Q3 Technologies review: Releiving 103

Some sources of stress are unavoidable. You can’t prevent or change stressors such as the death of a loved one, a serious illness, or a national recession. In such cases, the best way to cope with stress is to accept things as they are. Acceptance may be difficult, but in the long run, it’s easier than railing against a situation you can’t change.

Don’t try to control the uncontrollable. Many things in life are beyond our control— particularly the behavior of other people. Rather than stressing out over them, focus on the things you can control such as the way you choose to react to problems.
Look for the upside. As the saying goes, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” When facing major challenges, try to look at them as opportunities for personal growth. If your own poor choices contributed to a stressful situation, reflect on them and learn from your mistakes.
Share your feelings. Talk to a trusted friend or make an appointment with a therapist. Expressing what you’re going through can be very cathartic, even if there’s nothing you can do to alter the stressful situation.
Learn to forgive. Accept the fact that we live in an imperfect world and that people make mistakes. Let go of anger and resentments. Free yourself from negative energy by forgiving and moving on.

Ambience
The right colors and a conducive atmosphere can make all the difference in creating a relaxed atmosphere at your home or the workplace. The medical use of colors dates back to medieval times. When a son of King Edward I was stricken with smallpox, John of Gaddesden, the royal physician, surrounded his bed with red cloth. This considerably reduced the disfiguring effects of pitting. Back then, treatment with red cloth was done for mystical purposes, the actual benefits of the color being unknown. It was 600 years later that Niels Finsen, the Danish pioneer of phototherapy, discovered the treatment succeeded because it prevented ultraviolet light from reaching the patient's sensitive skin.

Finsen later showed that lupus (a tubercular skin condition) improved when subjected to ultraviolet rays.

Nearer home, despite being in the pressure-cooker field of advertising, Bharat Dabholkar of Zen Communications has reduced stress levels and created a homely atmosphere by having his office designed colorfully and aesthetically with space for pets of all hues, including a massive fish tank.

Avoid using black or dark colors as they create a negative, morose ambiance. Use subtle or brighter shades depending on the mood you wish to create in a particular room. For instance the color green is especially soothing to the eye.

Bonsais, indoor plants, fountains, waterfalls and instrumental music can all impart a relaxed, natural atmosphere. And you don't need Zen to bring your stress levels to zero-wind chimes at their tinkling best are the surefire winner.

Yoga Nidra
Yoga nidra is a state of psychic sleep brought about by systematically inducing complete physical, mental and emotional relaxation. While in yoga nidra, one is in the hypnagogic state-a prolonged suspension between wakefulness and sleep. You emerge from this feeling more rested than after a good night's sleep.
Yoga nidra is practiced while lying in a supine position and following an instructor's guidelines, which may also be taped. You start by promising yourself that you won't fall asleep. Become aware of your breathing. As you breathe in, feel calmness spreading through your body. As you breathe out, feel your worries flowing out. You will feel your body relaxing.

In each session, you need to repeat a positive sankalpa (resolve), phrased in the present tense, with feeling and awareness. Do this and then rotate awareness from one part of the body to the next, repeating the name of each in your mind. After you are done with each part, focus on the body as a whole. All this while, remember not to fall asleep.

The next step is to view your body as if from outside. Imagine a deep well in which you are lowering a bucket. First, let it move into the darkness until you cannot see it anymore. Then pull it out again towards light. Consciously become aware of your thought process.

Begin alternating between opposite sensations, such as heat and cold, lightness and heaviness, and so on. Try to remember the sensation of pain and relive it. Then visualize some images, like a flickering candle, a palm tree, or a yogi in meditation, and become aware of your own awareness. Look within and try to be aware of the one who is observing.

Go into the chidakasa (space behind the forehead) where there is a flaming light. At the center of that light is a golden egg. Once you reach there, repeat your sankalpa thrice. Thereafter, relax and again become aware of your breathing and then of your surroundings. Start moving and when you are wide awake, open your eyes.

Autosuggestion and NLP
People sometimes make life difficult by having the wrong attitudes. Perfectionism is top of this heap. Unless you are a surgeon, service or aeronautical engineer, there's no need to make every job a masterpiece. Besides consuming undue time, it's a stress magnifier. Get rid of negative emotions by inculcating positive attitudes.
There's nothing greater than the power of positive suggestion, which came to prominence innocuously through Emile Coue. A French psychotherapist born in 1857, Coue studied the methods of hypnotist A.A. Liebeault (who cured people of various ailments) and came to the conclusion that the curative power lay not in the hypnotist but the patient. He reasoned that the presence of the hypnotist would be redundant if a way was found to trigger off the patient's power to heal himself.

Coue evolved the system of auto-suggestion, which was designed to harness the unconscious power of a patient's mind. He devised several phrases to put patients in the right frame of mind. The most famous was: "Every day in every way I am getting better and better." It was not the actual words that mattered but the emotional feeling they engendered. Coue's phrase worked like magic. People were cured of asthma, skin diseases, paralysis and even appendicitis.

