Refresh: Refresh and Renew Yourself Regularly
March 19, 2018 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
It seems that stressful times are the times when our self-care is lacking. It is precisely at these times when we need to be vigilant about eating right, getting enough rest, exercising, laughing, connecting, and making good choices to help us through the stress unscathed. When our resistance is low, we are no longer in the driver’s seat and we lack the energy to take charge. If we let ourselves run down by not guarding our personal energy, then we won’t have the energy to take care of others, our work, or ourselves. And so starts a downward spiral of negative energy that is ever harder to break.
Even when our minds won’t recognize that we need a break, our bodies will take over and put us flat on our backs for as long as it needs to heal itself and recharge. The lesson is to take care of yourself first, or else you won’t be able to take care of anybody or anything else.
We need to plan time for creative renewal on a regular basis and particularly during times of intense focus or stress. Good old rest and relaxation are still vitally important to the mental and physical well being of fighting soldiers. Being emotionally drained affects our performance as much as being physically exhausted. We can be very physically fit and get enough rest and still be emotionally exhausted. Taking time out to decompress is vitally important for our vitality.
Sleep and restful downtime increases your concentration and gives you the stamina you need to fight off sickness or other enemies. Adjust your bedtime rituals to allow for restful, uninterrupted sleep. Avoid exercising, caffeine, or lots of liquids just before bedtime and set a regular time schedule and habits to signal your body that it is time to slow down. Just ask any rotating shift worker how productive or alert they feel in-between rounds.
It’s not easy to conjure up enthusiasm for sex when you’re stressed out, but not having sex can actually lead to a higher anxiety level and it can become a stressor if it is unavailable or unsatisfactory. Building a healthy, intimate relationship with your partner can lead to other types of stress releases and emotional support as well as the physical release. Take the time to refresh and renew yourself regularly to avoid the perils and pitfalls of being overcome by stress.
Life Balance Begins at Home
July 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
Life balance is vitally important to your happiness, success, and health. There is considerable evidence showing that mishandled stress at home interferes with work performance, and mismanaged on-the-job pressures create or magnify problems at home. Other research shows that the quality of personal relationships strongly influences job productivity, disease resistance, and longevity. Evaluating your various roles in areas of your life and attaching a level of priority to each is another important step toward making more intelligent decisions on where to put your time and energy.
Providing time for Leisure Moments in our lives, helps increase our resilience to stress, helps improve self-confidence and self-esteem, our physical fitness, and mental alertness. Often, when we take time out to re-create, refresh, and renew, we feel more in control of our lives which helps lower stress levels. When was the last time you went out and played to recharge your batteries?
Humor and laughter can build a healthy heart. Cardiologists at the University of Maryland studied 300 participants, half with healthy hearts and half with heart disease. Those with heart disease were 40% less likely to see humor in situations based on a survey and were more hostile and angry than those with healthy hearts. You can test your healthy sense of humor with their survey at http://www.umm.edu/news/humor.html . Another study of 240 heart-attach survivors found those who laughed at comedy videos every day were less likely to suffer a second heart attack during the course of a year. Based on an article by Allen Klein, the Jollytologist, in the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor Newsletter.
Many workers believe that the supportiveness of their boss is an important factor in determining their attitude or outlook at work. Nearly 61% rated this factor as extremely important, while 26% rated the supportiveness of their boss as somewhat important. When choosing a workplace, 87% sought out a place that is understanding of their personal and family needs. Only 4% actually sought out employers who are strict about attending to family needs, while 9% found employers who appear to be unaware of family needs as reported to Careerbuilder.com. Being content at work is a big part of having a balanced life. Take stock of where you work and with whom you work and if it’s not working for you, find something that will.
@ EASE – Ideas to Organize, Recognize, and Energize
July 4, 2015 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Quick and easy ideas for you to optimize your work and your life to live and lead Hartfully.
1. Skip lunch at your desk and take a walk outside to munch lunch while sitting in the fresh air. Start a walking club and pick your dream vacation spot and walk the mileage it takes to get there.
2. Replace your stuffy plaques with photos or posters which inspire you or afford a mental get-away.
3. Take turns bringing in creative treats to work on Friday.
4. If you have flextime, change your schedule according to the season for a change of pace.
5. Have a staff baby photo contest – the winner gets to leave an hour early.
6. Schedule more 3-day weekends to give yourself a break instead of putting all your vacation time in one spot. Our energy soars as we look forward to something special. Plan special things on Mondays to start your week out with higher energy.
