The key to enjoying life and making the most of everyday is to notice the little things in life that happen all around us, taking a moment at a time and slowing down, relaxing and just enjoying each and every precious minute throughout the day. Today’s world is filled with hustle, people rushing here there and everywhere without a minute to spare, we have more advancements in technology to help in our life yet we still don’t seem to have a minute to spare for ourselves. In order to fully enjoy every moment of everyday it is essential we slow down, learn to relax a little and think about ourselves, what we want out of life, what we enjoy doing, what makes us happy and puts a smile on our face.

 In order to get the most out of everyday you have to start with yourself, it is essential that you look after yourself, eat a healthy diet, get plenty of exercise, make sure you get enough sleep and take care of yourself in general. Having a daily schedule is also a necessity, by planning a daily schedule you are to make sure you give yourself some “me” time, we all need time to our self to just enjoy doing what we like, be it listening to music, talking a walk, a long hot soak in the tub or a hobby. So what can we do to make sure we get the most out of everyday? Here are some tips to help you
 
Forgive yourself
If at the end of your day you find you didn’t accomplish all that you set out to do then forgive yourself and say to yourself “I did the best I possibly could and made the most of today, tomorrow is a brand new day”.
 
Your daily to-do-list
We all have certain chores that must be done on a daily basis, do these chores in order of importance and don’t let them pile up, however sing along to the radio while you are doing the dishes, dance along with the vacuum as you push it around the house. Take pleasure in doing mundane chores and turn them into an enjoyable experience instead of moaning and grumbling about having to do them.
 
Take regular breaks
Whether you are at home or work, give yourself a break every now and again, even if its only for 5 minutes, learn a quick relaxation technique and unwind if you are beginning to feel tense. If at work then get up and stretch your legs or grab a cup of coffee and say hello with a smile to everyone you pass on your way to the coffee machine.
 
Do something you enjoy doing
Make it a point to set some time aside just for you, to do what you want to do, this could be reading, taking a bubble bath, meditating, going to the gym or basically anything which you really enjoy doing and which makes you feel good and puts a smile on your face.
 
Positive thinking
Try to have a positive attitude towards to life even when things aren’t particularly going the way we want them too, look for the good in the situation and what you can learn from it, rather than looking at it in a totally negative way.
 

Do you feel there is something missing from your life? That perhaps the world is against you or that other people seem to smile, laugh and be a lot more happy and contented in life than you are? Have you ever stopped to wonder why this might be? Or even, what you can do about it? Have you even considered what happiness actually is?
 
Happiness and peace in life is different for all of us, what makes one person happy doesn’t necessarily bring contentment to another. Very often we are happy in life but we just don’t realize it. Very often the hustle of life can completely overtake all else and leaves us little time to enjoy the things that make us smile and enjoy life to the fullest. If you stop and sit down and think about what actually makes you happy and feel content, you might actually find you have those things already around you but you just didn’t realize it.
 
However, there are times when we can get into a slump and haven’t yet come across the conditions that we regard as bringing happiness and being content. If this is the case then you have to figure out what changes you need to make, to bring happiness into your life, in most cases it is the smallest of things which bring happiness and you have the power to gain them by working towards them.
 
Your happiness and peace depends entirely on you, no one else can give it you, it is something inside you that you have to find and work towards. You can either decide to stop in the rut or to take positive action and make changes to your life or yourself in order to accomplish the feat of being content.
 
In order to understand what happiness means to you, the first step you should take is looking at your emotions, ask yourself questions such as “if I could be enjoying something in my life, what would it be?” and “what makes me feel content with my life right now?” Once you understand what your vision of happiness and peace is you can build on what you have now or focus on changing your life to what you would like it to be.
 
The important thing to remember is to examine your feelings by way of the answers you give to your questions, examine them honestly and concentrate on the good or bad feelings that you get from your questions and answers.
 
There is no magic spell or potion that can bring you happiness and peace, it is something that is already right there inside of you, you just have to realize what it is and develop and bring it out to start enjoying life. Happiness can be found in family life, work, relationships, nature or a pet, to name just a few, in fact it can be found in anything and any situation if you just know where to look and look in the right direction, the inner you.

