stress. And studies I’ve seen show that more than 7 out of 10 doctors agree.

Stress does not come from outside sources. Nothing and no one can MAKE us stressful. Stress comes from INSIDE (and until it becomes negative stress, or DIS-stress, it’s not always bad; without positive stress, you’d fall out of your chair!)

Some of us clearly work too hard physically, and suffer physical consequences: backaches, headaches, pulled muscles, sore feet, cut and calloused hands, aching fingers, an increasingly-wrinkled brow –and of course more– can all take their toll. Ask any roofer!

• We blame every thing and every body outside of ourselves all along the way, truly feeling like we are, in fact, “breaking our backs.”

• Yet others of us may put ourselves in the mental/emotional stress-inducing position “between a rock and a hard place” when something happens (or fails to) that causes us to break our WORD.

But unlike the physical “break your back” labor, “breaking your word” is most often accompanied by tightened muscles, mental distractions, angry feelings, feelings of incompetence or inadequacy, emotional outbursts and mental stress, to name just a few symptoms.

• Breaking someone’s HEART can be the most destructive stress of all — and especially if it comes packaged with either and/or both of the above circumstances.

Most human beings (and, I believe, many animals) have had their hearts broken somewhere along the path of life, and know that this is the most traumatizing of all experiences because it goes to the very core of every creature’s emotional existence. And it often triggers an avalanche of mental, emotional AND physical stress!

Regardless of the source we attribute to increased stress— whether physical, intellectual, or emotional– we often head for the nearest relief.

This runs the gamut between medicine cabinets, then drugstores (or dealers), alcohol, tobacco, fortune-tellers, natural healing practitioners, dieticians and chiropractors, primary care physicians, and hopefully, we avoid hospitals and surgery… until next time.

BUT THE BOTTOM LINE is that:

A) Behavior is a choice! That choice can be the moment of upset, or the result of a choice made even years earlier. It is nonetheless, a choice. That being the case, it can be just as easy to make the choice –at the moment of upset– to NOT break your back, choose to NOT break your word, choose to NOT break a heart.

B) The “HOW-TO” of choosing to reverse direction to get better results dictates that your mind be in the present moment, not dwelling on anything more than a minute old (or a minute into the future). It can admittedly be difficult to conjure up present-moment awareness in the midst of trauma . . . unless you choose for it to be easy!

C) The best, easiest, most-effective way to choose a non-stress-imposing action or thought to eliminate or minimize the trauma of the moment is to first: be aware of and acknowledge your upset feelings, and remind yourself that you are choosing them, then: second…

D) Follow the simple, quick, discreet (the more you practice, the less noticeable) steps outlined HERE . Your persistence at doing this even for a minute, even while in a discussion, will calm your nervous system and send more oxygen to your brain. It works no matter what age, physical condition, or type of upset feelings.

MORE?

Give me a call. I run sessions like this by phone,

and in person with employee groups and teams

to help relieve the employer burden of paying

for the results of employee stress.

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hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

931.854.0474 Coaching for Higher Branding Impact

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Personal & Professional Growth/ Creative Entrepreneurial Thinking

YOU’RE 30-40 YEARS’ OLD?

There goes your past. Here comes your future. But
it’s only this minute—this very split second as you
read this sentence—that counts!

Popular observations about your age:

YOU’RE 30-40 YEARS’ OLD

It’s inconceivable that those under 30 consider you older than dirt, so you do everything mentally and physically possible to prove yourself otherwise. You get a little achy-breaky once in awhile, but–after all–you still feel invincible enough to beat yourself to a pulp on the athletic field, go cliff-climbing, hang-gliding, whitewater rafting, buy a horse, and race jet skis. Maybe you’re a late bloomer, but you fall in and out of love 15 more times, then soul-mate with one of your original 25, from when you were (aaaaah!) in your twenties.