Self-hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) are some other tools to foster a positive mindset. In the words of Santhosh Babu, a licensed hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner: "A person may feel nervous about a presentation if his last one didn't go well. This could create great stress. In NLP, I find out how he has coded this information in his nervous system that making a presentation is stressful. I then decode this so that the incident no longer affects him. For instance, if you recall yourself sitting in a roller-coaster, you'll see yourself actually sitting in one. This is a dissociated image. Now if you visualize trees whizzing past and the wind whistling through your hair, it's an associated image… I ask the person to visualize himself making a presentation in an associated manner, but with his favorite song always playing in the background. Thereafter, whenever he recalls the presentation he will no longer find it stressful since his favorite song that's playing in the background is soothing."

Try out all the above for instant destressing.

Exercise
Stress has the uncanny knack of creeping up on most people and overstaying as a chronic companion, whether one likes it or not. Chronic stress can lead to constant aches and tensions in the muscles and joints of the body. Such stress is always cumulative and inevitably finds an outlet through the weakest link in the body or mind. If an organ gives way, you could be saddled with heart, kidney, lung, liver or some other problem. Even cancer. If your mind caves in, you could end up with emotional problems or even suffer a nervous breakdown.
But relax! Simply avoid all this by junking stress on a regular basis. One healthy way is through regular exercise. Like aerobics, calisthenics martial arts, weight training, walking, jogging, cycling, swimming or whatever suits your body and budget. Even sports like football, badminton, tennis, table tennis and squash can be healthy exercise. Before performing any vigorous exercise, do check with your family physician. For those in the prime of youth, most forms of exercise are healthy. If you are in the middle years or past it, avoid vigorous activities like jogging, which could cause injuries or cardiovascular problems. A 30-minute walk in the mornings or evenings would be ideal.

However, the most all-round exercise is swimming, which tones up almost every muscle in the body, including the eyes. Do not swim after a meal, however.

Vacation
There might be times at the workplace when you will run around like a headless chicken as a deadline nears. The sheer pressure of work might make you feel like exploding or imploding. This is especially true if you are in the hotel, advertising, airline, public relations, IT, media or foreign banking industry. In which case, you might need to get away from it all once in six months or so.
Take a break from work and go trekking in the hills, have a ball on the beach or go wherever it suits your budget and inclination. And ensure you don't take anything that's even remotely connected with your work. No, not even your mobile! This is your break from the grind of daily routine, buddy. This will ensure you enjoy your vacation in toto.

Besides destressing, your body and mind will be recharged and you'll be raring to pick up the gauntlet once you're back in town.

Hobbies
Empirical evidence since the 1950s indicates that aches and ailments tend to mushroom after retirement and death looms larger than ever. Once-busy people who couldn't spare any "time to kill" find all the time on their hands, which is killing-literally and figuratively. As the adage goes: An idle mind is the devil's workshop. It is also a workshop for atrophy and disease of the body, mind and spirit, since any faculty that isn't used rapidly deteriorates.
To pre-empt quicker aging, retired people should begin a second innings by learning a new skill or cultivating a hobby. One could try painting, some form of craft, learn a foreign language or begin a collection-philately, numismatology (coins), deltiology (picture postcards) or anything else that enthralls you.

Those not interested in picking up a new hobby could revive past flames-and we aren't thinking about the opposite sex! Writing, cooking, gardening, flower making, listening to music, singing, maintaining a fish tank or doing anything that is relaxing and enjoyable would qualify as a hobby. One of the most soothing and rewarding hobbies is maintaining a fish tank. As an element of relaxation, nothing beats water. It is natural, soft, transparent, and not just its sight, but even the sound of trickling water soothes frayed nerves. And if there are exotic and colorful fish in the tank, it adds to the joy of the experience.

"Hobbies help us ventilate, redefine focus and allow one to indulge in activities that are health-stimulating in nature, " concurs Dr Chugh.

Go ahead and discover the hobby of your life.

Laughter
"A laugh a day keeps the doctor away" is a dictum the Marx Brothers would happily swear by. Besides doctors, laughter also keeps lawsuits at bay. No kidding! In the 1940s, the Marx Bros made a film titled Night in Casablanca. Whereupon they received a notice from Warner Bros threatening to sue the Marx Brothers if the latter didn't change the name of their film. Warner Bros felt aggrieved as they already had a hit film entitled Casablanca. The Marx Bros responded by saying that they would be suing Warner Bros if the latter didn't drop Bros from their name since the Marx Bros were born before the Warners!

Predictably, Warner Bros saw sense.
Small wonder then that many medical practitioners have advocated a happy, positive mindset as a means to healthy living. When Sir Heneage Ogilvie, a specialist at Guy's Hospital, London, made a statement in the 1950s that "a happy man never gets cancer", he was speaking from years of experience, although he knew his words weren't an inflexible fact and there could be exceptions.