How many times have we said to ourselves “I hate this or that” or even “ I hate him/her”, but where does hate get us, does it make us feel any better by declaring we hate something or somebody?  Hate is a negative feeling and negative feelings only bring about bad. When we think of the word hate we start to have thoughts of coldness towards others or something, we automatically isolate ourselves from that person or situation and nothing good can come from feelings such as these. There are many types of hate such as racial, sexual, ethnicity or just plain disliking a situation or disliking a situation due to a phobia, here are some ways you can think about turning the hatred into a more positive and good approach.

Racial hate
People are people, we are all flesh and blood whatever the colour of our skin or our background in life, we all have the same color blood flowing through our veins; we have the same shape hearts and brains, we all have fingers, toes and the ability to communicate. Why then do so many people profess to hate someone else just because they have a different color skin or come from a different country? It is worthwhile remembering that underneath we are all basically the same and want the same out of life for ourselves and our families, there are good and bad people of all colors and nationalities in life. So instead of just hating someone because the look differently to you, look deeper inside than the color of the skin, see the true person.

Hate due to a phobia
People can truly hate certain situations or objects in life due to an excessive phobia, this could be a hate of heights, spiders, snakes, the dentist or being enclosed in elevators. This type of hate is brought about by fear, a deep fear of something or situation that for those affected have hardly any or no control over, however since fear is all about feelings and thoughts, fear and hate of this type can be controlled with the mind with a little help and know how. An analyst can help to turn this type of hate and fear into a more positive outlook and help the person overcome the phobia and turn a fearful situation into a good one.

Everyone gets angry at sometime in their life over something that happens.  However, anger is a negative emotion that leads to feelings of sadness, guilt, frustration, unhappiness and helplessness. Anger is an emotion which we must recognize and be able to let go in order to be happy and successful in life, finding a resolution for the anger is essential in being able to let it go and move on.

Knowing what you are actually angry with helps.  Finding out what actually upsets you is an important factor in actually narrowing down what it is that is bothering you. The more you practice controlling your anger the easier it becomes to let it go and move on and by learning to control your anger you are effectively learning to take control over your life and happiness. Here are 5 top tips for gaining control over your anger.

1.     When you feel anger beginning to build up inside of you, let your whole body droop and relax to the best of your ability while beginning to breathe from the diaphragm, breathing in this way helps to calm both the body and mind which leads to letting go of the anger before it takes a hold.

2.    Visualize a stress free zone in your mind, this should be a place where you feel totally relaxed and calm and a place which only you knows about where you can quickly go too when you feel anger beginning to build up inside. It can be a totally imaginary place or one that you have visited in life where you feel totally relaxed and at ease.

3.      Realize that it’s you and you alone that is allowing the anger to build up inside of you, while it may have been caused by someone else, you chose to let it bother you and to get angry.

4.     Counting to 10 really can help to diffuse anger, by concentrating on counting you are forgetting what happened and are consciously letting anger go.

5.     Repeat an affirmation or mantra to yourself whenever you feel anger beginning to build up inside, for example tell yourself to “take it easy”, “I feel calm and relaxed”, “anger isn’t going to get me anywhere” or “let it go”. Affirmations can help to diffuse your anger and get you back on the right track to thinking in a more positive and calming way.

Nearly anyone and everyone – people of all ages worldwide – is prone to displays of anger. The degree of frequency and level of intensity of the emotion are what vary most and most often result in how well a person handles the anger and whether there are positive or negative results.
 
A key to those who successfully manage anger is gaining control. And in order to gain control over the emotion, it helps to first take a look at anger itself, what it is and how to deal with it effectively.
 
Anger is an emotion. It can be triggered by a variety of things, issues, people, places, etc. Some of the top triggers are jealousy, confrontations, failure, greed, fear, low self-esteem, assertiveness, feeling threatened and pain.  I call it “war” simply because when you have massive anger you start a war inside yourself that can’t be won.
 
When a person gets angry, the negative emotion can actually harm the person’s physical and emotional well-being. The heart rate increases, stress levels rise, and often a fight or flight reaction is the immediate response, neither one always presenting a healthy alternative.
 
What counters anger best is to be prepared in advance to learn major triggers, how to tell when they are about to happen, when possible, so as to avoid them, plus a variety of coping skills in order to deal with what is necessary. To help, keep a private journal to note any anger triggers, ways to possibly avoid confrontations down the road and possible coping techniques to try.