You gloat at being able to buy your first house, then quickly realize—as nasty things go wrong that require hiring contractors—that you’re in over your head. But now, for the first time, you at least have your own neighbors and your own on-the-job friends (and a soul-mate) to commiserate with. You try a couple of churches. You drink a lot of fancy-brand beer.

If you weren’t having young children and old parents when you were 20-30, you’ve probably got both now, and you feel like you’re in the middle of a sandwich, ready to be eaten up by stress and time pressures, especially with so fewer opportunities for self-indulgence. Getting your fingers burned and knuckles rapped as you learn the politics of career pursuit, you think about starting your own business. You Google a lot.

Approaching 40, you own up to the fact that maybe you don’t actually know as much as you thought you did when you were ten years younger. You trade your Camaro for a minivan to get the kids to baseball, soccer, dance lessons, Cub Scouts, Brownies, fast-food spots. You love your spouse, but the minivan . . . Your smartphone keeps you connected to the world, but you somehow still feel disconnected. The kids anchor you to living in the present. These years are all about making and spending money, getting promoted, researching startups.

In your heart, you know there’s hope for you yet. It’s true. Just choose it. Oh, and hang in there, Kiddo! Time Heals.

Business Life Reality: Now is the only time!
How thankful are you to be who you are,
headed where you’re headed?

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WATCH THIS BLOG THE NEXT 4 WEDNESDAYS FOR

YOUR AGE COMMENTARY~~~ NEXT WEEK: 40-50
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Hal@BusinessWorks.US or 931.854.0474 or comment below

OPEN MINDS OPEN DOORS

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

Make today a GREAT Day for someone!

Welcome to the world’s first SMALL BIZ Alphabet Series of blog posts!

When you carry a grudge

. . . there’s no room to

carry your business!

The old Dutch proverb and German expression,“Vee grow too soon oldt, und too late shmart” sums up much of why we fail miserably to fully understand and effectively cultivate relationships. Our seeming inability to let go of the angry feelings someone close to us once provoked has toppled many business ventures, even entire empires.

                                                                                       

But, ah, the ability to forgive and forget those who crossed us up is a choice. 

And the consequences of making or not making that forgive-and-forget choice are the differences between:

• Having peace of mind, plus the energy to pursue both business and personal success–because by letting go and moving on, you are marshaling your energy and exercising control of you, captaining your own ship.

VS.

• Suffering a permanent or recurring headache that’s potentially terminal to you and your enterprise– because by holding on, you are wasting energy and choosing to subject yourself (and ultimately your business) to someone else’s control.

Carrying a grudge is

what leadership is not!

Many of us carry more grudges than we are probably conscious of. We keep them in our throats, and they come out as guttural utterances when certain names or circumstances surface. We keep them in little invisible knapsacks in our brains that send a flood of upset feelings into our nervous systems whenever they’re unzipped.

Some people get tight chest muscles (love relationships), tight shoulders (related to responsibility), backaches (associated with memories), stomach flutters, fists, headaches, leg pains, shortness of breath, indigestion, diarrhea, constipation, toothaches . . . it’s called being over-stressed, and it’s debilitating. For an entrepreneur, it can kill.

Ask any cardiologist.

Stress is both physical and emotional. It can be good (like the stress that keeps you sitting up straight in a chair), or bad (DIS-stress!), like the level that produces symptoms such as those in the earlier paragraph. Carrying a grudge, having revengeful feelings, like uncontrollable anger or road rage, can be a self-destruct path of no return.

Recognizing that letting go is a choice may not make doing it any easier, but that –itself– is also a choice. You can choose to make it easier. You can also ease the process by practicing more deep breathing and/or by taking a yoga or meditation program. Doctor-sanctioned serious exercise, like daily jogs and brisk walks can also help.

Think of it this way–

Every minute of your life that’s consumed by harboring angry or frustrated or disappointed feelings about another person (even, and perhaps especially, family!), or entity or event or policy is a minute you will never get back, and it’s a minute that you are choosing for someone or something else to reach inside your brain and control your thoughts.