7. Send thank-you notes to staff or customers who were particularly helpful or kind. Send notes home to staff spouses or parents telling them how terrific their partner or child is and thank them for their support.
8. Schedule a massage therapist to visit your office for seated massages during a particularly stressful time (budgeting cycles, end-of-month inventory) to decrease stress and increase productivity and well-being.
9. Conduct fewer meetings, remove the chairs to ensure they will be shorter, use email or conference calling, make meetings more fun and personable with surprises to keep people interested. People learn more when they are having fun.
10. Listen to books on tape, soothing music, or motivational tapes as you drive to work to make use of commuting time. Residents around the Washington DC area spend an average of 82 hours per year stuck in traffic…what are you doing to help increase your energy as you drive?
!: Live Your Life as an Exclamation!
May 23, 2015 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Remember Helen Keller’s statement, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”? Live your life out loud, as if you didn’t have much more to live . . . because you never know what the future holds. It takes concentrated effort to avoid being lulled into our secure patterns. How would you change your behavior if you knew you would live to be 100, or for only a few more years, or months?
Because our life can change dramatically in a matter of moments, live and laugh loudly now. What have you been excited about lately? Make dates with yourself to stretch your comfort zone. By taking calculated and thoughtful risks, we put ourselves out there to trust our intuition and to go with our gut instincts. As we grow older, we tend to risk less and live more quietly. Be daring and buck this trend by learning a new sport, a new language, a new art form, or renting a Porsche 911 and driving the autobahns of Germany.
A trend sweeping the nation lately is the Red Hat Society where women of a certain age (mid-centurions) don purple outfits with red hats and get together to test drive new experiences, kick up their heels, or just have a fun outing. Check out www.redhatsociety.com for more information on these wild and crazy women and their forays into living life as an exclamation. Word has it that if you are under the age requirement, you can join in the festivities, but you must wear lavender apparel with a pink hat until you have earned your stripes and are old enough to be promoted to the proper colors.
Adventure gets your adrenaline pumping and charges you up. There’s nothing like a good adventure to narrowly focus on the task at hand and take your mind off trivialities. Excitement builds commensurate to the physical, emotional, intellectual, or financial risks being addressed. Push yourself to taste adventure more often as it will boost your energy and make you feel alive.
Adventures come in all shapes and sizes from taking a new route to work, to learning a new computer program, taking a cooking class, or walking into a singles bar alone. What constitutes an adventure is really in the eye and the attitude of the beholder. Wearing a bikini might be common practice for some, but for others it might be an adventure, or perhaps a misadventure. It doesn’t have to be exotic or life threatening to be an adventure.
Deciding to have an attitude of an adventurer and being open to what comes your way will help you deflect some of the stress that may come your way when things don’t work out as planned. At least you will have an adventure to tell friends and family about later. What have you done lately that could be considered an adventure? Why not plan for some adventures on your own as well as with friends or family? You never know where your next adventure will take you.
I have a ritual that I need to try at least one new big adventure each year such as hang gliding, sky diving, helicopter skiing, or dog sledding. It keeps my energy up just looking forward to the thrill. What is your next big adventure?
Keeping our sense of adventure and discovery in tact helps keep us on track. Cultivating our sense of delight and honing it by introducing new and enjoyable experiences into our lives helps to keep us feeling vital. Children are naturally adept at these traits since their lives are filled with copious amounts of discovery and delight because they have not yet discovered many life experiences and everything is still new and exciting.
As adults we tend to stay with what we know and our discovery cycle diminishes with age. To keep ourselves young, try doing what the young people do and make new adventures and discoveries a part of your lifestyle. Keep your curiosity up about how things work, why things are the way they are, and what happens if. . . By putting yourself in the position of life-long learner, your energy will be renewed with each aha moment or new discovery.
Risk Taking and stretching out of our comfort zone physically, mentally, or emotionally keeps us on our toes and gets our adrenaline and our energy surging. They key is to move that energy towards the excitement end of the continuum versus the nervous and “scaredy cat” end of the continuum. Whether it’s embarking on a new career, asking for a raise, auditioning for a spot in a theatre production, walking into an adult education class, or a weight room; the act of going beyond our normal limits expands our world and expands our possibilities while it expands our energy level. Without such regular expansions, we cease to be vital in our lives and begin to live the same day over and over again. Open yourself to new discoveries and see what new energy reserves are released.
