– Limit Your Hours –

For those of you who have some level of control over your work schedule, one of the best things you can do is to start limiting your hours at work. Start by shaving 15-30 minutes off of your end time, or come in later. Use this extra time to do one of the things listed in the next few sections. Another way to limit you hours is by not wasting as much time at work. I know many people who goof off at work thinking that they are relieving stress. But, at the end of the day, you’re still at work longer than you need to be. Instead of the extra long chat with the co-worker about how miserable your work environment is, use that time to finish off a project and go home earlier. The less you are at work, the less stress you take home with you. Obviously, I’m not saying that you should sneak out of work. With the state of the economy as it is, I wouldn’t want you to lose your job. But, wherever possible, see if you can come in later and leave earlier when you can. Another thing to aim for is to leave work at work. Don’t take work home with you unless you absolutely need to. Try not to even think about work once you’ve left. I know this is very difficult for many people, but with practice it will become second nature and your refreshed mind will thank you. One way to take your mind off of work is, of course, to meditate.

– Take Up a Hobby –

I can’t stress enough how important it is to have a hobby outside of work. As for me, I run a second business, play sports like racquetball and volleyball, and love messing around on my computer. Whatever your hobby may be, make sure it’s something you thoroughly enjoy. It should be something that takes your mind off of work and other worries. This may seem obvious, but when you don’t have an outlet for releasing steam you end up becoming more frustrated and depressed. The first thing you should do is come up with a list of all of the things that interest you. My list might look something like this:

Play with my son
Learn piano
Play racquetball
Play volleyball
Play billiards with friends
Watch a movie
Create articles and videos to help people relieve stress

As you can see, there are a lot of things on my list. Your list will undoubtedly have a lot of items on it as well. There is only so much free time in the day though, so you need to pick a few that you can realistically focus on. The last thing you want to do is create extra stress by spreading yourself too thin with your hobbies. One thing you can do, however, is to do all of them, but just on different days. You could focus on a couple of items at a time and then move on to other items on your list. By going back and forth, you keep it all fresh and exciting. Once again, the point of these hobbies is to relieve stress and take your mind off of work. If you find yourself stressed out because of your hobbies, it’s time to change the hobby or slow down with how much you’re trying to do.

– Take Mini-Vacations –

Most of us have some vacation time accrued that we have grand plans for. We often think about the month we’ll take off for some adventurous vacation. We go on the vacation and it’s usually pretty good, but than we come back to work. After a few short days, it feels like we never went on the vacation in the first place! A different strategy you might consider is to limit your larger vacations in favor of more frequent mini-vacations. By mini-vacation, I simply mean taking a Friday and/or Monday off to make a long weekend for you and your friends or family. By doing these shorter vacations a lot more often, you give yourself regular doses of stress relief and relaxation, which will help you stay energized and refreshed throughout the year.

– Calling it a Day –

I hope you’ll be able to use some of these suggestions to help make your work life more bearable. It has certainly worked for me. Once you change how you view work and start to enjoy some hobbies outside of work, you’ll hopefully find yourself leading a more stress-free, happy life. I’ll leave you with the prayer they use at many support groups.

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

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3:30 PM
You find out that you were passed up for that promotion you had been working so hard to receive.

Normal way – You are overwhelmed with feelings of depression and spend twenty minutes hiding in the bathroom. You have thoughts that you’ll never get this promotion and that no one appreciates your work and skills. You then think that you probably don’t deserve the promotion anyway and you just feel worthless.

Meditation way – After a few seconds of self pity and sadness, you realize that these feelings won’t help you move forward. Instead, you spend the next few minutes thinking about possible reasons why you didn’t get the promotion. You come up with a plan of action with specific to-do items to help you become a better candidate for promotion. You are confident that this goal is achievable and that you completely deserve it. With a renewed sense of hope, you continue your day.

4:30 PM
You get a call from you wife that your daughter has come down with a serious fever and that she’s taking her to the emergency room. You ask your boss if you can leave early and rush to the hospital. You and your wife sit in the waiting room as doctors work with your daughter.

Normal way – You are in a state of panic and are having trouble swallowing. You pace back and forth as your mind races with worse case scenarios. Seeing your state of mind, your wife’s anxiety rises even further. You both feel utterly helpless.

Meditation way – You are deeply concerned about your daughter. You hold your wife’s hand and assure her everything will be all right. You then close your eyes together and focus all of your attention on your daughter. You conjure up an image of your daughter in your mind and imagine a burst of white healing light surrounding her. Both of you continue to send her white light and affirm that she will be all right. You ask the universe to help her in this time of need. You both feel better, knowing that you are doing something to help her as you wait, and calming yourself down in the process.

8:36 PM
You bring your daughter home from the hospital and she is doing just fine. You make some quick dinner and sit down to eat. As you try to have your meal, you receive calls from four different telemarketers trying to sell you their services.

Normal way – You get extremely angry and scream at the telemarketers. You have a hard time masking your anger, making everyone feel tense around the dinner table.

