Nearly everyone has times when stress builds up, whether from specific things or just from life in general, to the point where they feel overwhelmed and stressed out.

Knowing how and why you get to that state can help you to avoid it in the first place… and there is a 3 step method that can help you quickly and easily reduce your stress once you’ve already gotten there.

Where Your “Stress Load” Comes From

How easily and often you get stressed out varies widely from person to person.  Some people get stressed out easily and often, while other people appear to almost never have that problem.  The people who don’t get stressed out often also tend to get over it faster when they do hit that state (which can actually cause even more stress for the people who do get stressed out, as it makes them feel like there is something wrong with them).

You can even move from one extreme to the other as your life goes on, becoming either more or less easily stressed, depending on the events in your life and how you perceive them.  If you perceive that you are constantly surrounded by bad things happening, it can make you become stressed out more easily.  If you perceive that things in your life are going well (or even just getting better), it can make you less likely to get overwhelmed.

Everyone has a certain “stress load” that they can bear, a load which is measured by the number of things going on in your life plus the negativity of those things, and when you get close to that limit, or even cross it, your quality of life starts going downhill.

Your stress load is not objective… it is affected just as much by how you perceive what you have to do as it is by what you actually do.  In other words, you can have a person that does the job of three people that has less of a stress load than someone who only does one small piece of the first person’s job… it all depends on how much they feel like they have going on, and how negative those things are to them.

The negativity of things, in regards to stress load, has three main components:  how much you like doing that thing, how much control you feel like you have over it, and how much pressure you feel to get it done.  For example, I like to write.  When I feel like I can write when and what I want, and that I don’t have a deadline, writing actually has a negative negativity… in other words, it lessens my stress load.  On the other hand, even though I like writing, when I have to write something specific, say for work, and it needs done by tomorrow, that increases my stress load by a fair amount… even though I’m doing something I enjoy.

The higher your stress load is relative to your overall limit, the more impact small burdens have.  When you are functioning very close to your limit, incredibly small things can send you right over the top.

How To Quickly And Easily Reduce Your Stress Load

There is an easy, quick, and painless way to reduce your stress load.  Anyone can do it and see huge benefits the first time they attempt it… and you get even better with practice.

So, with no more ado, here is a 3 step method to reduce your stress:

1. Find A Place The first step is to find a place where you can be uninterrupted for a few minutes.  This is extremely important, as interruptions don’t simply interfere… they can actually cause you to have more stress than when you started, when the goal is to reduce stress.  This place can be anywhere from an office to the bathroom to somewhere outdoors.
2. Close Your Eyes And Visualize The second step is to close your eyes and visualize somewhere that is peaceful in your mind.  Personally I usually visualize sitting alone on a cliff near the top of a mountain, or the beach, both at either sunrise or sunset.  The beach works for a lot of people, but you can use whatever you want, and the same goes for who is there… it’s all a matter of what is peaceful to you.
   
   
3. Breathe Deeply And Make It Real Now that you have the picture in your head, breathe deeply, breathing in through your nose (and draw the breath down into your stomach, not just into your chest) and out through your mouth.  With each breath, try to put your mind more and more solidly in the place that you are visualizing… for the beach, you could add the light at sunrise, the sound of the surf, and the feel of the sand on your feet.  It doesn’t really matter what details you add, just that you add to the reality, so that you can mentally sink into the place.

That’s it… you just stay in that state for as long as you can, and then slowly bring yourself back out of it and open your eyes.  As long as you are not interrupted while you are doing it, you should notice a substantial change after just five minutes.  If you can do it for fifteen minutes, it can sometimes be more refreshing than an entire night’s sleep.

Have any suggestions for other things to visualize, or even other things to do?  I’m always looking to learn… so please share.

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Have you ever had one of those days when you simply wake up in a bad mood?

When you wake up in a bad mood, whether the bad is depressed, angry, frustrated, or something else, it seems like it is often very hard to shake.  It can easily last through most of the day, and you even interpret everything that happens that day through the filter of your bad mood.

There is actually a very simple “trick” that clears out the funk much quicker… and it doesn’t really take much.  Anyone can do it, and it’s effective nearly 100% of the time.