It is often uncomfortable to try new things and risk feeling foolish or not being good at a new sport or artistic endeavor or even test driving a new recipe. When we put ourselves out there to try new things and take a risk, we increase our energy and our thirst for exploring new things and trying new ways of being or behaving. Try planning for small, medium, and larger risks each year to keep your life more interesting and see where in the world it takes you.
Taking calculated risks and not throwing all caution to the wind and taking stupid risks whether it’s physical, financial, emotional, or intellectual is probably a good idea. Only you know your risk tolerance in each of these areas and only you know how much of a nudge you need to expand your tolerance. So go ahead and take a leap of faith, I dare ya.
-: Negative Energy is 11 Times More Powerful Than Positive Energy
December 23, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
It was Einstein who said that negative energy is 11 times more powerful than positive energy, so we must work very hard to overcome the negativity which would naturally take over. The law of entropy states that everything will break down over time without work or force applied to it (i.e. cars, relationships, communication, and mechanical items). Just look at what would happen in your garden if it were left unattended. The weeds just take over, while it takes careful cultivation to grow flowers or fresh produce.
Watch out for those weeds in your head and cultivate the positive forces that it takes to overcome the energy drain of negativity. Worrying and fear exhaust you and take their toll on your physical and emotional well being. Acknowledge that the negativity is alive, but don’t become a slave to its powers. Become aware of those whose outlook is negative and prepare statements to deflect their negative energy such as gossipers, nay-sayers, or worry warts.
Better yet, try to avoid these types of people if at all possible and surround yourself with positive, supportive people with a different perspective and upbeat outlook on life. The synergy is amazing when the positive forces of people collide.
Courage and confidence to deal with negativity get your juices flowing when you take on a risk and successfully navigate a positive outcome. Cultivating confidence to meet your challenges is very powerful and a successful bout brings on even more adrenaline. Start with what you’re good at, then keep expanding, learning, and practicing to increase both courage and confidence.
Positive self-talk instills courage, then take the leap . . .feel the fear and do it anyway. Sometimes others have more confidence in you and can give you courage and support. Enlist their honest assessment for energy interventions. These supporters can keep you going strong. Whether it’s an official mastermind group, a success team, a personal board of directors, or just an informal circle of friends who care about you. Asking for input and inspiration from your support network can help you gain the courage, confidence, and clarity to move you forward past the powerful stressful issues that may be blocking you.
Enter: Enter Each Day on a Positive Note, Not Alarmingly
September 23, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Research has shown that those who wake up with a jolt to an auditory-assaulting alarm start out their day agitated. Add in the usual frantic rush to get out of the house and we get weary before we get to our destination. We often run on the temporary burst of energy from adrenaline or the stress hormones produced in the fight or flight response, instead of authentic, long-term energy.
Compare that frazzled episode to awaking on our own to our body’s natural rhythms after a good night’s rest, or to pleasant music with plenty of time for morning activities, most of which has already been prepared the night before. Ease into your day, start off on the right foot, and make the first hours as pleasant as possible. If you must use an alarm, try a Zen Alarm clock that starts out very quietly and grows to a slightly louder volume or an alarm that has other soothing sounds of soft music or nature.
Try listening to calming music instead of the morning news, taking a morning walk to clear your head, and plan the day sipping herbal tea on the deck, or practicing yoga to start off in the right frame of mind. Gulping coffee, slamming down a donut and dashing out the door combing your hair is no way to feel good about yourself. Ingesting caffeine causes our body to run like an engine revving to 70mph in second gear. It will move, but it’s not natural and it can’t keep up that pace without negative repercussions.
To get a jump on stress, ditch the coffee and the caffeine that has been found to elevate your blood pressure throughout the day and into the night. Caffeine exaggerates the stress response and the affects last for 8-10 hours. Stress hormone levels were double that of those who were not ingesting caffeine in one study done at DukeUniversityMedicalCenter. If you must sip a hot beverage, try herbal tea, green tea with its anti-oxidant factors, or rooibos tea which has even more anti-oxidant power than green tea and both have much less caffeine than coffee to avoid the highs and lows that coffee can bring on. Decaffeinated teas are also available. Make sure to look for those brands that are naturally decaffeinated and not chemically decaffeinated for the most healthful choice.
