Physical Techniques: Deep Breathing, Progressive Muscular Relaxation & The Relaxation Response

Introduction:
This tool introduces three useful physical relaxation techniques that can help you reduce muscle tension and manage the effects of the fight-or-flight response on your body. This is particularly important if you need to think clearly and perform precisely when you are under pressure.

Deep Breathing:
Deep breathing is a simple but very effective method of relaxation. It is a core component of everything from the "take ten deep breaths" approach to calming someone down, right through to yoga relaxation and meditation. It works well in conjunction with other relaxation techniques such as Progressive Muscular Relaxation, relaxation imagery and meditation to reduce stress.
To use the technique, take a number of deep breaths and relax your body further with each breath. That's all there is to it!


Progressive Muscular Relaxation (PMR):
Progressive Muscular Relaxation is useful for relaxing your body when your muscles are tense. The idea behind PMR is that you tense up a group of muscles so that they are as tightly contracted as possible. Hold them in a state of extreme tension for a few seconds. Then, relax the muscles to their previous state. Finally, consciously relax the muscles even further so that you are as relaxed as possible.
By tensing your muscles first, you will probably find that you are able to relax your muscles more than would be the case if you tried to relax your muscles directly.

Experiment with PMR by forming a fist, and clenching your hand as tight as you can for a few seconds. Then relax your hand to its previous tension, and then consciously relax it again so that it is as loose as possible. You should feel deep relaxation in your hand muscles.

For maximum relaxation you can use PMR in conjunction with breathing techniques and imagery.


The “Relaxation Response”:
We mentioned “The Relaxation Response” in our article on Meditation. In a series of experiments into various popular meditation techniques, Dr. Benson established that these techniques had a very real effect on reducing stress and controlling the fight-or-flight response. Direct effects included deep relaxation, slowed heartbeat and breathing, reduced oxygen consumption and increased skin resistance.

This is something that you can do for yourself by following these steps:

• Sit quietly and comfortably.
• Close your eyes.
• Start by relaxing the muscles of your feet and work up your body relaxing muscles.
• Focus your attention on your breathing.
• Breathe in deeply and then let your breath out. Count your breaths, and say the number of the breath as you let it out (this gives you something to do with your mind, helping you to avoid distraction).
• Do this for ten or twenty minutes.

An even more potent alternative approach is to follow these steps, but to use relaxation imagery instead of counting breaths in step 5.
Summary:
“Deep Breathing,” “Progressive Muscular Relaxation,” and the steps leading to the “Relaxation Response” are three good techniques that can help you to relax your body and manage the symptoms of the fight-or-flight response.

These are particularly helpful for handling nerves prior to an important performance, and for calming down when you are highly stressed.

http://www.mindtools.com/stress/RelaxationTechniques/PhysicalTechniques.htm

How To Refresh Your Relationship Today

Relationships — like everything we do in life — don’t really operate as well as we think they do on auto-pilot. While everything may seem fine on the surface, dig a little deeper and you’ll find two people who are unhappy, but just don’t know how to broach the subject.

Let’s face it, sometimes our romantic relationships can just become stagnant.

It’s time to reignite the flame and restore the passion that you and your partner deserve.

How do you do it? Click through to find out!