There are three components to this very simple solution to improving your mood.

1. Get Away From “Screens”

   Get away from all “screens”, whether it is from your cell phone, your TV, or your computer.  The constant light being emitted makes it very difficult to relax and let go, meaning it’s more difficult to get rid of your bad mood.

2. Move

   The second step is to get up and move your body.  I don’t mean exercise, exactly… just move.  If you’re inside, go outside.  If you’re outside, just move away to another area.
   

3. Pay Attention To Your Posture

   It’s amazing how much impact your posture has on your mood.  Stand up straight and confident, move like you own the place, and hold your head high.  Put your shoulders back, your chest out, avoid letting your shoulders slump, and keep your hands out of your pockets.

The most important pieces of posture, by far, are having your back straight and having your head up.

It’s very simple, and very quick… combine all three steps, and your mood will improve, often in less than ten minutes, and sometimes in less than five minutes.

Just like your mind can affect your body, in both positive and negative ways, your body can also affect your mind in positive and negative ways.  Bad moods, especially when you start the day that way, tend to cause your mind and body to set up a negative reinforcement cycle… your bad mood causes you to alter your posture, and then your posture reinforces the bad mood, which causes you to keep the negative posture, etc.

Breaking that cycle starves the bad mood, causing it to crumble and fade away.  Simple, right?

Picture via flickr.com – Leopard Print

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When you’re feeling overwhelmed, it can be easy to let your dreams die.  It can be easy to give up on them, and begin to believe that they are impossible.

Dreams never really die, though… when you give up on them, they don’t go away.  Instead, they hang around in the background constantly sapping your mental, emotional, and sometimes even physical energy.

That drain doesn’t heal with time, either… it gets worse.  The longer that you allow your dreams to languish in the belief that they are impossible, the more they drain the color and joy out of your life.

You can bring life back to your dreams… you can bring color back to your life.  All you have to do is turn around and re-embrace those dreams.

When you first turn back to your dreams, it can hurt… you have to rip away the layers of belief that you can’t have your dreams and the scars attached to those beliefs.  Don’t give up when it hurts… it doesn’t take too long for your heart and your dreams to start waking up, and to say the change in your life is “worth it” is such an understatement that once you feel it for yourself you’ll understand how ridiculous it sounds.

The pain from bringing your dreams back to life can be compared to the pain when circulation returns to your foot after it has gone numb.  It hurts, with the pain depending on how long it’s been that way, but the choice is between dealing with the temporary pain or having a big part of you stay numb.

It’s bad enough to imagine having to go through life dragging around a foot that’s numb, but what if the thing that’s numb is your heart?  Is avoiding pain now worth not feeling anything, having everything be “fake” worth it?

You don’t have to drop everything to pursue your dreams, diving off into the unknown.  It’s enough to give up on giving up, and to start taking action towards your dreams.

If your dream is to be a photographer, pick up a camera and start taking pictures.  If you want to write a novel, write a page.  Want to start your own company?  Start putting together your ideas and plans, and start networking to find people to help you make it happen.

Every step toward a dream helps to make it real.  Every step helps to bring color back into your life.

Go… and may you enjoy your technicolor life, full of dreams and possibilities.

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Do you know what it means when you feeling overwhelmed?  Do you know not what it is, but why it happens?

You know that dizzy feeling you get when you’re having trouble keeping your balance, or when you lean out over the edge of some place high up?  It’s your subconscious mind’s way of telling your conscious mind that your body is out of balance.

Feeling overwhelmed is the same thing, but for “life balance”, instead of physical balance.  It lets you know that things are not right, and you’re doing yourself harm.

Your conscious mind has a hard time multi-tasking.  It’s sort of like the iPhone’s multi-tasking… it can keep things open to a limited extent in the background, but it basically only focuses on the thing that is currently in front of it.  When you “multi-task”, what you really do is work on one thing, then push it into the background while you work on something else, then bring the first thing back to focus, etc.

This lack of ability to “de-focus” makes it very hard for you conscious mind to realize when your life gets out of balance.  It has trouble even with the more obvious life balances, like work vs play, let alone with things like quiet vs noise.