A man with a cheerful disposition has the ability to instantly light up a room full of solemn people. If disease can be contagious, laughter is doubly so. Laughter can also act as a catharsis in various emotional disorders. Which is why laughter clubs are mushrooming in metropolitan cities with their aficionados visiting parks in the early morning to indulge in their day's quota of a bellyful of uproarious laughter.

And the best thing about laughter as a therapy is… it's free! Enjoy!

Progressive Muscle Relaxation
A technique developed by American physiologist Edmund Jacobson, described in his book Progressive Relaxation (1929), it is based on the premise that anxiety-provoking thoughts and situations create muscular tension. The trick is to deliberately heighten muscular tension and then relax. Here's a simplified variation of his original technique:

• Clasp your hands behind the back of your head. Push your head back into your hands even as you tighten your arms to shove the head forward. Hold this position till a count of eight. Then release the tension and relax. Repeat thrice.

• Clench your fists, flex the biceps and crunch the pectoral muscles while tensing the shoulders, back and upper body. Hold till a count of eight. Release tension. Relax. Repeat thrice.

• Raise your knees while you lie down, cup your palms behind each knee cap and as you press the knees upwards and out pull your hands inwards while tensing the entire lower body. Hold till eight. Release tension. Relax. Repeat thrice.

• Tense your entire body simultaneously, hold up to a count of eight. Release tension and relax. Repeat thrice.

Remember to tense each muscle group for a maximum of eight seconds and relax for up to 30 seconds before the next repetition. Throughout, focus on the sensations of tension and relaxation. Do not do this exercise before or after a heavy meal.

An excellent stress buster for quick relief.

Creative Visualization
This is a technique for mobilizing inner resources for success or whatever else you desire. Begin by having an idea, or image, of what you want to create and then accept that to fulfill your goals you have to imagine your present reality transformed into something you want. In short, you create a vision, believe in that vision and pursue it till accomplishment. This can be used for material success. Or to handle aches, pains and stress.

Suppose you have a constant pain in your right elbow caused by daylong work at the computer terminal. Every morning before getting up from bed and every night before sleeping, visualize your healthy left elbow. Then overlap the elbows and visualize your right elbow as a fighting fit body part.

This technique is also used to destress. Begin by lying down or sitting comfortably. Now close your eyes and visualize a tranquil place, one you have actually been to or an imaginary one. Make it vivid: A beautiful Himalayan valley full of flowers spanning the spectrum of rainbow colors. A cool, gentle breeze is wafting the fragrance of these exotic flowers all around. Your ears register the mellifluous music of birdsong and the soothing trickle of a gurgling mountain stream. Leaves rustle in the wind as a magpie robin trills its love song to seduce a teasing female and a pair of lovelorn koels answer each other's calls at rapid intervals.

Now visualize the stress slowly trickling out of your fingers and toes like grains of sand from a sand clock. Sixty seconds later, your mind is completely calm, your body totally relaxed. You feel you're in the Garden of Eden. Indeed, you are. Mentally.

Gradually let this image fade away and return to reality. You are back in your room. Sans the stress. Feeling absolutely refreshed. Relaxed.

Light, instrumental and soothing music in the background could aid the visualization process.

Use creative visualization twice or thrice a day and see it work wonders.

Time Management
Time is money, said Benjamin Franklin. Centuries later, the dictum still holds. Which is why management guru Peter F. Drucker said: "Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed." Time is inelastic-once squandered, it is lost forever. Make sure that every waking and working moment is used productively.
You could do this by being organized and avoiding clutter. If pressed for time, plan and prioritize your tasks by preparing a checklist. If you still have your hands full, delegate.
Indecision and procrastination are two of the biggest time wasters. Rid your life of both. To quote Sant Kabir: "Kal kare so aaj kar, aaj kare so ab."

Having outlined what task(s) you wish to accomplish, set a deadline. A job without a deadline is akin to a boat without a sail.

If possible, split your task into sub-tasks, each with individual deadlines, keeping the final deadline in mind.

Ensure that staff meetings are kept to the minimum. At every meeting, adhere to a prior agenda so that time is not lost in "putting things in perspective".

At the workplace, avoid/reduce personal calls. Besides, keep official conversations to their polite brief. And when you mean no, say NO. Beating about the bush is only productive if you're out on shikar.

Years ago, the Japanese developed a beautiful tool called Kaizen, to boost efficiency and productivity through simpler, faster and/or cheaper techniques and tools.

You too could discover your own tools to save on time and costs, instead of waiting for the Japanese to do so!

Stress Diaries help you to get a good understanding of the routine, short-term stresses that you experience in your life. They help you to identify the most important, and most frequent, stresses that you experience, so that you can concentrate your efforts on these. They also help you to identify areas where you need to improve your stress management skills, and help you to understand the levels of stress at which you are happiest, and most efficient.

To keep a stress diary, make an entry on a sheet. For example, you may do this every hour. Also make entries after stressful events.

After, say, two weeks, use the diary to identify the most frequent and most serious stresses that you experience. Use it also to identify areas where you can improve your management of stress.

