by Blogsip Admin | Sep 20, 2022 | Self-Awareness
Research conducted over a decade ago showed that meditation reduces anxiety and stress, with potentially life-altering effects. Prolonged anxiety has been linked to depression, poor digestion, an increased risk of heart attacks, and a weakened immune system, and it can affect your entire body.
Here is how you can use meditation to reduce anxiety and move closer to better health and well-being.
- Simple breathing exercises to combat panic attacks
Panic attacks can be terrifying. Shaking, sweating, nausea, extreme dread, a racing heart, and even chest discomfort are possible symptoms. However, simple meditation practices can help you deal with a severe anxiety attack.
Start by removing yourself as much as you can from the unpleasant circumstance. Next, work on slow, deep breathing. Guy Joseph Ale, the founder of Lifespan Seminar, suggests a straightforward breathing technique to assist you in controlling stress. You could discover that a relaxing mantra helps you focus and regulates how long you hold each breath.
- Self-guided meditation to reduce anxiety
Even if you don’t experience panic attacks, anxiety can still have negative physical and emotional impacts. In fact, may feel “stressed out.” These things are particularly harmful because the harm to your body continues to exist and has even developed into a chronic condition.
- Find quiet time alone
Give yourself some self-time. Whether it is an hour or 15 minutes, make the most of it! Shut off your phone and block out all outside noise. Consider playing calming music at a low volume if outside noises like traffic distract you.
- Make yourself comfortable
Lying down may seem relaxing, and you might benefit from sleep. But learning how to be mindful and control your tension while awake is also an element of practicing meditation to lower anxiety. A cozy chair, pillows for the floor or to use as bedposts, or a meditation pillow can all be beneficial.
- Relax with measured breathing
To calm your entire body, you can take slow and measured breaths can help. Just inhale from your nose slowly and deeply, then hold your breath for a moment and exhale through pursed lips. You can adjust your breathing pattern until that sensation reduces. Practice to breath from your lower chest and belly, also known as diaphragmatic breathing.
- Consider using visualization techniques
You might discover that within a few seconds, ideas like goals, outcomes, and other things start to cross your mind. If you wish to get rid of them, visualizing can help. Whatever relaxes you, imagine it. Imagine a serene lake, forest retreat, or ocean with waves that move in sync with your breath. Such images not only assist in reducing anxiety, but they also help you forget about your troubles.
by Blogsip Admin | Sep 19, 2022 | Changing Personal Habits
The worst thing in life is experiencing failure. Once you know that you are not perfect, you can reset your mindset to recognize your faults and learn from them. The road to success is indeed made from past failures. Failures can teach you lessons that you would not have learned otherwise. Below we have listed five powerful lessons to learn from failure.
- Failure Teaches that Success is Never Guaranteed
One who has experienced failure knows that success is never guaranteed. Sometimes some factors are out of your control which leads to failure.
If you have faced major failure, you know that things can go wrong despite how much effort you put in. So, experiencing failure pushes you to go forward to your dreams which eventually leads to success.
- Failure Teaches You to Embrace Change
If you are experiencing failure means, there is something wrong you are doing. So, to overcome failure, you need to change something in your approach. For this, you need to look back, examine what is wrong you are doing, and then choose the changes to be made which are necessary to lead to success. By doing so, you understand that the only way to crush failure is to embrace change.
- Failure is a Great Source of Motivation
After facing failures, many people feel like quitting. However, people having the right mindset, treat failure as a great source of motivation. So, do not worry if you have failures. Instead, let it push you to work harder until you achieve your goals.
- Failure Teaches to Stay Humble
Success is a terrible instructor. After experiencing a string of successes, most people frequently allow success to cloud their heads. You begin to feel invincible and as though everything you attempt was destined to be successful. Unfortunately, arrogance frequently results from this. You begin taking on riskier bets as a result of your conviction that nothing can stop you. This eventually positions you for failure.
But if you’ve been through failure, you never let success get to you. Even when things are going well, you are aware that anything might change. This helps you to stay humble by reminding you that you are only human. Additionally, it makes it simpler to manage problems you face in the future. If you’ve always succeeded in all of your endeavors and naively think you can’t fail, dealing with failure is much harder.
- Failure Teaches that not every Idea is Worth Pursuing
Sometimes, pursuing the wrong idea can lead you to failure. Every idea that pops into your head is not a great one. So, through failures, you know how to filter your ideas, conduct evaluations, and pursue the ideas that lead to success.
Wrapping Up
The fact is, no one wants to go through a major failure, but it is inevitable. You cannot avoid failures if you are attempting something new that you have done never before. So, despite losing hope by experiencing failure, learn the important lessons from these failures to move forward towards your success.
by Blogsip Admin | Sep 19, 2022 | Changing Personal Habits
Sometimes, you may feel some challenges in your life. To overcome them you need to put in some extra effort. In this situation, you recognize the need for self-care. Self-care is listening to your body, checking in on your moments, intentionally tuning into the thoughts going on in your mind, and challenging your behaviors and belief systems if you feel that things are going out of alignment in your life. So, adopting a self-care practice that can improve your life, here we have listed five approaches you can follow:
5-Step Process for Creating and Getting Into a Self-Care Routine
Follow these five steps to create and get into self-care practice:
- Find what makes you feel centered.