The fact that your conscious mind doesn’t notice doesn’t mean that your balance being off doesn’t hurt you.  To make another comparison with physical things, consider that a large portion of male back problems come from men carrying their wallet in their back pocket.  This causes the bottom of their spine to curve, but in a small enough degree that it’s not noticeable while it’s happening.  After ten, twenty, thirty or however many years, though, that little bit adds up to some serious back pain.

Poor life balance does the same thing, but it affects you mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, rather than physically (though enough suffering in any of those four areas will affect the other three over time).  This distress of your non-physical self comes out as feeling overwhelmed.

Feeling overwhelmed is subjectively terrible, and can seem to come out of nowhere.  It can do serious damage not just to you, but to your family and friends, as well, because of the way it causes you to act.

Feeling overwhelmed is like physical pain, though… there’s a purpose for it.  Its purpose is to let you know that you are out of balance, that you need to change things in your life.

Once we understand that the feeling comes from something being out of balance, the next question is usually “But how do I know what is out of balance?”  This may seem like a hard question, but the vast majority of the time, it really is not… it just feels that way.

The reason it feels that way is because of a balance that is one of the most likely to be off… action vs avoidance.  There is an incredibly strong impulse in most people to avoid things that are uncomfortable (yes, that includes me… probably one of the reasons it has been so long since I’ve written here).

In evolutionary terms, this behavior often makes sense… it’s generally a good idea to avoid the type of places where you’re likely to find something that will eat you.  In terms of life balance, however, it can be the equivalent of throwing a bowling ball on the wrong side of the scales.  That’s because you avoid facing whatever it is that is out of balance, and if you don’t face it, if you can’t even acknowledge to yourself what it is, how in the world are you going to do something about it?

That means that your already out of balance life gets even more out of balance, because your balance of action vs avoidance leans more and more heavily toward avoidance… and the more heavily it gets skewed, the stronger the tendency to avoid that balance problem becomes, as well.  It’s a really nasty vicious circle.

There’s another major balance point that is getting more and more skewed in our modern world, too, and it’s one that’s really hard to notice… quiet vs noise.  This is both in the literal sense, but also in slightly more generic terms, meaning all of the “noise” of the constant bombardment of input… emails, phone calls, TV, music, coworkers, family, etc.  More and more people these days forget to spend time away from these things.

These two balances, avoidance and noise, tend to negatively reinforce each other, as well… avoidance causes you to seek distraction (noise), and enough lack of quiet will cause you to start getting further and further into avoidance.

That covers the reason why we feel overwhelmed, and what the two worst causes of it are, but if you are feeling overwhelmed right now, what you really want to know is how to get over it.  I have good news and bad news for you:  I can tell you how to start getting over it, but you’re probably going to want to avoid it.

Here’s the secret to getting over being overwhelmed:  Each day set aside (and I really mean set aside… treat it the same as if you were setting it aside for the person who is most important to you) two thirty minute periods.

One is for quiet… when I say quiet, I don’t mean watching TV, or even reading.  I mean quiet… go somewhere away from all input, sit or lay down (laying down is better but not always available), and just be there.  You may find that you can’t stop thinking about what else you need to do, or dwelling on this or that… and that’s fine.  That comes when you don’t have quiet often enough.  If you keep doing thirty minutes every day, you’ll see this start to go away… and feeling overwhelmed will go with it, too.

The second thirty minutes is for action.  When I say action, I don’t mean exercise (though that’s good for you, and for feeling overwhelmed, too).  I mean action doing something you truly enjoy, in a way that you enjoy it.

That last part probably needs further explanation… I enjoy writing, for example.  I do not enjoy writing when I feel like I have to do it, like I am constrained.  I write two blogs as part of my regular job, for instance.  I don’t really enjoy writing them.  I didn’t enjoy writing here for a while, either… It felt too much like something I had to do.  Now that I’ve given that up, I can write on here, or on my other personal blog, and I enjoy it again.