1. Be social. Look for healthy couples to hang out with. Summer is almost over, but there’s still time for barbecues, pool parties, camping, picnics in the park, and going to the beach. Socializing with other couples will bring about new adventures to add to your list.
2. Make your partner feel special. Let him or her know that your relationship is at the top of your priority list. Brainstorm different ways that you can show them daily.
3. Learn to be an effective communicator. Being a good communicator means being a good listener. Most couples listen with the intent to reply. Instead, listen with the intent to understand.
4. Play nice. It’s not always going to be fun and games. There will be times that you and your partner don’t get along. Watch your tone. No name-calling, no degrading, and no blaming. Before you speak, ask yourself, “is this helping or hurting the relationship?” If you slip up, don’t forget to apologize.
5. Volunteering at a church, soup kitchen, women’s shelter, animal shelter, Red Cross, or nursing home is a great way to give back to the community and will leave you and your partner with a sense of accomplishment.
6. Break up the routine from time to time to make things more exciting.
7. Learn to accept your partner for the things that you like and don’t like. Respect each other’s differences. Allow your partner to be themselves. If we mold our partner to be what we wish they were, then we only love the reflection of ourselves.
8. Everyone needs alone time. Take a personal day and enjoy being with yourself. Go for a walk, have a spa day, hit some balls on the golf course, or whatever else you find relaxing.
9. Surprise your partner. Try a card to let your partner know how much you appreciate him or her, a smiley face balloon to brighten a tough day at work, a bouquet of seasonal flowers, or a gourmet box of chocolates to share while watching a romantic movie. Surprises can also come in other forms. Straightening up the garage or cleaning up the kitchen can be a great gift.
10. Intimacy not only means physical affection, it also means emotional affection. Take time to talk to your partner about your emotional and physical needs. Discuss how you can improve in these areas and follow through.
11. Equally divide chores. Evenly distributed chores could equal more intimacy.
12. Experience something new. Maybe redo a room together or learn how to make sushi this Friday night. Check out the website Pinterest for ideas that might interest both of you.
13. Schedule some uninterrupted time for the two of you on the family calendar.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/09/05/how-to-refresh-your-relationship-today/

Take Time To Nurture Yourself

Women are often the primary nurturers. Women carry the pregnancy and breast-feed the baby. They are the epicenter of healthcare decisions for the family and are more likely to be the caregiver when a family member falls ill. They are often the limo driver, the chef and the chief financial officer of the household. And in addition to caring for kids and a partner, they are often the front line for caring and supporting parents as they age.

Does this sound familiar? If so, my question to you is this: Who is nurturing you? Who is nurturing the nurturer? Who is making sure that you are getting the time, attention and emotional support that you need and deserve?

If there isn’t a clear answer to this question, pause a moment and realize – the need is still there; the desire to be nurtured is still there; the impact of not being nurtured is still there.

So what can you do? First, realize it’s OK to have needs. Next decide who in your immediate world you can reach out to for nurturing. In some cases there may be no obvious choice to fill this role for you.

That’s OK, too. There is still you and you have a powerful position. You can allo­cate some of the time you are using to nurture others and reserve it for yourself.

Set aside some you-time for an ex­ercise or yoga class or a walk or for reading a book. Maybe it is eating lunch with a friend. Maybe it is two 15-minute meditations you do by your­self. Even talking on the phone with a woman friend can be very therapeutic.

What you do isn’t the goal. It’s taking time to restore yourself and your “self”; to focus on you and not onthem. Remember in the airplane, the person says, “In the unexpected case of an emergency and oxygen is needed, when the oxygen mask falls, place it on your head first and then place it on the head of your child.”

Every nurturer needs to be nurtured. Are you making you-time to nurture you?

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/you-time-take-time-to-nurture-yourself.html

Throw Your Old Plan Away: 6 New Ways To Build Leadership Development Into Your Job

Every leader I know is extremely busy getting their job done. At the same time, they also realize that investing effort in their own leadership development is good. The problem is that when faced with a choice, work seems to always trump personal development. Everyone runs fast and hard, and personal development is put off as executives wait and hope for a break in the schedule.’ll argue that this is a false dichotomy. First, work and development should not be seen as competing activities. Here’s the reason to combine them: Doing one can accomplish the other. You can make your daily job into a practical leadership classroom and laboratory. If you choose to do this, you can constantly improve your leadership skills while getting your job done. That, in turn, benefits your organization, your working associates, and most certainly, you.

Here are some specific ways you can bring your personal development and your job closer together:

1. Learn new information. 

There are bodies of information that are highly relevant to your job. It may be the latest trends in the industry or some new technology. It could be about competitors. Or it may be technical information that would make you more knowledgeable about your company’s products.