Gill Lopez, who organizes self-care workshops for students, professional groups, and community groups, exposes participants to different types of self-care because one size doesn’t fit all. She said that she has gone through different types of things that may appeal to people in hopes that they will find something to do routinely. So, do something which brings you joy on a regular basis, whether it is playing, listening to music, or anything else.
- Brainstorm to incorporate those things into your daily life.
You can do your interesting activities in the background, or you can make more central space for your daily routine activities. Starting doing your activities for a small time may make the habit easier to get into, so try adding just one new self-care routine at a time.
- Set goals for including self-care behaviors every day.
Now, once you choose the self-care routine you like to integrate into your life, set a goal on how often and when to do it. Make your goal realistic and measurable. For example, if you’re trying to disconnect yourself from electronic devices to be more present, start with a short period of time. When you successfully stick to that period of time for a week, you can set a more challenging goal.
- Find support.
To keep your self-care practices regular and fun, Freitag suggests relying on your support system. Find people who engage in the same self-care activities so you can perform them better together.
- Change and adjust your approach as you go.
If there are difficulties along the way, that’s okay. Ellen K. Baker, Ph.D., a psychologist with a practice in Washington, DC, says that “we’re talking about a practice, trial, and error, and our needs evolving through time.” “What may constitute self-care at one time may not be at another time.” Self-care techniques that are simple to follow include reading a book to your child (or to yourself) each night, going for a 10-minute stroll outside, getting to bed early, turning off your electronics in the evening, cooking with healthier ingredients, and surrounding yourself with cheerful things.
Final Words
By giving time to the activities which give you healthy habits and routines, you’ll be better placed to handle life’s ups and downs. So, remember that everyone deserves self-care. And the bonus is, that the better your self-care, the better you can take care of others.
by Blogsip Admin | Mar 23, 2022 | Self-Awareness
Epitomizing a positive attitude, Find the Upside of the Down Times provides advice for turning bad situations into opportunities.
If you’ve ever been through tough times and wondered why it happened to you, you might have been comforted by Rabbi Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People (First Anchor Books, 1981). Turn your bad experiences into good ones! Rob Pennington, MD (Resource International, 2011) is a perfect complement to Kushner.
Kushner helps questioners suffering through tragic events that seem patently unfair to those who have done their best to live good lives. Where Kushner does an excellent job of assisting people in dealing with the “How could this happen to me?” question, Pennington ignores that aspect and focuses instead on how to make the most of the cards you are dealt. He doesn’t minimize the impact of adverse events but chooses to focus instead on how to move forward despite them.
A Positive Attitude Strategy
The tone of Find the Upside of the Down Times is clear from Pennington’s opening sentence of chapter 1: “I was shot in the center of the chest by an unknown assailant…It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.” Is this man insane? How can being shot be a good thing?
Pennington’s theme can best be summed up this way: Stuff happens to us all. Some of it is terrible, but stop whining and get on with your life. It is not a direct quote but seems to be his theme as he repeatedly points out that positive opportunities always exist, despite the overwhelming nature of a problem. But, of course, you must be looking for them to find positive possibilities, and Pennington provides many suggestions.
Rob Pennington
What are Pennington’s qualifications for giving such advice? Aside from his Ph.D. in psychology, his personal experiences include: Being shot in the chest; Facing a thirty-six thousand dollar hospital bill without medical insurance; Being divorced by his first wife; Being fired; Being threatened with divorce by his second wife; Becoming the caregiver for his second wife when she becomes incurably ill with MS.
The reader might suspect the author suffers from acute Pollyannaish symptoms—being in severe denial of the terrible situations he faced. But Pennington isn’t advocating ignoring a tragedy by calling it a chance; He means we should accept negative occurrences without concentrating on them, then move on to constructive behaviors like seeking out and seizing new possibilities.
He sums up that philosophy this way: “It is a lot easier to get out of a rut if you look for a way out than if all you think about is what won’t work.”
Among the many tidbits of advice for dealing with adversity are tips for:
- Reducing everyday stresses like lengthy queues and traffic bottlenecks.
- A three-step process for finding a positive possibility in an adverse event.
- Stress as a signal for transformation.
- A five-step process for taking proactive action to change a negative circumstance.
- A preference versus requirement process for dealing with relationship issues.
Dealing with the Stress of Bad Things
Find the Good in Bad Times is not only filled with excellent advice for those facing adverse situations, but it’s also an exciting recounting of one man’s way of dealing with life situations most of us fear but never have to face.
Though Pollyannaish might seem to focus on opportunities within tragic events, the strategies are fundamentally sound and consistent with advice from positive psychologists’ research.
by Blogsip Admin | Mar 23, 2022 | Changing Personal Habits
Learn the definition of fear and how fear is the number one obstacle to individuals striving to achieve success.