You might feel the same way about watching TV, for instance, or reading the news.  It’s enjoyable until it starts feeling like an obligation… “I can’t miss the new episode of my show” or “I have to keep up to date”.  As long as you don’t feel like you have to do something, but instead are choosing to do it because you like it, that qualifies for your thirty minutes.

See how each of these thirty minute periods starts balancing out one of the two life balances most likely to get severely skewed?  They are complementary, as well, building positively on each other in the same way that noise and avoidance build negatively.

So… feeling overwhelmed?  Turn of the computer, go somewhere that you can be alone and quiet, and tell your avoidance instinct to shut up when it tries to keep you from being quiet.  Then, after you’ve done that for a while (it doesn’t have to be thirty minutes when you’re first starting, though it does help), go do something of your choosing.  It doesn’t really matter what it is, as long as you don’t feel like you are required to do it.

You’ll start feeling better the first day you do both things, and the more days in a row you do it, the further from you that feeling of being overwhelmed will be.

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“Show me the money!”

“Put your money where your mouth is.”

I’m sure you’ve heard someone say one of the phrases above (most likely both) at some point.  They both mean about the same thing:  You’ve talked enough, now show some action.

Love is the same way.  It is great (and important) to say that you love your wife, or girlfriend, but words only go so far… and the longer you go without doing something to show love, the less the words mean.

So… how long has it been since you showed your wife/girlfriend that you love her?  If it’s been a while, here is a list of things that you can do today to show your love (with examples!):

1. Suffer with her

   This is best explained by example… My mother has certain diet restrictions that she can’t violate without serious consequences (I’ll not reveal what, out of respect for her privacy).  My father does not have any such restrictions… but he still follows them very nearly all the time.  This shows his love because he is willing to accept heavy burdens that are not his… just to make it easier for her.This one doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone, but when it does, it is very powerful.

2. Go out and buy her something she likes for no reason

   Any time you show that you remember specifics of what your wife or girlfriend likes, and supply those likes without any underlying reason other than you love her, it sends a powerful message… that you are willing to go out of your way and spend your time and money on her, and are giving her enough attention all the time to remember even small things she likes.Here’s an example:  My brother-in-law went out and bought my sister her favorite candy and favorite soda, for no reason, and brought them home to her.  This was a while ago, and she still remembers… it was unexpected and clearly showed he was giving his time and attention to her, so it was memorable, even though it was small.

3. Give her a massage

   You really don’t need any special ability to give a reasonably good massage, and it has two very clear benefits:  It shows that you are willing to spend your time and energy on her, and if it is your hands on her skin, it releases oxytocin, a powerful hormone that makes you feel closer.Here’s a hint… just a light running your hand over skin (over time), in a place that she feels safe, is often as effective, if not more so, than a deep tissue massage from a professional masseuse.

4. Find her favorite song, put the words on something, and give it to her

   You can use her favorite song or “your song”… choose something that has powerful meaning for her, and put the words on something enduring.  This could be getting a wood-burning kit and putting it on wood (I find this to be very powerful, as it uses your own hand, and you can get one for about $20), or having it engraved on something silver or glass, or anything else that you choose, so long as it is something a little more long-lasting than pen and paper.

5. Leave notes around the house

   This is the easiest of this whole list… all you need to do is write little notes (sticky notes is okay… just slightly longer is better), and leave them concealed somewhere that you know she will look (in a drawer, on the pillow beside her (if you get up earlier), etc.).  This shows her that you were thinking about her even when you won’t with her, and is a little reminder of you even when you are not there.

6. Make a “treasure hunt”

   Get her something small that your wife or girlfriend likes and hide it somewhere in the house (or apartment, or whatever) or with someone you trust.  Then write a few clues (5-10 is generally good, but it really depends on her personality/likes) that each lead to the next, and finally to the “prize”.  Leave the first somewhere that she will see it when you are not there (but still the same day… it’s much better to have this all happen the day you plan for it).

   Depending on how good your timing is, this can be a fun way to get her to meet you for dinner at a restaurant, too, where you can have something for her, or it might just be the date itself that is the prize.