You can then use the Stress Key to find helpful stress management techniques, and then plan a stress management program.Your Stress Diary also provides important information for the next technique, Stress SWOT.

Killers of Success

What stops people from being successful. Contentment is never a reason. Even the worlds richest person wants more of freedom and fame. The most happiest person wants more of the same or something else. Every single one of us always want something more it could be materialistic or an internal need. Either way each one of us always want something more. So when all of us want something more then what stop few from getting the same?

1. Lack of Belief
2. Not knowing precisely what they want
3. Laziness
4. Procastination
5. Self Doubt
6. Fear
7. The know how

Most importantly I have seen people who lack the needed DRIVE. They only Wish to be successful they don’t make SUCCESS a must for their LIFE. Once you make SUCCESS a must then you achieve it.

I think one of the most best ways to achieve is to have the drive to do so. Imagine if I were to ask you to run outside from your home would you do so? I tell you you will feel good if you run over there. Chances are high that you might not. But if I were to tell you that there is a FIRE that is engulfing you shortly in the room where you are sitting, 101% that you will run. The same FIRE is what you need.

Build that FIRE in your NOW. And stop all the KILLERS of SUCCESS

How to Handle all your Challenges?

When you want to achieve big in life, you are bound to have challenges in life. Which means you must find a way to handle these challenges. You cannot run away from these challenges but you need to find a way to handle them.

1. Break them down into smaller chunks and they will start looking small. This will create a mindset for you that it so damn easy to achieve anything you want.

2. Once you break them into chunks for each of these find all possible solutions to achieve the desired solution. Remove any negative thoughts you have about these challenges. If you find others can help you in finding the solution then you know it, ASK them. Find all possible ways to achieve the result you want

3. Remember to take action on these smaller chunks. This will give a new dimension to your challenge. This will take you to a new level of achievement and help you to come out of the troubles you are facing.

Most people find it very difficult to control anger and react to situations. The moment they feel that they are not in control the immediate outburst is anger. At every place we can find people who are in utmost rage. Simply because they are not in control of the situation, and they feel that they must be in control of themselves. The fact is that only because we are in control of ourselves, we get angry and show the same.

We allow ourselves to react to external situations. Anger is mostly because of an expectation mismatch. We expect certain things to happen in certain way and as it does not we tend to react. Invariably expectations from people is what makes us angry. We walk in to our work place expecting things to happen and as they do not happen because of certain people not working on them, we immediately respond.

Anger is quite common amongst all however if it exceed limitations can turn to be harmful. Because every time you get angry there is a huge amount of negative energy that is generated inside you which can be really destructive. You can control these emotions much more faster than what you think. All emotions are because of certain pictures that you run in your mind and if you can control these pictures yo! You have done it. The communication channel that you establish between the thoughts and the response is so fast that you are not aware of how this happen.

It is still possible and easy to overcome anger. The time you take to react to a situation is so huge, though you might think it is too small. An instant can change your life forever which mean an instant can control your anger too. It’s the way the mind perceives. Are there times when you stand on a queue and a few minutes looks like a few hours? Definitely yes, what you do is just distort time. We perceive few minutes as few hours. So the same can be done when you perceive a few seconds to be a few minutes and a few hours. So this give you lots of time to change the emotion and react in the positive way.

Ways to Control the Anger

Using Words: The moment you are about to kick start the anger, just tell yourself “Relax”, it can be as loud as possible inside your head. While there is a devil that’s there inside your mind wanting to burst out, the moment it hears the word relax, it calms down. An embedded command will immediately make the sub conscious mind take action. You can even see the letters of R – E – L – A – X on the person who is standing in front of you or make the letter in air so that it replaces the pictures you see that provokes you to anger.

Using Pictures: Control your anger by using the right pictures. You are forced to get angry because of an external event and expectations. The moment some of your expectations are not met, you immediately get angry. All you need to do it the push away the picture that you see inside your mind and create a blank white picture which conveys nothing and hence the emotion also is so neutral.

Use Breathing: Breathe deep from within which will control your anger immediately. This is of immense help because the breathing also changes the physiology and hence the images in the mind also change immediately thus making you control your anger

Use Humor: Convert your anger into humor. Whatever picture that you see make it as humorous as possible. See the people with horns, like monkey, like cartoon characters and so on. This will instantly put a smile on your face and after that you just cannot get angry.

Do this small exercise, recall an event that has been troubling you and for which you get frustrated because you do not get the desired outcomes. Ask your self “why the hell is this happening?” and experience how you feel. Isn’t it frustrating? I am sure it is. Now change the same question to “what must I do to over come this challenge”. Now how do you feel? You feel more in control of your emotions, your thoughts?

You have the Choice and frustrations are not external they are internal in nature and you know the consequences of frustration are so high. So the choice of not being frustrated will lead you to better outcomes in life. Enjoy every bit of life. All that happens has a purpose and has a positive intention. Look at the highest positive intention behind the event and why has the event occurred even though it was not favorable and negative. You can focus on the positive intentions, on the positive purpose which will lead you to a more peaceful and comfortable life.

