Reduce Stress . . .

Reduce Stress: Honor Your Commitments
Copyright © 2005 Stephanie Marston, MFT
www.stephaniemarston.com

Keeping your word is critical to reducing your stress and creating a life you love. When I say keeping your word what I'm referring to is honoring what you commit to. It's keeping your promises, especially with yourself.

Unfortunately, we usually betray ourselves more than we do anyone else. We say one thing and do another. For any of you who have children or for that matter, who once were children, you know how it feels to have a promise made and then not kept.

You lose faith and trust in the other person. Well, the same thing occurs with you. When we don't keep our word we lose credibility and it undermines our self-esteem. Every broken commitment is a crack in the foundation for creating a high quality life.

How many times have you said you're going to exercise or eat better and not followed through? We've all fallen into the trap of saying we're going to do something and then finding every possible excuse not to do it.

Have you noticed that the next time you make a similar promise to yourself it's tainted with doubt? You don't completely trust that you're going to do what you say.

Whatever you neglect to respect-the commitment to spend more time with your kids, to live by a financial budget, to be more understanding of your parents-these betrayals poison the well of your credibility.

They undermine your integrity and trustworthiness. It's not that the fickle finger of fate is going to come down and punish you. It's about your not having the internal support to accomplish the changes you want to make.

The key to being successful is to start small. Don't make any grand proclamations that will set you up for failure. Keep it simple. Only commit to what you honestly know you can and will do. Otherwise don't say it. For example: rather than proclaiming, "I'm going to leave the office everyday at 5." A more reasonable and achievable approach would be "I'm going to leave work at 5 today." It's the old AA concept of one day at a time.

Instead of saying, "I'll never yell at my kids again." (Which is next to impossible to do.) Why not be more sensible and say "Today I'll speak to my children in a calm manner." Or "From now on I'm going to spend at least a half an hour a day doing something that nurtures me." Wouldn't it be more realistic to say, "Today I'm going to set aside a half an hour for myself." The secret is to make promises that you know you can keep. Manageable commitments allow you to be successful and to become a person who keeps her word and is trustworthy.

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Stephanie is an acclaimed speaker and author. She speaks from experience. Stephanie is the "go to" expert for those who seek to create quality driven lives. She is the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul's Life Lessons for Women: 7 Essential Ingredients for a Balanced Life, If Not Now, When? Reclaiming Ourselves at Midlife and Life Coaching for Parents: Six Weeks to Sanity. For more information please visit her website: www.stephaniemarston.com

Pump Up Your Passion

Pump Up Your Passion In 6 Simple Steps
Copyright 2005 JoAnna Carey, Carey'D Away Enterprises, LLC.
www.RatRaceRelaxer.com

Love life. Lose track of time. Get caught up in the moment. Choose to be not only present but truly, utterly involved in the things you do. Sing, laugh, dance and play. Life really is too short to not participate passionately in every moment.

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PUMP UP YOUR PASSION IN 6 SIMPLE STEPS

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How To Play To Your Strengths

How to Play to Your Strengths
by Jo Ball

Are you clear on your unique qualities, talents and personal strengths? And what's more do you centre your life around these gifts?

You're busy, trying to be a good worker, colleague, partner, parent, friend and neighbour; you've been brought up with parents and peers ideals, educated well, maybe have a religious background, and perhaps a little of your past behaviour might been influenced by something you saw on TV or in a movie.

In fact, maybe, just maybe, and you're not alone here, some of your thinking and behaviour belongs to what others have told you to think or feel in any given situation.

In fact, it is highly likely that other people might influence a large chunk of your life. Maybe you followed a career path based on your father telling you it made good career sense or because you'd earn a lot of money; maybe because everyone else drinks tea or coffee or beer you do the same, even when the taste doesn't excite you; and maybe you buy certain brands of food because an advertisement makes it look good.

What am I saying here? I'm saying it is easy to be steered down one path, then another, then another, and then before you know it, "BANG" you're in the middle of a forest, cut off from your original path, and have no idea how to get back on the right trail. On a journey we call this being lost. In life we end up calling it something else.

When we get lost on our path we say we got disillusioned. But if we get disillusioned surely that must mean we had an original illusion in the first place, (because if we didn't have an illusion, how could we become dis-illusioned). It's a fact that many teenagers through to twenty-seven year olds are already disillusioned with life, disconnecting from life with behavioural change like attention deficit disorders and by using gaming stations, DVDs and in some cases drugs.

In older generations the same disconnection is manifesting in other ways, stress, sick notes from work, anxiety and depression. In my understanding we come to this life with a purpose.

Life = Active principle of living things and movement

Purpose = Thing intended

But what happens is life - education, religion, friends, family, TV, work - all lead you away from this purpose or illusion, until you become disillusioned. It is only then, in disillusionment, that you begin to find your true self. You are furthest from your true illusion when you lose the concept that you have unique qualities, talents and personal strengths and when you don't centre your life on these gifts.

Teenage and early adult behaviour problems and the issues of later generations begin to disappear the moment you live in alignment with 'YOUR PURPOSE.'

Love and best wishes,
Jo Ball

p.s. Happiness comes in through doors you forgot you left open. At Unstoppable Life, Jo Ball is developing the next generation of leaders who play to their strengths. These people are discovering and defining their life purpose. Join Jo's Fr>ee newsletter at Unstoppable Life now and discover the mass of information others are already using to enhance their lives.
www.unstoppablelife.com