7. Pick a day and just spoil her rotten

   You can’t do this every day (or even very often) or it loses its power, but it can be really fun for both of you (hint… if it’s not fun for you, you are probably going to suck all the fun out of it for her, too, so you might want to pick something else).  This one is, by definition, not specific… you can do anything that comes to mind, from making her breakfast to taking her to her favorite restaurant to a surprise shopping trip… just make sure it’s all focused on your wife (or girlfriend), not you.

There you go… seven ways to show your wife or girlfriend that you love her, things you can do today, things that don’t require a ton of planning (though a couple do require a little planning, you can still do them in one day).

If you have any other suggestions, please share them… either in the comments or by using my contact page (my wife is about due for something, and it would be great to have something new!).

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Popular theory has it that men are easy to please, and women are more, well, complicated.

It’s true… women are complicated, but the implication that women are not easy to please, now that one is a complete fabrication.  It’s as easy to make a woman happy as it is to do so for a man.

Want proof?  I have listed below 7 easy ways to make your wife happy…

1. Write her a letter

   Adding this one to the list is easy for me… I wrote about it before (in another article about happy wives), and I was reminded about it by The Art of Manliness earlier today.
   It’s nearly impossible to NOT be affected emotionally when someone takes the time to handwrite a letter and send it, especially if that person took their time and really put their own feelings into it.  Just pull out a couple pieces of paper, a pen, and a few memories… the rest will pretty much take care of itself.

2. Gather old pictures of the two of you and buy a nice frame for your happy memories

   Speaking of memories, what better to bring them out than old pictures of you… from when you met, when you got married, or even when you did something crazy together.  It all depends on the mood you want to set.
   Take a few of these pictures, get copies, and go to buy one of those collage frames that holds a few pictures… even better if the pictures fit some kind of “theme”, like one of those I just mentioned (your wedding, your honeymoon, your summer together hiking across Europe, whatever it is that brings up memories of you being together and happy…).
   Now put the pictures in the frame, and put the frame in a gift box, and give it to her some time when she isn’t expecting anything.

3. Make her something

   When you make her something, it shows that you care enough to give up your time and energy for her… and that’s what ALL non-verbal ways of showing love boil down to in the long run.  Making her something just puts it right out in the open.
   If you make something durable, you may have something that reminds her of the love you share for years, or even decades, to come, as well.

4. Not the type to make something?  Have something made for her

   What if you’re not really the type to make something yourself?  Not to worry, you’re covered, too… as long as you spend the time to make sure it’s something that has personal meaning.
   Need an example of this one?  One year for our anniversary I had a charm bracelet  made for her with pictures of each member of the family, our names, our birthstones, etc.  That was a few years back, but she still wears it every anniversary, and often when she just feels close to me.

   

5. Do her chores

   As long as you can do them right, of course.  It could be anything, but of course you get extra brownie points if it’s whatever one she hates the most.  Whatever you do, take the extra time and effort to make sure that you do, in fact, do it correctly, or this one can backfire…. half-done or wrongly done chores is worse than no chores done at all.

6. Bring her a flower (her favorite, if you know it) for no reason at all

   Roses are acceptable to nearly any woman, but they’re sort of generic at the same time… it’s much more fun, and usually more appreciated, if you get her some other kind, especially if you know her favorite.
   This one has been known to occasionally arouse suspicion, but if you really are doing it just to make her happy, it will show… you just have to get through that first couple minutes.

7. Send her something small just to remind her that you love her

   At work or at home, either way works… just find something little, even a knick-knack, that has some personal significance for the two of you, something that shows that you were thinking about her (and the two of you together) in more than just passing, and have it delivered to her.
   Brownie points for this one are tied directly to how well it shows you know her, and how unexpected it is.

There you go… seven ways to make your wife happy that are both quick and easy (though making her something could take a bit longer).  It’s good to do one of them, or something else like them, about once a month, and though you can customize that to fit your particular relationship, you should be careful of doing them so much that they become one of your chores, and therefore not valued.

Interestingly, all of the actions above, and most of the reasoning, also work for improving your relationship with your daughter, if you have one.