And you are facilitating that impossibility to happen. After all, no one else can really control what you think and how you behave, except you . . . unless you choose for that to happen.

Now, why would you want to do that?

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Hal@Businessworks.US 

  Open minds open doors.

 Thanks for visiting and God bless you.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

The quickest fix for

“Nuttin’s Happenin'”

. . . is to ACT NOW!

NOW, while we’re on the cusp of

The Great American Work Slowdown. 

Christmas is just a week from Saturday. Everyone (except for rambunctious entrepreneurs–there’s some other kind?) is moving more slowly at work. The rank and file are increasingly preoccupied with office and neighborhood parties.

Could this be true? Is it just my imagination? Are you grinning nervously at that thought or at what I might be tossing your way in the next couple of paragraphs? 

                                                                                                 

Well, if you’re in that “rambunctious” crowd I mentioned, you probably wait ’til the last minute to shop, hate to waste time making the festive rounds but find that a couple of stiff drinks help make those swashbuckling business status-climbers and oozy neighbors a little more tolerable . . . and it’s all good practice leading up to that big week of dysfunctional family gift-giving gatherings! 

Put your mouse down for a nap.

Get up from your desk or work station or laptop, and stop reading this blog (I trust you that you’ll come back). Now, DO SOME thing. ANY thing! It doesn’t matter what you do. What matters is that you do SOMEthing.

Take a walk around the block. Eat a cookie. Take a bathroom break. Turn the music on or up. Draw a picture. Get away from the monitor and keyboard and take some deep breaths. Shake your head like a wet dog. Clap or briskly rub your hands together. Take a slug of cold water.

Appreciate that by breaking your concentration, you are also breaking some element or accumulation of stress.

Don’t quit yet. Don’t rush back to the screen. Gently close your eyes and take ten seconds to massage your temples or the back of your neck (counter-clockwise stimulates more blood flow).

Pick up a pen or pencil (you DO still have one?) and a piece of scrap paper. Write or draw or diagram the first thing that comes into your mind . . . like a creative branding theme exercise! 

It absolutely doesn’t matter what you record (and no one but you will ever see it anyway).

Go ahead. I’ll wait. ………. Good!

Next, draw or write or diagram the first thought you have about something you can do at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning to pump up or booster-shot some part of your business into action right away.

Maybe it’s a new direction. Maybe it’s solving a nagging problem. Or it’s reviewing reports or articles you’ve been shoveling around, or checking websites you’ve been intending to visit, or having coffee with the new (or oldest) employee (or supplier/vendor/sales rep) and listening?

Perhaps you haven’t made enough time lately to initiate collection of customer feedback? 

No matter how small a step, just make it an ACTION step. SOME action always beats NO action! I hear from blog visitors all the time that success comes from having a bias to action. Do you? 

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www.TheWriterWorks.com

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

You’re the boss, but 

are you a happy camper?

     If you’re not a professional athlete and you need energy drinks to keep afloat, or nine or ten cups of coffee every day just to stay alert, on track, and in control, you are definitely not a happy camper.

     You are fighting with yourself and not sleeping much.

     But you’re not alone. You definitely don’t want to hear the latest findings about unhappy work situations, depression, anxiety, stress, illnesses, accident-proneness, and insomnia.

     Just know that the numbers are staggering enough to underscore that you’re in good company, or perhaps bad company as it may be (?).

     Just an awareness of how common these issues are should prompt you to pursue your options.

     But odds are —like a student I remember telling me didn’t think he had enough time to take my time management course — that you continue to manage to sidestep alternative ways of thinking. What’s that “Got Milk?” thing? Uh, got excuses? 

     Sidestepping is an art form all by itself. Sometimes it’s in your own or others’ best interests. Sometimes it’s not.

     Sidestepping is not in your own and others’ best interests when it puts your life or the lives of others on the edge . . . hanging precipitously on the cusp of the kinds of physical, emotional and psychological ailments itemized in the third paragraph above.