There are numerous studies about the positive affects of these teas such as helping us fight against cancer and preventing heart disease by helping lower our cholesterol. Why not try sipping hot water with lemon instead of coffee to help cleanse your system. Another great starter is an energy shake made with fruit, yogurt, tofu, milk, wheat germ, and juice to get your protein, carbs, fruit, fiber, and dairy in your system in an easily digestible form.
Insert: Insert Energy Into Your Day
August 16, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Fill your day with energy inserts, short breaks, breathing room, downtime, toys, and playful items that speak to you and that are appropriate or allowed in your workplace. Studies show that using colored pens, stickers, and getting creative will cause you to look forward to your daily planning sessions. When we plan our time better, we usually have more time to insert some energy into our schedule.
Turn your planner into an adult version of a coloring book and color-code your schedule to quickly see how balanced or unbalanced your life is. With a quick glance at your colorful calendar you can see immediately which color dominates or if they are in balance. Our eyes see color before they see words, so using different colors for personal, professional, meetings, deadlines, or other categories will save you time and eyestrain from reading all your activities. Plotting both personal and professional time slots in your palm pilot or day timer will help you schedule your day and keep you from becoming overscheduled, over-committed, and overwhelmed.
Recognize that you will need some downtime for your brain or your body after a taxing project and schedule the downtime into the project planning time. Insert pleasurable things into your day to help you practice safe stress and mark it on your calendar. Some clients have a family calendar on the refrigerator and use a different color for each family member on the master calendar for easier planning.
Professionalism can be playful – remember fun and effectiveness? Energy inserts could be candles, flowers, juggling, music, people, pets, art, free time, fresh air, or anything else which makes your smile or nourished your soul. Create your Fun Meter list and write down as many things as you can that make you smile and that you enjoy doing in your leisure time to practice safe stress.
Taking several joy breaks daily can liven up your life. Look at photos, stretch, call a friend, turn on music, have fresh flowers, walk outside, or move your body to release the tension and get your left and right brain integrating more effectively. Research shows that those who plan for daily joys can cope with stress much better than those who don’t. Become aware of what brings you joy and create moments in your routine to experience aspects of that positive feeling. Just thinking about joyful things brings positive physiological and psychological changes in your body.
Joy is a step beyond happiness; it is more active and animated than plain happiness. What joyful things are you putting into your life as an energy insert today? See Appendix A for more energy inserts to get you started on your own list. If you have trouble wondering what to do with an extra 15 minutes in your day, keep your list handy and start inserting some energy and joy into your day.
Shift: Shift Tasks to Increase Energy
May 12, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Adults, in our infinite wisdom, think that children have short attention spans. Children know they are just shifting to a task that brings them more energy when they are getting drained from the task at hand. Shift from left-brain tasks such as budgeting and “administrivia” to right-brain-oriented tasks such as reading your mail, playing with a pet, or talking on the phone. Your productivity will increase and your mind will feel refreshed with this shift in gears. The same shift is needed when working on a right-brained creative project. If the ideas stop flowing, shift gears to something more mundane or something fun to give your brain a break.
Shifting your body also shifts your way of thinking and gives you a new perspective. Get up and move to jostle your body, jog your memory, and get that blood flowing to your brain to carry more vital oxygen to your cells upstairs. If you have been staring at a computer screen for too long, even shifting your gaze and your focus to something else will help with your energy.
Shift your tasks according to your body and brain rhythms to be more productive. If you are brain-dead after lunch, use the morning hours for creative tasks and the afternoon for less taxing projects. If you are not a morning person, then make sure your important meetings and difficult tasks are scheduled after your body wakes up and is alert enough to handle the task. Becoming more child-like, which is not to say childish, will give you more energy by going with the flow of energy and shifting your tasks, your brain, and your body to something that excites you and holds your attention.
Listen to your body and when it is fighting the urge, take a break and come back to your task when you are fresh. It will save you stress, mistakes, and mishaps. Sometimes you have to shift your space and move towards the Escape key to shake things up and shift into high gear. As I wrote this revision for my book Keys to Energize, I was floating aboard ship in the Caribbean harbor of St. Kitts to have the solitude I needed to think and type without interruption. Cruising solo having the world come to your balcony is a fantastic way to write and recharge. Take stock of your needs and figure out if you need to downshift or shift into high gear to charge up your energy.
Sometimes it’s a shift in thinking, a shift in perceptions, a shift in your environment, a shift in attitude, a shift in your belief system, or a shift in movement. It’s up to us to figure out the category, intensity, frequency, or duration of the shift for the most positive results.