One reason to smoke

Taking a cigarette break - while often frowned upon - is still an excuse to take 5-10 minutes away from one's work and stop and breathe awhile. No doubt there's some chemical effect to the additives in tobacco products, but I think smokers often just enjoy the time to slow down and breathe.

If only we could find some excuse to do so without actually smoking ... that really would be something...

Making the best even better

A recent Reuters article mentioned how Tiger Woods' constant pursuit is to get more power out of a natural golf swing*.

The problem he faces? "I tend to slip back into the same old faults."

The same is true of most people's approach to stress - we all have old faults that get in the way of our natural motion to release our stress easily. Our best strategy is to make adjustments to see what serves us better.

We each, like Tiger, have many opportunities to see the results of our adjustments. Unlike Tiger, however, it's harder to measure or track (In Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness he gives ample evidence why we're not so good at keeping track of our feelings). You may want to set up some measuring tools and get an objective coach to help you out.



* recognize the voice? ;)

Why I love improv

wonderful, exciting, stressful, scary, reckless, daring, focusing, uncanny

There are a many different ways to think about the experience of stepping on stage with no idea of what you're going to say, or what's going to happen.

The best performers have studied techniques that will strengthen their abilities, bringing them greater awareness, and flexibility. When they go on stage they always try their best, and realize that regardless of what happens, they'll be ok.

They'll review their performance and laugh about their brilliant (and not so brilliant) moves. The top performers will look for ways to improve for their next performance, often seeking outside, trusted opinions, to help them excel. In the end however, they never beat themselves up for missed opportunities - and there's always plenty).

Sounds a lot like life too, right?

Taking yourself and your life too seriously? Take some practice swings - improvise.

Thoughts on Labor Day traffic

Labor Day is the busiest day for car-travel in the U.S., and there's a good chance that if you're on the road you'll hit slow-moving traffic.

Here's a few ideas in case you're:

Running late - and having to alter one's carefully synchronized/choreographed day (much like when they miss their train)
thought: If you were creative enough to come up with one plan, you can just as easily create another scenario.

Feeling disrespected - after all, if they knew how important you were the other drivers would get out of your way.
thought: Who would you be willing to get out of the way from? Maybe that's them coming now.

Lack of forward motion - sometimes it just feels nice to be moving, and there is definitely something pleasant about the wind blowing in your hair, but if you haven't figured it out yet, you can't always get what you want.
thought: you never have to hit your brakes if you're moving the slowest.

I can't stand paparazzi either

I occasionally stop what I'm doing and thank my lucky stars that I have my space and privacy instead of swarms of people following me around.

Hey, you never know when you may be famous, so enjoy your obscurity now.

Trouble sleeping? Here are some tips!

One sure fire way to help reduce stress is to get better sleep. It allows the body to spend less energy focusing on survival (approximately 30% of your energy goes towards processing what your eyes see), and more energy healing and rejuvenating. The University of Maryland Medical Center has these tips on how to sleep more quickly and easily (such as Progressive Relaxation, Toe Tensing, Deep Breathing, Guided Imagery, Quiet Ears).

Another technique I've been advocating lately is to massage lavender oil your feet just as you get into bed. It not only has a pleasant aroma, but helps calm, relax, and balance both physically and emotionally.

It's important to keep in mind that these are just tools to help you cope with whatever is causing you to feel so distressed. You can apply tip after tip, but wouldn't you prefer to just sleep soundly, easily, and feel well rested when you wake up?

Fortunately there's a system to help you do that.

But at the very least start by giving yourself a set amount of time to sleep each night and protecting that time.

Stuck in the subway

It took 13 years.

I've been living in Manhattan for quite a while now, frequently using the public transportation system, and today is the first time I've been stuck in a train for an extended period (over 15 minutes).

No one in my subway car was happy about it, but everyone seemed to take it in stride. I was amazed. No one expressed a sense of entitlement, "this shouldn't be happening to me!" but there was a fair amount of, "All they (the Transit Authority) have to do to fix this is ..."

I turned my attention to jotting down a blog post and smiling at the coincidence that yesterday I saw a movie where all the transportation systems in the US were disrupted - so my predicament was fairly tame in comparison.

My gratitude list (aka, at least I've still got this going for me):
The lights are on
The air conditioning is on
The conductor is telling us why we're delayed
I have some water in a bottle
We're passing by other, non-moving trains

And those are just some of the 'practical' ones before going onto:
A fight hasn't broken out
I'm not wounded
The ceiling is sound and hasn't collapsed on us
Rats aren't storming the subway cars
No reports of anthrax

45 minutes later, I was at my subway stop and late for a meeting - a good number of the attendees were also late, and some had yet to arrive.