You are so much involved and totally associate with the event that frustration crops up and then it just runs through you. Yes it is very important for you to be associated, to be in the thick of things for achieving your outcomes. But when you do not get the desired results you must do the devils advocate. You need to step out of yourself and look at things from a 3rd persons view, which means that you are disassociating yourself and you would tend to look at solutions rather than feel frustrated and have the feeling of let down.

I sometimes advocate frustration and a certain amount of frustration is always good because it means that you are expecting better results from yourself. You want more for yourself and hence get frustrated. You are a Champ and you know that you can work out things better and then you get frustrated, which is an advantage for you. The questions you ask yourself can intensify or de-intensify your level of frustration. Recall the last time you were frustrated and look at all the questions you asked yourself. I am sure it would be questions like “Why the hell did this happen to me”, “This is so pathetic and life of so unfair” and so on…, Have you ever asked “What must I do to come out of this?”

If you start looking at events as events that cannot be avoided and has already occurred then you ponder for solutions rather than disturbing yourself by reacting. This is the easiest way to change the feeling of frustration. To start focusing on solutions rather than the so called “PROBLEM”, that disturbs you. If you were to curse yourself, blame yourself and scream at yourself you only end up feeling worse. This is self sabotage. Interestingly you can consciously get angry and get angry and frustrated by reacting to an event. You tend to loose more energy within you when you get frustrated and the “PROBLEM” though does not even exist, seems to be existing and never is solved.

As you look at event and tell yourself “This event has already happened and is inevitable”, you would only respond and not react. Moments before the outburst of emotions and frustration there is a process that is involved. You run picture of the event in your mind that leads to an intensive helpless state and fires as frustration. It is better to control the emotion as that will do a lot of good because your reaction of frustration could be so intense that it can only intensify more. Though some do suggest that giving vent to these feelings is good and acceptable I do not authenticate this theory as the ramifications are very high.

3 most important points that you must have in mind to manage frustration – 1) Accept the fact that getting frustrated is a common human act. 2) Learn from the frustration and move forward instead of getting worked on it 3) Start creating a new belief for yourself that there are other better ways of handling situations that you are aware of

What is frustration? Frustration is the act of reacting to an event which is not desirable. I would like you to spend sometime on what I have mentioned Frustration is. It is REACTION that causes the frustration. The moment an event occurs you do not ponder on that, you do not have time to think on that and decide how to handle the situation. The immediate action is impulsive and you react immediately. There is another way you can handle the same event. Instead of reacting, you could RESPOND to the same event. The moment you RESPOND to the event rather than reacting you never get frustrated. Remember the event has already occurred which means that you cannot do anything about the event now. And you have a Choice to respond the way you want to.

Like many negative emotions, it's not wrong or weak to feel frustrated. What is crucial, however, is how we handle our frustration.

Change the way you see it

One of the quickest ways to change how we react to a negative emotion is to change how you see it and then what you do about it.

One unproductive way to view frustration is to think how dare something frustrate me, and then become offended by it. It's as if you're saying, "God, I don't like what life is handing me right now, and how dare you let this happen?"

The doing that comes with this viewing usually does not solve the problem. In fact, it often makes it worse. We yell, we curse, we blame, we raise our blood pressure and that of those around us.

And the problem still remains unsolved.

Solve the problem

A more productive way to view frustration is as a chance for improving our problem-solving abilities. If we are frustrated, we need to find some other tools to solve the situation. Develop as many problem-solving tools as you can, because as a wise person once said, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything begins to look like a nail."

Ask yourself: "Because what I am doing is obviously not solving
the problem, what else can I do, find out, or learn to do that might solve it?"

A Stress SWOT Analysis helps you to understand your unique position with respect to stress management.

By looking at strengths, you ensure that you recognize all of the personal strengths, skills, resources and social networks that can help you manage stress. By looking at your weaknesses, you identify areas you need to change in your life, including new skills that you need to acquire.

By looking at opportunities, you should be able to better see how you can take advantage of your strengths to help manage the stress in your life. You should also understand the rewards of good stress management. By looking at threats, you should recognize the negative consequences of managing stress poorly, and this should be a potent source of motivation!

SWOT Analysis is a useful technique used for understanding an organization’s strategic position. It is routinely used to identify and summarize:

Strengths: The capabilities, resources and advantages of an organization.

Weaknesses: Things the organization is not good at, areas of resource scarcity and areas where the organization is vulnerable.

Opportunities: The good opportunities open to the organization, which perhaps exploit its strengths or eliminate its weaknesses.

Threats: Things that can damage the organization, perhaps as people exploit its limitations or as its environment changes.

The Stress SWOT tool is a variant of this technique, focused on helping you to understand your unique strengths and weaknesses in the way you manage stress. It also helps you to identify the resources you have available to you, and points out the consequences of managing stress poorly.