Not enough ways to show your love?  I have Part II, with seven more ways, coming out next, and a few from the first time I was writing articles:

7 Quick Tips On How To Make Your Wife Happy
7 Ways To Show Your Wife You Love Her
9 Ways To Remind Your Wife You Love Her
8 Ways To Show Your Husband You Love Him

And, of course, last but not least, the most popular article ever on my site:

One Slow Tip To Improve Your Relationship

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Chaos is in my nature.  I thrive when creating, and suffer when maintaining.  I feel passion when building something and “stuck” when forced to focus on the details.

Does that sound familiar, or overwhelming?  Does it sound exciting to throw caution to the wind and dive right into something, or does it sound scary?

In my last article, I gave a very broad overview of the two basic natures of people, chaotic and orderly.  I mentioned, briefly, that I am of a chaotic nature (more so, in fact than virtually anyone I’ve ever met).  Ironically, I am also very good at spotting the order in what seems chaos to others (something sometimes referred to as pattern recognition).

Below I’ll list seven of the major attributes of someone for whom creative destruction is the spice of life, and then a few things that don’t come easily, but pay back the extra effort they require many times over.

1. You feel alive when creating something new.

   Crafting something builds your energy, leaving you satisfied and stronger, while assembling things leaves you empty and drained.

2. You see the whole more than the parts.

   In the kitchen, you make a meal, not a recipe… in writing, you see the world, not its mechanics… in business you see how the whole is different than the sum of its parts.

3. You love creating plans, but have trouble following them.

   Creating plans is fun, just like creating nearly anything usually is for you… when you are creating, you easily open up and pour your energy into things.  When it comes to following the plan you have created, you start having to pay attention to details, and the fun goes away… and with it goes the energy.

4. You generally have little attachment to things.

   Things are a part of the details, and therefore not something to which you become attached… the same often holds true for the majority of people that you meet.

5. You are easily frustrated when details keep you from advancing the big picture.

   This one really rears up and bites me every now and again… when you get stuck on what seems like a minor (but necessary) detail, and it keeps you from making any major progress on the big picture, the frustration can build up to an extreme level very quickly.

6. You excel when given a free hand, but perform average at best when forced into a box.

   When you have something to do, and the freedom to do it your way, you tend to excel, because it draws forth your energy as you create a solution.  When you have something to do and have a prescribed way that you must do it, especially if you see a way that seems better, you resent it, and do not give it your energy.

7. You are frustrated by working with people who must follow step by step plans.

   Sometimes life works better when you follow Nike’s advice and Just Do It.  Some people, however, can’t operate that way… they need step by step guidance for everything.  Of course, sometimes their way works out best, too.

There are, of course, degrees of alignment with either nature.  Some people are extremely chaotic, while some are just mildly chaotic, and the same goes, of course, for those of a more orderly persuasion.  The degree to which the points listed above apply reflects that level of alignment.

If you don’t recognize yourself in the points above, you almost certainly can name someone who does fit them right off the top of your head.  While everyone leans one way or the other in their nature, the ones who lean the farthest tend to be more memorable.

That’s the first half… knowing that you are chaotic.  The second half is knowing how to use your strengths to cover your weaknesses.  Here comes your second list:

1. Find something you can do with passion to keep you going after the initial investment.

   As mentioned above, when you create something, it’s easy for you to invest a lot of energy into it.  When it changes from creation to maintenance, though, it becomes much harder to invest your energy.  The counter to this is finding something that you are passionate about, so that your passion can keep you going between your bouts of creation.

2. Create smaller, short-term plans so that you can accomplish them before you run out of energy.

   One of the best ways to keep going when you have a chaotic nature is to keep things in the creation mode as much as you can by creating short-term plans more than long-range ones.  Create a plan for what to do today, rather than what to do for the month.
   If you must create long-term goals, then break them down as soon as you can and forget about the long-term goal except for when you accomplish the shorter goals and need to see what the next short-term goal is.

3. Learn to shift exactly how big the big picture is.

   Because we tend to see things in terms of the big picture, little details can become frustrating all out of proportion.  One solution for this is to shift how big the big picture is… if you’re building a house, and the detail is an electrical problem, shift the big picture down to the electrical system of the house.  This will make the detail not seem like it’s so disproportionately small, and can also make it feel like it’s the last detail, which can relieve a lot of the stress.