Suffice it to say that being overworked, unhappy in relationships, constantly worried about money, jacked up on caffeine, and never sleeping enough is a description that probably fits — at least in part — the majority of Americans in today’s workforce.” 

     Sidestepping is not in your own or others’ best interests when you foster or nurture worklife environments that breed these kinds of symptoms.   Are you breathing?     

     Does this mean you need to be the Sheriff of Civility, and fire offenders, or put them behind bars? Silly, huh? Well how silly is it that you consistently choose to set yourself up to get whacked out by stress, and become the poster-boy or poster-girl for serving up on-the-job heart attack appetizers by setting a lousy example?

     What if you came in to work tomorrow morning and drank juice or water instead of Red Bull or whatever it is that presently floats your boat? (Careful to wean off the caffeine unless you enjoy headaches.) Would people notice? Of course. Would they tease and whisper? Of course. Would it prompt them to think twice about their own caffeine-loading habits?  Of course.

     And would choosing to change that simple behavior be a good thing overall for productivity, customer service, sales,  operations, and your own well-being? Of course. Will it happen overnight? Now, come on, how long did it take to work up to nine or ten daily cups of coffee, or get everybody hooked on energy drinks? 

     This isn’t about three or four cups of coffee a day, or getting into occasional bad moods, or interfering in people’s personal lives. It’s about closing the floodgates.

     This is about recognizing you have a chance to help others to live more enjoyable and rewarding lives by making the conscious choice to help yourself to do that, and setting an example . . . it’s about making that choice over and over every day.

    www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America and our troops. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

“Leaders have to control their

emotions under pressure.”

Rudy Giuliani, Time Magazine’s “Mayor of the world”

     We’re reminded to be kinder than necessary because everyone we meet is fighting some kind of battle. If that reminder is only half true, we’re talking about a lot of pent up stress. Bottled up anxieties = emotions under pressure. Leaders, by virtue of being leaders must rise above that.

     Forcing your brain to functionin ways that are totally opposite of what you are feeling can be a daunting if not overwhelming challenge, but not one that’s impossible. Why? Because you choose your behavior. You choose whether you will reACT or reSPOND to any given situation.

     Being aware that you have that choice and consciously making that choice is a fairly conclusive bit of evidence that you are indeed someone who is in a leadership position. This is not to say that you need to be unfeeling or insensitive about other people and situations. It means you need to control your feelings when you’re in the pressure-cooker!

     The best starting point for this is to follow the 4-step 60-second exercise spelled out at:

http://halalpiar.com/2009/05/4-steps-in-one-minute-zero-stress/

     Next, recognize that not only is the act of leadership a choice, but so too is the designation that empowers the action. Or, as some have more succinctly put it: if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen!

     Remember too that leaders are both born AND made, but that leadership doesn’t fall from the sky! 

     What is this elusive quality all about? TIME magazine (which I don’t think gets very much right in general, but happened to here) had this to say about designating Rudy Giuliani as “Mayor of the World” and as the 2001 “Person of the Year”:

For having more faith in us than we had in ourselves, for being brave when required and rude where appropriate and tender without being trite, for not sleeping and not quitting and not shrinking from the pain all around him.”

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Input welcome anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar  # # # 

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“I’m Sick of Worrying!”

     An important followup note on last night’s blog post topic: “Worry” as noted comes from being too over-focused on the FUTURE, which ignites weapons of self-destruction fuses and pulls the pin out of expectation grenades that inevitably breed disappointment, followed by negativity, depression, stress…

     This is all true, but as I re-read the post, I see that I failed to include being too overly-focused on the PAST as a worry trigger as well. Consider getting caught up in giving either too much attention to future plans and expectations, or in over-and-done-with past events, as “partners in crime.”