Using an assertive approach to communicating is a fair and adult way of raising, and dealing with, difficulties in your relationships with powerful people. In using an assertive approach, you avoid both the weakness of passivity and the relationship and career damage that comes from excessive aggression. Assertive approaches avoid the game-play of passive and aggressive communication. They promote clear communication and, because all relevant facts and emotions are considered, are more likely to bring about a successful resolution of the situation.

By being able to communicate clearly, you can bring stress-creating problems and issues to the attention of people who have the power to do something about them. Most managers are rational human beings who want to keep their teams happy recognizing that this actually helps teams to perform well. Often, the main obstacle to this is that people do not communicate problems. You may be surprised by how willing powerful people are to help you out.

Negative Thoughts Crowd Our Minds

We are all aware that we have a limited short-term memory: If you try to memorize a long list of items, you will not be able to remember more than six or eight items unless you use formal memory techniques. Similarly, although we have huge processing power in our brains, we cannot be conscious of more than a few thoughts at any one time. In fact, in a very real way, we have a limited “attentional capacity”.

As we become uncomfortably stressed, distractions, difficulties, anxieties and negative thinking begin to crowd our minds. This is particularly the case where we look at our definition of stress, i.e. that it occurs when a person perceives that “demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.” These thoughts compete with performance of the task for our attentional capacity. Concentration suffers, and focus narrows as our brain becomes overloaded.

This is something of a slippery slope: the more our brain is overloaded, the more our performance can suffer. The more our performance suffers, the more new distractions, difficulties, anxieties and negative thoughts crowd our minds.

Other research has shown that stress reduces people’s ability to deal with large amounts of information. Both decision-making and creativity are impaired because people are unable to take account of all the information available. This inability accounts for the common observation that highly stressed people will persist in a course of action even when better alternatives are available. It also explains why anxious people perform best when they are put under little additional stress, while calm people may need additional pressure to produce a good performance.

If you find it difficult to look at your negative thoughts objectively, imagine that you are your best friend or a respected coach or mentor. Look at the list of negative thoughts and imagine the negative thoughts were written by someone you were giving objective advice to, and think how you would challenge these thoughts.

These are some examples of how you can challenge negative thinking. You should be able to quickly see whether the thoughts are wrong, or whether they have some substance to them. Where there is substance to the negative thoughts, take appropriate action. In these cases, negative thinking has been an early warning system for you, showing where you need to direct your attention.

By anticipating stressful situations, you can prepare for them. By making sure of your facts, and getting a complete understanding of the situation, you can ensure that you are properly prepared, and that you are not wrong-footed by predictable situations and events.

By rehearsing properly and fully, you can polish your performance and identify and eliminate problems with it. By rehearsing your performance often enough, you can make it almost automatic. This helps you to enter the state of flow we talked about earlier, turning a stressful event into an enjoyable and pleasurable experience.

Finally, by reducing the importance of the event, you place it in its proper context. This helps you to reduce stress and gain a fair sense of perspective.

Managing Performance Stress
We all know the feeling of sickness in our stomach before an important presentation or performance. We also know how excessive pressure can undermine our ability to perform well in these situations.

Anticipating Stress - Managing stress by preparing for it

By anticipating stressful situations, you can prepare for them. By making sure of your facts, and getting a complete understanding of the situation, you can ensure that you are properly prepared, and that you are not wrong-footed by predictable situations and events.

By rehearsing properly and fully, you can polish your performance and identify and eliminate problems with it. By rehearsing your performance often enough, you can make it almost automatic. This helps you to enter the state of flow we talked about earlier, turning a stressful event into an enjoyable and pleasurable experience.

Finally, by reducing the importance of the event, you place it in its proper context. This helps you to reduce stress and gain a fair sense of perspective.

2. Concentration

In whatever we do, we will be more successful if we can concentrate fully on the task in hand. This means being single pointed. When we meditate we need to switch off from everything else and put all our attention onto the meditation.

3. Place to Meditate

It is very helpful to find a Quiet Place to meditate every day. I have a small corner of my room specially set aside for meditation. You can use a picture of a saint or Teacher who inspires you. Or just use flowers and a candle. If you meditate in the same place every day it builds up a meditative atmosphere.

4. Aspiration

Aspiration to meditate. If we are hungry then we are eat. It is the same with meditation if we are not satisfied with what we have and would like to discover the inner peace within ourselves then we will be motivated to meditate every day. This aspiration or inner cry is perhaps more important than learning many techniques.

5. Perseverance and Patience

In the beginning we cannot expect results overnight, each time we meditate we are adding to our capacity's even if we don't have great experiences then we need to persevere. If we practise sincerely we will progress.

6. Use the Qualities of the Spiritual Heart

The heart is the location of the soul. If we focus on the heart, immediately our thoughts have less power. By concentrating on our heart we can enter into the vastness of meditation.

7. Cultivate Happiness

It is important to bear in mind the goal of meditation is to uplift our consciousness and have a more positive outlook about life and about ourselves. When we meditate well we will have a positive outlook on life.

I offer these 7 tips which will help us to meditate more successfully.