4. Create systems to help you with things where you know your nature is hurting you.

   This is one area where I can definitely do better… the most obvious example for me is networking (and not in the computer sense).  It is not natural to me to build and maintain network connections, but it’s clear that they make it far easier to succeed in whatever it is that you do.  It is natural, however, for me to take a problem and build a system to solve it.  I just need to apply that here.  The same goes for other things where your nature works against you, like if you are absent-minded and forget what needs to get done, or what was highest priority… create a system to solve the problems your nature causes.

5. Find partners (whether in business or personal) who are more orderly than you, but understand your nature.

   This is a big one, but has a catch, too… you need someone more orderly than you, but if you are at the extreme of chaos, you don’t want someone from the extreme of order.  You’ll end up having so much trouble seeing things from each other’s view that you’ll have serious problems communicating properly and working together.
   Someone who is a little more orderly than you, though, can be a great complement, with their strengths supporting you where you are weak, and vice versa.  This is how it is with my wife and I, and it works out amazingly well for us.

Understanding who you are, what your nature is, and how to use that is an almost overwhelming advantage, as the vast majority of people never learn.  If you can understand the nature of others and therefore how to best let them use their own nature, you’ll can, and almost certainly will, find success in both business and personal life.

Next article… signs and tips for the more orderly among us.

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I don’t really know WHY my subscription service has been having issues lately, but I believe that I have them fixed.  Of course, in the midst of fixing them, I also appear to have temporarily broken direct access to articles (it’s fixed now).  If any of you visit the site and notice that one of the articles appearing on the site has not been received in your subscription, be it email or RSS, please let me know so that I can take immediate action

Here are the three most recent articles, in case you have NOT received them, which I suspect many of you have not:

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Everyone in life has a nature that tends toward either chaos or order… knowing which one is your nature is essential to happiness and success.

What do the terms chaos and order mean in regards to your life?  They are opposite ends of the same spectrum, just as they are in other things.

Order is a force of preservation, of structuring… order is all about maintaining what already exists, about keeping the status quo.  Its impact is easily recognized in things like planning and scheduling.

Chaos is a force of both creation and destruction.  Often the creation actually comes from the destruction… something gets taken apart, and the pieces get put back together in a new way to create something that didn’t exist before.  Its impact is usually most easily detected in things associated with creativity… art, design, writing, etc.

Both of these forces are present in everyone’s life, and both are important in everyone’s life, as well.  The key is to finding the balance between them in your life.

If you are like most people, your first thought about balancing order and chaos in your life is wrong.

Unless you’re a very unusual person, you can’t balance chaos and order by having equal amounts of both.  That’s because your fulcrum, your center of balance, is highly unlikely to be in the center.  Instead, you will, by your very nature, have more affinity for one side than the other.

If you are the kind of person who gets nervous at the first sign that something unexpected is happening, your nature is pretty far to the side of order.  That means that you need considerably more order than chaos in your life to find balance.

If you are the kind of person who never plans unless they have to, who does nearly everything on a wing and a prayer, then your quite chaotic.  Balance for you requires keeping the order to a quiet murmur.

It really isn’t hard to figure out which side you lean toward.  If, when looking at  a task, you see all of the pieces and then assemble them into the whole (like following a recipe when cooking), your nature is orderly.  If, when looking at the same task, you naturally look at the whole and see where the pieces fit, your nature is chaotic.

Where you, personally, fall can be anywhere from nearly at one of the poles (pure chaos or pure order), to somewhere very near the center.  As with most things that involve people, though, it tends to be somewhat of a bell curve, meaning that the farther toward the edges you get, the fewer people you find, though in my experience, the center of that curve, where you find the most people, tends to be more on the side of order than chaos.

Anyone who actually knows me can tell you which source my energy tends to come from… I am definitely chaotic.  I love to dig in, tear things apart, and build new things… but I don’t like doing the detail work.