     These “bad guy partners” are out to get you, and you can stop them short, before either one ever gets close to delivering harmful effects to you, your family or your business. Success means simply that you need to exercise more of your brain power to deliver increased personal awareness and increased self-control to your SELF! (Considering Einstein reportedly only ever used 10% of his brain power, just imagine what’s possible.)

     Thinking about the past can be productive, relaxing, and instructional, but not once it reaches the point of dwelling on past events. As with allowing future thoughts to become worrisome, our balance and stability as humans is equally threatened by dwelling on the past. 

     The past is over and cannot be changed. Worrying about and dwelling on it is a nonproductive (actually counter-productive) waste of time and energy. Conscious or unconscious, the fact remains that paying over-the-top attention to either the past OR the future—instead of the (much-healthier) present—is a choice.

     To get past the “points of destruction” in your mind, you need to be a detective about yourSELF. Figure out what it is that trips your circuit-breaker, that gets you “lost” in past or future thoughts and issues. Once you know what your “trigger” is, then every time you are aware of it coming to the surface, let it serve as a reminder to pinch yourself or feel your pulse or heartbeat, or take a deep breath…and return yourself to what’s going on right in front of your face.

     Oh, but that’s hard and I don’t know how to do it! It’s hard if you CHOOSE for it to be hard. You can just as easily CHOOSE for it to be easy. As for how to do it, just start paying closer attention to your own behaviors…how you respond and react to others, to situations.

     Keep track of your words and actions. Write your observations down someplace and review your notes every few days. Keep asking yourself what you are learning about yourself right this minute.

     You’ll surprise yourself. And odds are you’ll far exceed your own expectations of what you believed to be possible for your own physical, mental, and emotional health and happiness. Try it. You’ll like it! But don’t wait too long. There’s no time like the present!      

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Input welcome anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar              # # # 

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ARE YOU

BREATHING?

1-Minute private technique kills business stress

This 4-step, on-the-spot stress management technique is being used—right this minute, as you are reading this—by millions of healthcare, business, sports, entertainment, teaching, and homemaker professionals.  It works for every age and level of health.  

It will work for you too!

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Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Discombobulated? 

     When overwhelm strikes, like a tsunami, and you dive under the nearest pillow or cannonball into your hot tub from the second floor deck, or run screaming down the hall that little chickens are falling from the sky, you may be on the cusp of committing to some daily psychotherapy explorations, but you’re probably normal. You may simply have spent too many years locked in your office.

     We all feed ourselves to the clock and occasionally become time-stricken. Great, you say, to hear so many others share this misery, but, you say, whassup with how to get out of the clock before it chews off my feet –or head, depending on how close it was able to get to me when the hickory-dickory docked?

     The answer, my friend, is not blowin’ in the wind. It’s in chunking up your day so you’re never in any one place mentally or physically or emotionally long enough to get gobbled up by Old Man Time. In other words, start planning your daily schedule by “CHUNKS” instead of by hours.

Motivational guru Brian Tracy suggests we ask ourselves, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” as many times as we are able to think of it, day after day.

He says that asking ourselves this question consistently makes us more productive and guarantees success.

     If you’re finding yourself lost in your work for days on end or corkscrewing yourself into a bottleneck of problem-solving, you may want to re-visit some of what you might have forgotten about the art of delegation, and you may want to simply start taking more breaks.

     Some of the world’s most UN-productive people are those who dedicate their efforts to their work so single-mindedly that they eat lunch at their desks, cannot relax around family or friends, injure themselves anytime they try some kind of exercise that takes them away from their jobs, and have to have it be a real effort…to smile ;<})

     When you can chunk up your work schedule, your exercise, family time, your goals, decision making, even travel, you will be happier, healthier, and more productive more often. Remind yourself that your body is not a machine, that you ARE your body.

     I mean imagine that carnivorous clock noted earlier eats your body, now what? What’s left? Don’t give me “heart and soul” stuff here. Think it through. You run a business. You know how to think. Do you know how to chunk it up? Give it a shot. What have you got to lose? More valueless time?    

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!