Burnout is a term that is closely related to stress. Burnout occurs when your body and mind are continually stressed to the point when you begin to develop emotional and physical fatigue. If you have been continually subjected to high levels of stress over an extended period of time it can bring feelings that eventually have an effect on every aspect of your life, it is said then that you have suffered a  “burnout”.
 
While burnout is related to severe stress, it is different from just being excessively stressed. Many people live for years with long-term stress without “burning out”. While signs and symptoms of a burnout can be very similar to those felt when stressed, when you “burnout”, you have the symptoms of stress but along with this also feelings of emotional exhaustion and negativity.
 
The signs that you may be heading for “burnout” include the following symptoms, lower down the scale indicates symptoms you may feel the closer to “burnout” you become.

•  You begin to have problems with your digestive system
• Your blood pressure starts to rise
• You begin to suffer severe headaches
• You start grinding your teeth consistently
• You begin to feel extremely fatigued
• You may suffer from heart problems or even heart attack
• You may suffer from stroke
• You begin to feel increasingly hopeless and powerless
• You begin to feel dissociation
• Satisfaction from work and life in general deteriorates
• Feelings of deep resentment build up
• You feel in a rut and there is no way out 
• You become withdrawn and totally isolated
• You feel incompetent and a total failure
 

The end result of these symptoms show one as suffering from “burnout” due to continual and unrelenting long periods of stress, they are nothing more than the result of an extremely tired body and mind. At the time of actual “burnout” you will be experiencing problems not only at work but also with relationships and almost every aspect of what you used to know as “normal” life.
 
In order to prevent burnout it is important that you recognize the symptoms and try to eliminate as much stress as possible from your life. Stress management is essential to prevent burnout and using stress management techniques can prevent many of the symptoms. To reduce burnout or prevent it you can take the following precautions by making changes to your physical, mental and social well-being.
 
• Have a complete physical with your doctor
• Make sure you eat a health diet
• Make sure you are getting enough daily exercise
• Make sure you get enough sleep
• Learn relaxation techniques to deal with stress and stressful situations
 
 

Stress affects people in different ways, but it is usually only the severity of the symptoms that differs while the actual symptoms remain basically the same. Some people are much easier to stress than others while some lose their cool for the slightest reasons, others can seemingly take a lot before the give in to stress and begin to show the common signals related to stress.
 
Stress can also be divided into two categories, short-term stress and long-term stress. Stress is generally regarded as short term if a situation comes up that you aren’t used to in everyday life such as an interview, an exam or going to the dentist. While the signals of short term stress and long term stress are the same, if you are only stressed in the short term these feelings are only with you on the day of the event or just before and quickly disappear once the event has passed. Once this has passed your body settles down and you think no more about the feelings of stress and anxiety and it passes with no trouble.
 
However, long term stress differs because it has the same signals as short term stress only they are with you almost everyday, constantly affecting your body and mind and developing into deep seated anxiety and panic attacks occasionally, if left to its own devices.
 
The common signals listed below could be warning signs that you are suffering from stress, either in the short term or long term and can vary from person to person in the severity
 
• Feeling cold sweats and feeling very flushed or hot
• Your heart seems to pound or beat much more quickly than it should
• Your hands may feel cold and they may tremble
• You lose the ability to concentrate and even think properly
• You feel a terrible feeling that you cant describe
• Your skin feels itchy or as some people put it as though something is crawling beneath your skin
• You find it hard to settle down and often your sleeping patterns change with you laying awake for hours while feeling exhausted
• You sleep but wake up feeling more tired than when you went to bed
• Your energy levels drop and you begin to feel lethargic and have no interest in the things you once did
 

With the summer seeming to be a long way off and the dark cold winter mornings set in many of us become affected by the season. Winter depression or the winter blues is also known as SAD, seasonal affective disorder; it is something that is thought to affect millions of people and it ranges from mild symptoms to the more severe.
 
So what are the symptoms of SAD? And what if anything can be done about it to enable you to survive the winter blues? The symptoms vary from person to person with it affecting some more than others; however the symptoms listed below are the most common with just the severity changing.
 