My writing and my programming both reflect this… I jump in, build the structure, the skeleton, and make it work, and I generally do this very rapidly.  Then I have to go back and fix or add all of the little details I missed.  I love the first part… it definitely is my passion.  I can do the detailed part, but I mostly do it without the passion, meaning that someone who is passionate about the details could likely do it better than I.

There is nothing better or worse about either way, any more than there is between brown and blue eyes.  You may very well have a preference for one or the other, but neither is actually objectively better.

That being said, the there are things in life that align better with one side or the other, one of the most important being your work.  Artists, for example, tend to see the things they are creating first, then shape the pieces to fit, whether those pieces be brush strokes, stone, or words.  Managers and money people, on the other hand, tend to see the pieces and try to assemble them into a whole.  Nearly every type of work, however, has some sort of role for those of the opposite nature… technical writers, for instance, are usually very orderly, while sales managers may tend to be chaotic (at least, if promoted from within the sales department).

True happiness is nearly impossible to find when you try to force yourself into roles and paths that originate, or mostly stay, on the other side.  It is like the mental equivalent of wearing clothes that are too small for you… you can do it, but it is uncomfortable short term and can cause serious damage long term.

Take me, for example… In my last job, I was moved from a role that consisted mostly of creation to a role that was mostly organizing.  I went from enjoying my job, and being very good at it, to intense dislike of my job and overwhelming stress, and doing average at best.  In the beginning I was following my nature, and after the change I was fighting it.  The move, even though it came with a higher title and more money, was a poor one on my part.

Happiness, and success, in life nearly always comes from following your heart, your passions… and your passions will always reflect your nature, be it chaos or order.  When you follow your passion, you do things with your whole heart, your whole mind, and that is how great things come to be.

Your passion doesn’t have to be something the world admires, it just has to be yours.

Find your nature, find your passion, and find a way to follow it.

Follow-up article:  7 Signs You Are A Creative Destruction Kind Of Person And How To Excel If You Are

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What causes the most stress during the holidays?  It’s usually one of two things… family (relationships), or presents.

Maybe you don’t get along with someone in your family… maybe you don’t get along with anyone in your family.  Or it could be that you have “things that need to get done”, and spending time with extended family keeps you from doing those things.

Or perhaps you are one of those ones who worries about gifts… “Did Suzy get the same number of presents as Joey?” or “Did I spend the same amount on each of the nephews and nieces?”.  Everything has to be “fair” (there is no such thing as “fair”, but that’s an article to itself) so that nobody feels left out or insulted.

Though these two sources of holiday stress seem very different, the true source turns out to be the same… it come from focusing on you.

Sounds wrong, doesn’t it?  How does focusing on yourself cause you to stress about other people, or about making sure that the distribution of presents is “fair”?

When you stress about who gets how many presents, and how much they’re worth, what you’re really worrying about is how that reflects on you.  If you didn’t care about the “kind of person” it makes you, you would just give people gifts based on who you are and/or who they are, things you enjoy giving and that they enjoy receiving.  The number and cost wouldn’t matter, because the whole goal and focus would be giving them something that would bring a bit of happiness.

Stressing about relationships works in a similar way… even the relationship with your significant other.  If you remove “how it affects me” from the way you think about the relationship, it takes away all the stress.  It doesn’t magically fix relationships, as there may be solid reasons why you don’t get along, or you may simply be different enough people that there isn’t much common ground upon which to build.  You are very likely to find,  however, that your relationships (all of them) improve when you stop looking at everything through the “how it affects me” lens.

It’s not easy to learn how to stop looking through that lens (actually, it might be more useful to refer to it as unlearning it, as it is a behavior that is learned), so what can you do to relieve the stress right now, while we’re still in the holiday season?

The answer is simple:  Go do something to serve others.  It doesn’t need to be your family… it might even be better if it isn’t.  Go volunteer at a homeless shelter, visit someone in a nursing home who has no family, or buy a bunch of toys and bring them to children who are in the hospital this holiday season.

It doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as you don’t do it for yourself… giving to others when no personal gain is involved has great emotional and spiritual rewards, one of the least of which is the relief of stress.

So go, help someone else without looking for any kind of reward, not even a thank you… and watch how much your own outlook improves.

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