1. Quite The Mind

The Goal of meditation is to go beyond the mind. Meditation cannot be done by thinking. All the different paths of meditation share this common feature of cultivating a silent mind. When our mind is silent we can start to enter a new consciousness, a consciousness not limited by the intellectual mind. With a quiet mind we will experience peace

"I meditate

So that I can inundate

My entire being

With the omnipotent

Power of peace."

True. Through meditation we can bring about greater peace of mind and powers of concentration. The length of time we meditate is not as important as the focus we give during our meditation. If we can meditate with a silent mind for 5 minutes we can bring to the fore our own divine qualities of inner peace and inner happiness. This is an inner joy independent of any outer success or outer prosperity.

16) Do NOT Stress. This may be the most important tip for beginners, and the hardest to implement. No matter what happens during your meditation practice, do not stress about it. This includes being nervous before meditating and angry afterwards. Meditation is what it is, and just do the best you can at the time.

17) Do it together. Meditating with a partner or loved one can have many wonderful benefits, and can improve your practice. However, it is necessary to make sure that you set agreed-upon ground rules before you begin!

18) Meditate early in the morning. Without a doubt, early morning is an ideal
time to practice: it is quieter, your mind is not filled with the usual clutter, and there is less chance you will be disturbed. Make it a habit to get up half an hour earlier to meditate.

19) Be Grateful at the end. Once your practice is through, spend 2-3 minutes feeling appreciative of the opportunity to practice and your mind’s ability to focus.

20) Notice when your interest in meditation begins to wane. Meditation is
hard work, and you will inevitably come to a point where it seemingly does not fit into the picture anymore. THIS is when you need your practice the most and I recommend you go back to the book(s) or the CD’s you listened to and become re-invigorated with the practice. Chances are that losing the ability to focus on meditation is parallel with your inability to focus in other areas of your life!

Meditation is an absolutely wonderful practice, but can be very difficult in the beginning. Use the tips described in this article to get your practice to the next level!

11) Listen to instructional tapes and CDs.

12) Generate moments of awareness during the day. Finding your breath and “being present” while not in formal practice is a wonderful way to evolve your meditation habits.

13) Make sure you will not be disturbed. One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is not insuring peaceful practice conditions. If you have it in the back of your mind that the phone might ring, your kids might wake, or your coffee pot might whistle than you will not be able to attain a state of deep relaxation.

14) Notice small adjustments. For beginning meditators, the slightest physical movements can transform a meditative practice from one of frustration to one of renewal. These adjustments may be barely noticeable to an observer, but they can mean everything for your practice.

15) Use a candle. Meditating with eyes closed can be challenging for a beginner. Lighting a candle and using it as your point of focus allows you to strengthen your attention with a visual cue. This can be very powerful.

6) Experiment. Although many of us think of effective meditation as a Yogi sitting cross-legged beneath a Bonzi tree, beginners should be more experimental and try different types of meditation. Try sitting, lying, eyes open, eyes closed, etc.

7) Feel your body parts. A great practice for beginning meditators is to take notice of the body when a meditative state starts to take hold. Once the mind quiets, put all your attention to the feet and then slowly move your way up the body (include your internal organs). This is very healthy and an indicator that you are on the right path.

8) Pick a specific room in your home to meditate. Make sure it is not the same room where you do work, exercise, or sleep. Place candles and other spiritual paraphernalia in the room to help you feel at ease.

9) Read a book (or two) on meditation. Preferably an instructional guide AND one that describes the benefits of deep meditative states. This will get you motivated. John Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are is terrific for beginners.

10) Commit for the long haul. Meditation is a life-long practice, and you will benefit most by NOT examining the results of your daily practice. Just do the best you can every day, and then let it go!

The purpose of this article is to provide 20 practical recommendations to help beginners get past the initial hurdles and integrate meditation over the long term:

1) Make it a formal practice. You will only get to the next level in meditation by setting aside specific time (preferably two times a day) to be still.

2) Start with the breath. Breathing deep slows the heart rate, relaxes the muscles, focuses the mind and is an ideal way to begin practice.

3) Stretch first. Stretching loosens the muscles and tendons allowing you to sit (or lie) more comfortably. Additionally, stretching starts the process of “going inward” and brings added attention to the body.

4) Meditate with Purpose. Beginners must understand that meditation is an ACTIVE process. The art of focusing your attention to a single point is hard work, and you have to be purposefully engaged!

5) Notice frustration creep up on you. This is very common for beginners as we think “hey, what am I doing here” or “why can’t I just quiet my damn mind already”. When this happens, really focus in on your breath and let the frustrated feelings go.

Meditation is the art of focusing 100% of your attention in one area. The practice comes with a myriad of well-publicized health benefits including increased concentration, decreased anxiety, and a general feeling of happiness.

Although a great number of people try meditation at some point in their lives, a small percentage actually stick with it for the long-term. This is unfortunate, and a possible reason is that many beginners do not begin with a mindset needed to make the practice sustainable.

This is interesting. I would like to add how can one control stress...