“Fear is the mind-killer,” Frank Herbert said. A coward dies several times before he dies,” while “the valiant dies just once.” Rev. Edward Kirkpatrick says that “God cannot help you unless you have faith, and the Devil cannot touch you unless you have fear.” It is very accurate. It is best to think of fear as a karmic death nail. Fear of any kind is a lack of faith and a lack of confidence, and both are deadly.
Since we know fear is a bad thing, we have many euphemisms for it. We prefer to call it anxiety, dread, worry, concern, or fretting, but these experiences are rooted in fear. So the important thing is to stop excusing your fear and get rid of it.
What is Fear?
Fear may be best understood as an entity. It is a separate being that lives in your mind and the minds of others. It feeds on your thoughts and, in turn, regurgitates those thoughts as something other than, and worse than, the initial concerns you may have had. Where does the entity come from? You make it! You create it with the power of your mind. You have created your own worst enemy, and now you must best it. It takes knowledge and passion, but the ability can be learned, and the power is available.
Fear can be palpable. You wrestle with it in the dark, in dreams, and the recesses of your subconscious. For example, you may wrestle with fear when you have to speak in public, apply for a job, face someone you aren’t comfortable with or do something new for the first time.
Sometimes fear seems to take form and whip you quicker than any bully on the playground. But unfortunately, fear is the tool of all playground bullies. Without fear, a bully is powerless.
In adult life, bullies are anything that keeps you from your goal or keeps you from being happy by inducing fear. Thus there are many bullies in life. Humans often intimidate each other, either knowingly or unknowingly. Circumstances seem to bully and often feel inescapable. Worst of all is the inner bullies. Inner bullies are those voices you have allowed yourself to remember whenever you feel self-doubt.
Fear of Failure as an Inner Voice
The record of every time you ever felt that you failed or did less than your best resides in your head as a voice. Often, parents, teachers, friends, and grade-school classmates were the first to point out your shortcomings, and their condemning voices are now a part of your psychological makeup. It is silly to think of these people, many of whom are insignificant to us now, still torture us for things we had done when we were so much younger, yet we all still feel like that same kid who lost their homework in third grade, left our math book in the rain, or perhaps didn’t dress like the other children.
You hear a voice in your brain saying you’re inadequate. What could you accomplish if you could silence these voices and think things out in a fresh way, based not on the past but upon the eternal now? Who would you become if you realized that you are new to change every day? You can become whatever you wish at any moment as an act of your will. You are not stuck in your old pattern of thinking and being. Now realize that you remove the power from these bullies by taking out the fear factor. Those of courage can overcome all the bullies. You can develop that kind of courage.
by Blogsip Admin | Mar 22, 2022 | Changing Personal Habits
Keys to Success Series, this article discusses the obstacles to change and how to overcome those obstacles under duress.
Evoking Change in Adversity
Life has a way of pressing people down and locking them into a pattern of behavior that makes it impossible to win. They are pushing too hard, trying to break even to focus on any goal. As a result, they become too weak, busy, and numb to make changes. They feel forced to keep things going the way they are. It is hard to improve anything when it’s all you can do to keep functioning. (You can’t repair your automobile while traveling at 80 mph.)
You are never in a hurry to check the road map.
Another point about going eighty miles an hour down the road non-stop is that you might run out of gas. Burnout comes to the best of us. Take a break to re-energize. Check the roadmap. Think about where you are going. When we are in a hurry, we waste time going in the wrong direction or have traffic accidents. We need to calm down and reflect.
Those who live life frantic to achieve their goals have their rewards. Well-placed ambition has its merits; however, you are headed for disaster if you get too desperate. It is good to pace yourself and take a little time to smell the flowers once in a while. Also, the more you do, the more you need to plan carefully. Avoid frantic and repetitive actions; try to find a better way.
Often attitude can make all the difference between calm success and a frantic nightmare of jumbled actions that could have been done more efficiently and with less effort. Taking the time to do a little inventory may be just what you need. Perhaps you are spinning your wheels a bit. Take stock of your life. See if you can order your life in a new and creative way. Removing the drama, fear, and pain will give you more time for productive and benevolent pursuits.
Learn to ignore nonproductive criticism
Discouragement often comes from those we love most. Whenever a great idea is discussed, someone is there to point out how impossible it is. How simple it is for them to condemn people who want to innovate. It is easy for them to sit back and laugh at others who are trying while resting on their laurels.
A difficult task to do when trying to change is to ignore the naysayer. There will be many in life. One must rise above the crowd to reach one’s potential. Ask yourself when someone criticizes you for your goals, what their goals are and how they have accomplished them. If someone is an expert in your field and has many accomplishments, perhaps you should hear them out. Maybe they will have suggestions and constructive criticism, but don’t let anyone steal your dreams. Keep trying. Until then, keep going. Don’t let the voices of those who don’t believe stop you. Go for it. Learning to ignore negativity is a learned skill. It takes knowledge and practice. We will learn more about this in the following courses.
Most importantly, you can become victorious over your inner bullies, the ultimate naysayers. More than anyone, your inner bullies know your weak points. They will be so shocked when your weak points aren’t there to pick anymore. Once you remove the pain from your past and realize that the old you don’t exist anymore and that you are a new creature moment by moment, they can’t hold you down anymore. It will work on human naysayers too.