Meditation way – You realize that, even though the telemarketers can be annoying, they are people too and they are just doing their jobs. They don’t deserve to be yelled at. You take a deep cleansing breath and calmly tell them you’re not interested and get back to dinner with your family. You even decide to turn off the ringer on your phone while you enjoy the rest of your meal.

10:45 PM
As you are about to go to sleep, your mind is filled with thousands of thoughts and feelings about the day’s events and things you need to do tomorrow.

Normal way – You go right to bed and end up tossing and turning for hours. You finally fall asleep, but wake up feeling awful the next day.

Meditation way – You spend fifteen minutes meditating. This time you choose to do the Focus on Self meditation, where you focus your attention on different areas of your body. Before you end your meditation, you also program your mind to wake up at 7:00 AM. You simply do this by telling yourself repeatedly that you will wake up at that time. As soon as you’re done, you go to bed and instantly fall asleep. You have a great night’s rest and wake up totally refreshed and on time.

This has been an exaggeration of an awful day you might have. Hopefully every day won’t be filled with all of these potentially stressful things, but we’ve all had similar experiences from time to time. I hope you were able to see how you might change your behavior and thinking when seemingly awful situations arise. With a lot of practice, you’ll find that with the meditation way, even the worst days end up being okay.

Have a great day!

If you missed part one, you can get it here.

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7:48 AM
You wake up later than you were supposed to because your alarm didn’t turn on for some reason.

Normal way – Your heart rate suddenly jumps up as you realize you’re late and panic sets in. You leap out of bed, feeling a great deal of anxiety.

Meditation way – You realize that what’s done is done and there is no reason to panic, because that will not get you to work any faster. Instead, you take a deep breath and get out of bed. You calmly plan what things you’ll need to do to get yourself to work as quickly as possible. Incidentally, you could have woken up on time without the need for an alarm if you had told yourself you wanted to wake up at a certain time during meditation the night before. In this way, you can program your mind to wake you up automatically.

7:52 AM
As you rush to get ready, you bump into the bed post, hurting your big toe.

Normal way – You yell out a few obscenities and hobble along feeling your anger levels rising.

Meditation way – You place your hands around your toes and feet, close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and imagine your toe feeling wonderful. You visualize your toe feeling better and within a few seconds, the pain is no longer noticeable. You then continue with your day.

8:45 AM
Because you left the house late, you find yourself in bumper to bumper traffic on the freeway.

Normal way – You begin to get angrier with each passing minute as you stop and go in traffic. Your heart rate is higher than normal and you notice that you’re tightly clenching the steering wheel.

Meditation way – You realize that there is nothing you can do about the traffic, so you decide to put your mind to good use. You take a few deep breaths with your eyes wide open and you become keenly aware of everything around you. You focus your attention on the road and the cars ahead of you. In this heightened state of awareness, you focus all of your attention on the act of driving, thus, forgetting about the fact that you’re late. You heart rate is normal and you feel good.

9:30 AM
You arrive to work only to find out that the meeting you were rushing to get to was cancelled.

Normal way – Your anger levels continue to increase as you recall the trouble you went through to get to work and how bad this day has already been. You spend the next few minutes talking to coworkers about how upset you are about this cancellation and end up getting yourself even more worked up.

Meditation way – You are happy because this means you did not miss the meeting and you now have more time to prepare for it. You excuse yourself and go to your office, where you take a minute to collect yourself. You simply close your eyes, take three deep breaths and focus on your breathing for the next 30-60 seconds. You feel great and are ready to tackle the rest of your day.

1:50 PM
The stress builds up during the day as you have one meeting after another and interact with coworkers you don’t get along with. You have about 10 minutes before your next meeting.

Normal way – You spend that time having a cup of coffee and staring blankly at your computer, lost in thought. The more you think about your day, the more stressed you feel and you begin to feel a slight pain in your stomach and chest.

Meditation way – You find a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted and you spend the next 10 minutes meditating. You decide to use a simple Counting Meditation where you focus all of your attention on counting from one to five (Link to a meditation you can use is at the end of the article). You find that this helps you lower your heart rate and reduce your stress effectively. After your meditation, you have a refreshing glass of water and feel energized to continue with your meetings.

The day is only half over. In Part 2, I’ll uncover what happens the rest of the day, also showing you how you can prepare for a restful sleep to start your next day the right way.

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How many times have you told yourself that this year you’re going to finally lose that weight or quit smoking or look for a better job?  How often do you carry over your New Year’s resolutions from one year to the next?  If you’re like most people, you come up with a long wish list of things you want to improve and try your best to make them happen during the year.  The problem is that not even a month goes by before you’ve already forgotten about most of your goals and are back to your old habits again.  There are a few simple things you can do though, to help you stick to your plan.

– Be Realistic –

One of the biggest reasons we fail to accomplish our New Year’s resolutions is that we tend to set unrealistic goals.  Wanting to lose 100 pounds and make more money and get organized and quit smoking all at the same time probably isn’t going to be very effective.  To help you stick to your goals, you should pick one or two really important things you want to work on and focus exclusively on those, instead of trying to completely reinvent yourself in one year.  Also, be sure that your goal is actually attainable.  If you have a heart condition and are in terrible physical shape and your goal is to climb Mount Everest before the end of the year, you may be in for some serious disappointment.  This is not to say that you can’t set goals that really challenge you physically and mentally.  It is simply important to be honest with yourself in regards to what you can and can’t accomplish.  The last thing you want to do is set yourself up for failure.