Stress Control
Most of the people who get on meditation do so because of its beneficial effects on stress. Stress refers to any or all the various pressures experienced in life. These can stem from work, family, illness, or environment and can contribute to such conditions as anxiety, hypertension, and heart disease. How an individual sees things and how he or she handles them makes a big difference in terms of how much stress he or she experiences.

Research has shown that hormones and other biochemical compounds in the blood indicative of stress tend to decrease during TM practice. These changes also stabilize over time, so that a person is actually less stressed biochemically during daily activity.

This reduction of stress translates directly into a reduction of anxiety and tension. Literally dozens of studies have shown this.

Stress Control
Most of the people who get on meditation do so because of its beneficial effects on stress. Stress refers to any or all the various pressures experienced in life. These can stem from work, family, illness, or environment and can contribute to such conditions as anxiety, hypertension, and heart disease. How an individual sees things and how he or she handles them makes a big difference in terms of how much stress he or she experiences.

Research has shown that hormones and other biochemical compounds in the blood indicative of stress tend to decrease during TM practice. These changes also stabilize over time, so that a person is actually less stressed biochemically during daily activity.

This reduction of stress translates directly into a reduction of anxiety and tension. Literally dozens of studies have shown this.

Meditation is an intensely personal and spiritual experience. The desired purpose of each meditation technique is to channel our awareness into a more positive direction by totally transforming one's state of mind. To meditate is to turn inwards, to concentrate on the inner self. The entire process of meditation usually entails the three stages of concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana) and enlightenment or absorption (samadhi). The individual preparing to meditate usually starts off by harnessing his awareness, such as focussing his mind onto a certain object. Once attention gets engaged, concentration turns into meditation or dhyana. And through continuous meditation, the meditator merges with the object of concentration, which might either be the present moment or the Divine Entity. In some branches of Indian philosopohy, direct perception from the inner self (mana) together with perception that is filtered through the five senses (pancha indriya) form a part of their valid epistemology (pratyaksha jnana). And this self-realization or self-awareness (as popularized by Paramahansa Yogananda), is nothing but the knowledge of the "pure being"—the Self. Humanity is increasingly turning towards various meditative techniques in order to cope with the increasing stress of modern-day lifestyles. Unable to locate stability in the outside world, people have directed their gaze inwards in a bid to attain peace of mind. Modern psychotherapists have begun to discover various therapeutic benefits of meditation practices. The state of relaxation and the altered state of consciousness—both induced by meditation—are especially effective in psychotherapy. But more than anything else, meditation is being used as a personal growth device these days—for inculcating a more positive attitude towards life at large. Meditation is not necessarily a religious practice, but because of its spiritual element it forms an integral part of most religions. And even though the basic objective of most meditation styles remain the same and are performed in a state of inner and outer stillness, they all vary according to the specific religious framework within which they are placed. Preparation, posture, length of period of meditation, particular verbal or visual elements—all contribute to the various forms of meditation. Some of the more popular methods are, Transcendental Meditation, yoga nidra, vipassana and mindfulness meditation.

Why Learn to Meditate
Eventually, we will be able to stay happy all the time, even in the most difficult circumstances.
The purpose of meditation is to make our mind calm and peaceful. If our mind is peaceful, we will be free from worries and mental discomfort, and so we will experience true happiness; but if our mind is not peaceful, we will find it very difficult to be happy, even if we are living in the very best conditions. If we train in meditation, our mind will gradually become more and more peaceful, and we will experience a purer and purer form of happiness. Eventually, we will be able to stay happy all the time, even in the most difficult circumstances.

Usually we find it difficult to control our mind. It seems as if our mind is like a balloon in the wind – blown here and there by external circumstances. If things go well, our mind is happy, but if they go badly, it immediately becomes unhappy. For example, if we get what we want, such as a new possession or a new partner, we become excited and cling to them tightly. However, since we cannot have everything we want, and since we will inevitably be separated from the friends and possessions we currently enjoy, this mental stickiness, or attachment, serves only to cause us pain. On the other hand, if we do not get what we want, or if we lose something that we like, we become despondent or irritated. For example, if we are forced to work with a colleague whom we dislike, we will probably become irritated and feel aggrieved, with the result that we will be unable to work with him or her efficiently and our time at work will become stressful and unrewarding.

By training in meditation, we create an inner space and clarity that enables us to control our mind
Such fluctuations of mood arise because we are too closely involved in the external situation. We are like a child making a sandcastle who is excited when it is first made, but who becomes upset when it is destroyed by the incoming tide. By training in meditation, we create an inner space and clarity that enables us to control our mind regardless of the external circumstances. Gradually we develop mental equilibrium, a balanced mind that is happy all the time, rather than an unbalanced mind that oscillates between the extremes of excitement and despondency.
If we train in meditation systematically, eventually we will be able to eradicate from our mind the delusions that are the causes of all our problems and suffering. In this way, we will come to experience a permanent inner peace, known as “liberation” or “nirvana”. Then, day and night in life after life, we will experience only peace and happiness.