2. Build new relationships. 

This might involve people external to the organization, such as suppliers, customers, those in academia or other parts of the business community. Or it could be your relationship with other department heads, or with various staff functions within your organization.1. Learn new information. There are bodies of information that are highly relevant to your job. It may be the latest trends in the industry or some new technology. It could be about competitors. Or it may be technical information that would make you more knowledgeable about your company’s products.

3. Organize colleagues who share a common interest. 

This may be a mutual interest in a new product or project. It may be a group interested in a specific subject matter such as strategic planning. It could be a group dedicated to increasing diversity within the organization. Many organizations have groups of women leaders who meet to further the role of women in the organization.

4. Take time to plan and review your day.

Some leaders set aside the first 15 minutes in the morning to note the tasks to be accomplished in that day. Others do that as they commute to work. Then they finish the day by reflecting on what went particularly well and where they could see ways to improve their performance. Others use the commute home to reflect on what went well and how conversations or meetings could have gone better.

5. Create new feedback mechanisms for yourself. 

We know there is great power and value in leaders seeking feedback from those they work with. It strengthens the organization and it makes their leadership better. It may be as simple as Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York, asking “How and I doing?” or team building sessions that allow a group to reflect on how well it functions. New feedback mechanisms may also involve getting information from groups you typically don’t get feedback from, such as staff groups or people in other divisions of your company.

6. Restructure your job. 

 As a manager you have the choice of doing certain things yourself or delegating to others. You can put more emphasis on one activity and less on another. You can elect to take on a task because you want to learn and understand it better as a part of your development.

70/20/10
Combining development and work makes even more sense if you believe the long accepted maxim that there is a 70/20/10 formula that applies to leadership development. (That formula suggests that 70% of what you learn about leadership comes from on-the-job experiences. Coaching from your boss and others gives you the next 20% and the final 10% comes from formal class-room development.) While those exact numbers can be debated, most would say it is directionally correct. Why, then, do organizations spend virtually no time trying to gain a higher return from the 70%, a minimal effort on the 20%, and focus most of their resources on the 10%? Willie Sutton, the bank robber, explained that he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is.” Willie’s statement is humorous, but he makes a valuable point. Applying that primitive logic, it becomes more obvious that you receive a much greater benefit from the time, energy and effort you spend building development into your job than on the time you spend on anything else. For example, job related feedback from a 360 degree instrument is a powerful tool to help combine development with work. Like Willie, you should focus your effort directly on the largest payoff at hand.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jackzenger/2013/07/16/throw-your-old-plan-away-6-new-ways-to-build-leadership-development-into-your-job/

6 Tips For Happiness

Tip 1: Manage Your Time
“Time,” so they say “is money.” But imagine that as if it was the hours and minutes of your life, managed by a “Universal Bank of Time.” 

Under their strict account usage terms, the UBT would mandate a compulsory daily withdrawal of 24 hours. The hours would be automatically transferred to you at the start of each day. But you could never make a deposit, you could never put back what you didn’t use – unused hours would be taxed at 100%. Worse still, there’d be no online banking with the UBT. No paper statements. You couldn’t even get a balance - you’d never be sure how much time you had left.

If real bank accounts worked this way you’d make sure you spent every penny of your daily withdrawal limit on something worthwhile. Pretty soon you’d probably start to plan your spending – you might even keep a book of items you wanted to spend your money on. So with that in mind…


Tip 2: Make a “Now List” 
Most folks have heard of a Bucket List (taken from the movie of the same name), a list of all the things you’d like to do before you die (“kick the bucket”). It’s a fabulous idea - except for the built-in assumption that we’re going to be doing all these marvelous things at some far flung point in the future, probably when we’ll be far too old and frail to do anything more than regret each and every item on the list as a missed opportunity.

So let’s dispense with the term Bucket List. What we want is to “Live Life Now” list – or a “Now List” for short. Write down everything you’d like to do, then start making it happen.


Tip 3: Collect “Trophies” Andy Warhol, so it’s said, never opened any of his mail. He merely collected it up, put it in a box, and when that box was full, sealed it and wrote the year on the top. 