• Having problems with sleep is the most common, this usually is sleeping more than normal but not feeling refreshed no matter how long you slept. The feeling of not wanting to get out of bed and also needing to take a nap during the day is also common.
• Many people overeat during the winter months with a particular craving for carbohydrates; this of course leads to piling on weight.
• Depression very often sets in with the darker and colder days and nights.
• Despair and misery often affects the person with feelings of being “out of sorts” to feeling sad and tearful for what seems to be the smallest things.
• Social problems and problems with relationships can also creep in, you find yourself snapping at your partner, being annoyed by them and avoiding going out with friends.
• A feeling of lethargy and everything becomes an effort, you find yourself becoming increasingly tired.
• During this period of time you find yourself catching colds and other illnesses more easily; this is due to lowered resistance to infection.
• Behavioural problems can occur particularly in younger people.
 
The symptoms of seasonal affective disorder will usually start to occur from around September and can last until around April, but symptoms will of course peak during the darkest and coldest months.
 
It is thought the reason behind SAD is the lack of bright light during the winter months, which although the exact reasons why this happens is unknown, it is thought that bright light does affect the brain chemistry. With the knowledge that bright light or the lack of it does have this effect; the treatment used for those who are severely affected by SAD is to be in bright light for periods of time during the winter months. Vacationing in a brighter climate during the winter or keeping your house well lit can achieve this
 

Jealous Girl

Jealousy is an emotion that can have devastating consequences to a relationship. Jealousy is a negative emotion that many of us suffer from to some extent; it is a feeling of emotions such as anger, hurt, dependency and self-doubt. Self-doubt stems from a fear of losing something, when in fact we ourselves often make this reality by our behaviour and actions through jealousy. A few steps for you to overcome jealousy in your life.

• Become independent – you should only truly rely on yourself and never develop dependency on one person, focus on developing self-independence and on what you have in life, not what you don’t have
• Give yourself a confidence boost – treat yourself to a new hair-do, a day at the spa or a new outfit, do something to give yourself a boost in confidence. If your confidence is very low then attend a course on how to assert yourself
• List what makes you feel jealous – sit down and admit to yourself what makes you feel jealous, list them down and be open in your thinking, are they silly things that make you jealous? And do they really matter?
• Talk your fears over with the person – sit down and talk with the person who is causing you to feel jealous and let them know how you feel. Are they doing something intentionally to make you jealous? Or without realizing it? If the person truly cares for you then they are usually more than willing to make changes, especially if they didn’t realize they were causing you to worry and feel this way
• Take a good and honest evaluation of yourself – being honest about yourself and admitting you might have problems with low self-esteem or self-worth can be an eye opener and is the first steps to changing your feelings
• Study the person you are jealous about – look at the person openly and honestly, figure out what you dislike about the person and what do you like if anything, about them? Ask yourself if you are being unrealistic in your thinking
• Don’t magnify your feelings – unless the jealousy is severe or it has been with you for a long time then chances are it is only fleeting and can have occurred for many reasons, with any luck these feelings will pass over and your relationship will calm down. Until this happens try to keep your feelings under control and don’t let them spiral.

There are many self-help methods that can be used to help those who suffer from severe jealousy, these vary from hypnotherapy courses, audio CDS, books and magazines, any technique which can be used to help relax and calm you down can also be helpful, particularly at those times when jealousy first strikes.

No matter how hard we try and how positive we try to remain about situations, we all end up having to deal with disappointments sometime during our life. We set goals in order to succeed in life.  Even though we give it our best shot, things don’t always turn out as expected and disappointment sets in. Disappointment in itself is not particularly a bad thing; its how we choose to deal with it that can make a difference. If we simply choose to accept the failure and allow the disappointment to wash over us and quickly go away we don’t suffer adverse consequences, it is only when we allow the disappointment to linger and we dwell on it that negativity and bad feelings can stay with us.

Some disappointment in life can be good for us because it allows us to grow and develop and practice thinking positively, going through disappointment and coming out the other side still wearing a smile makes us realize that no matter what life throws at us we can overcome it. Here are some tips to help you deal with and overcome disappointment when it rears its head.

• Realize that grief, stress, anxiety, fear, pain and suffering are just a natural part of life that we have to go through, it’s how we deal with it and come out the other side that matters.
• If family members or loved ones are causing you disappointments remember that no one is invulnerable, you cannot always live up to your expectations or yourself so how can you expect others to be perfect.
• When faced with disappointment instead of looking at it as though it is a bad thing, welcome it and think of it as a test or challenge.
• When things go wrong analyse the situation, see what you can learn from it and then let it go.
• Don’t except anything more from life than what you are willing to put in, if you don’t expect anything more, you won’t be disappointed.