– Be Specific –

The next big problem is that most of our goals aren’t specific enough.  While it may be okay to right “lose weight” on your New Year’s resolution list, this doesn’t tell you anything about how much weight or how you’re going to lose this weight.  In order to make your resolution more effective, you need to be specific about what you want to accomplish.  A better resolution may be “to lose 1 pound a month throughout the year,” or “to go to the gym at least twice a week before work.”  The more specific you are about your goal, the more solidified it will be in your mind.

– Be Task Oriented –

It’s great to want to lose weight, but how are you going to accomplish it?  I can almost guarantee you that the weight’s not just going to melt off of you on its own.  So, what do you need to do to make this goal a reality?  For each resolution you have on your list, write at least ten action items that you must do to accomplish your goal.  Here is a sample list to help you get started.

Resolution: “Lose 1 pound a month throughout the year”

To Do List:
1. Make an appointment to see a nutritionist (February 1st)
2. Get a physical check-up (February 5th)
3. Join a gym (February 6th)
4. Make an appointment to see a physical trainer (February 7th)
5. Begin going to the gym twice a week (February 11th)
6. Join a cardio kick boxing class (February 18th)
7. Eat less than XXXX calories per day based on recommendation by nutritionist (daily)
8. Eat more small meals throughout the day, rather than two or three big meals (daily)
9. Take doctor approved multivitamins (daily)
10. Walk everywhere possible instead of driving or taking elevators (daily)
11. Get some small weights and a workout video that I can do at home on days I don’t feel like going to the gym.

This is just a sample of course and you should make sure to check with a doctor and other healthcare professional before starting any new program (See how I just snuck the disclaimer in there).  But I want to point out a few things.  First, notice that there are dates next to a lot of the tasks.  This is really beneficial because it helps you set smaller goals as part of your larger objective that are easier to accomplish and very tangible.  Also, there is a great feeling that comes with being able to check off one item after another as you progress towards fulfilling your resolutions.  Second, notice that each item is fairly specific.  Some of them are simple one-time action items, while others may be ongoing, but they are all very action oriented.  By breaking down your resolution into more easily achievable chunks or tasks, you are getting one step closer to success.  As you progress, make sure to keep updating the plan and adding more items to it.

– Be Strong –

One of the reasons people fail with their resolutions is that they don’t adequately foresee the obstacles they may face along the way.  Try to come up with a list like the following:

1.  My co-workers always go out to lunch to unhealthy places and I might want to join them.
2.  My family eats unhealthy foods, so it’ll be difficult to get healthy meals at home.
3.  The gym is far from my house, so it takes a long time to get my workout done.
4.  I really crave chocolate and don’t think I can remove it form my diet.
5.  I’m out of shape so working out may be difficult for me.

Once you’ve completed the list, take a look at each obstacle and come up with a plan for how you will overcome each one.  It is of paramount importance that you figure out possible solutions to each of these obstacles, otherwise you’ll end up falling prey to one of them.  It’s also important to realize that life is filled with ups and downs and it’s rare to be able to complete a difficult goal without stumbling a few times along the way.  Perseverance is the key here.  You’re taking a big step to accomplish a big task, and that requires strong, continued commitment.

– Be Forgiving –

You won’t always hit your mark on the first try.  As soon as you realize that you’ll most likely have some good days along with some bad days, you can stop beating yourself up when you’re in a slump.  Forgive yourself when you stray off the path and find ways to encourage yourself to get right back on.  Blaming or feeling negatively towards yourself will only make matters worse and make it harder to finish what you so boldly started.  Instead, figure out what got in your way and come up with a revised plan of action to achieve your goal.

– Be Happy! –

This is the most important thing to remember.  All that we do in life is in vain if we’re not happy.  If you’re absolutely miserable doing your resolution, you’ll not only find it more difficult to stick to, you’ll also build up more resentment towards it.  This in turn, will make you even less likely to ever finish the goal.  Of course, some times we have to do something for health reasons that may seem terrible in the short term, but that will bring happiness at a later time.  I believe strongly that to accomplish anything in this world, you have to have the right attitude.  Life is short and you should choose resolutions that will enhance your life by making you healthier and happier.

As the Vulcan saying goes, “Live long and prosper.”

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Ali Sharifi

Hi Everyone. My name is Ali Sharifi and I’m very happy you found my new Blog. I’ve been teaching stress relief, relaxation and meditation techniques for a very long time and finally decided to open up a blog so I can share my thoughts and ideas with you.

Please take a second to subscribe to my blog so you’ll know when I post new entries. Also, I’m VERY interested in your comments, questions and feedback about everything I post here, so don’t be bashful. Let me know what you’re thinking, even if you disagree with me.

Look forward to sharing a lot of exciting tips and techniques with you this coming year!

–Ali

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