I’ve never taken the time to find out just how true this story is, but I do know that the first time I heard it, it had a profound effect on me. I wanted to do the same. However, being a somewhat deluded individual, I was fairly certain I could improve on the concept.

And so I started to collect things. Theatre tickets, And so I started to collect things. Theatre tickets, raffle tickets, train tickets, plane tickets, postcards, greeting cards, thank you cards, business cards, labels, badges, anything that was evidence of somewhere I’d been, something I’d done, or someone I’d met. And something I could pin to a board.


Tip 4: Decide What’s Important
Most people I encounter haven’t actually got a clue what they really want. They might wake up in the morning and want to go back to bed. They might flick through a magazine and want those shoes. They might even want the person in the magazine wearing those shoes. But these desires come and go. Few of them seem to stick around and become important - and that’s a mistake.

Knowing exactly what you want is hugely important. Merely knowing has the power to change everything. Not convinced? Then allow me to introduce you to the incredible, completely automated wish-fulfilment machine you have inside your head…


Tip 5: Use The Power of Focus
Brains are amazing. Especially yours. Even mine has its moments. And one of the most fascinating mechanisms of the human brain is how it deals with focus. Have you ever noticed how when you buy a new car, or even when you’ve merely decided what type of car it is you want to buy, you start seeing that same car everywhere?! That’s the power of focus. It happens because in order for our brains to cope with the extraordinary amount of information coming in through our five senses from the world around us, we’re programmed to concentrate on what’s “important,” and more or less ignore the rest.

Unconvinced? Excellent!

You might be asking yourself how does the brain determine what’s important? And the answer is: you tell it! And this mechanism isn’t just taking place during card tricks; this happens all day, every day. Your brain is continually filtering the information coming in based on what you’ve decided is important. Strange then that we quite often focus on entirely the wrong things, or nothing at all. 


Tip 6: Remind Yourself Of The Important Things Most people own a wallet, a purse, or some other item to carry around their credit cards, dog-eared receipts or (if you’re really retro) cash.

If your wallet is like mine then it might have a small see-through pocket where you’re supposed to put a photo of a loved one. Ditch it. Not the loved one, just the photo.

On a small piece of card, just big enough to fit that space, write down what you really want in life – your “life vision” if you like – and place it in your wallet. What we’re doing here is utilizing that Power Of Focus on a daily basis by creating something that will remind you of those important things, each and every time you look in your wallet.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-jones/6-tips-for happiness_b_3436324.html#slide=2567639

Practical Steps To Personal Development

Practical steps can be taken to enhance personal development, including:

• Organising your time.
• Producing a personal CV or résumé.
• Undertaking a skills appraisal.
• Looking at your transferable skills.
• Overcoming barriers to learning a new skill.

Organising Your Time
If you are considering making changes in your life, finding additional time often poses a problem. It could be that the changes you are thinking of making are to ensure you have extra time to:

• Spend with your family.
• Spend on things you enjoy doing.
• Devote to your work.
• Devote to your education

Whatever the reason, looking at how you spend your time will encourage you to think of ways your time could be managed more effectively.

• Learning to say 'no' to jobs or requests that you feel are not your responsibility.
• Learning to delegate – sharing jobs can be fun and will leave you with more time.
• Making a ’to do’ list of tasks you need to do each day/week, ticking off tasks that you complete.
• Giving up things you do not really want or need to do.
• Identifying your high and low times of the day. Everyone has a time when he/she feels more or less energetic. Try to do the most demanding tasks when you have the greatest energy as you will do them more quickly, thereby releasing more time to spend on other things.

For many people their personal development will involve setting goals; these might be to change behaviour - as in looking at their time management - learning new skills or advancing their career.

Many employers are looking for the same sorts of skills. These include good communication skills, the ability to work as part of a team and the ability to learn – these are often termed ‘Soft Skills’ and are the sorts of skills that SkillsYouNeed writes about. Beyond that the skills required will depend on the particular job.

http://www.skillsyouneed.com/ps/personal-development.html