1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height.
Let the doctor worry about them. That is why you pay him/her.

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening,
whatever. Never let the brain idle. ” An idle mind is the devil’s
workshop.” And the devil’s name is Alzheimer’s.

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who is
with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it’s family, pets,
keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.

8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable,
improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9. Don’t take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, to the next county, to
a foreign country, but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.

And so we must cherish all the good moments of our holidays and give them the highest priority in our memory banks. Better yet, after duly noting any lessons to be learned from our unpleasant life experiences, we benefit tremendously (mentally and physically) from assigning  our bad memories a permanent “time out” status.  In fact, deep breathing myself back into the present moment and living each one fully are among my most valuable stress management “tools.”  I count on these “tools” when I get stuck dwelling on painful past memories or unproductively worrying about the future.  Don’t get me wrong …. planning ahead wisely is a worthwhile endeavor….unproductive worrying, however, is costly.  It costs us the moments at hand, stress and usually resolves nothing … unproductive.

This familiar quote rings so true with me …..”We don’t remember days…we remember moments.” So with another holiday season upon us, I will be looking for and cherishing all the good moments that occur with family and friends and I will refuse to let the not-so-good ones dampen my spirits. How about you?

Nancy

With all that said, my husband and I do pretty good at making room for mini-breaks in our lives even if only for a fleeting few minutes or hours.  Still, we allowed  too many years to slip by before we took our an extended break from the world.  We tried to get away in 2008 but our house sitter fell through at the last minute (which meant a painful vacation rental deposit forfeiture in addition to the disappointment of it all…Grrrrrr).

Back to our recent “escape” from reality…. for 11 days, it was just the two of us…no work travels, no client calls, no horses, donkeys, dogs, cats to feed, tend to, no tense or toxic communications to survive…in other words, none of the normal twists and turns of our busy lives (Okay..I admit I did a little bit of twittering and email replying but it was truly a very little for me!).  And our vacation was truly wonderful from start to finish…perhaps the vacation life style we lived would be boring to many people as we didn’t run ourselves to death trying to see the sights, try out new restaurants or other typical vacation activities for many……we just stayed put as “they” say.  With the ocean as our backdrop, we hunkered down with plenty of food, books, good music, rocking chairs and movies.  TV was an option but was rarely turned on.  Ditto re my laptop.  It was quiet, restful, healing, uplifting and basically like one long, slow 11-day deep breath! Excuse the redundancy, but it truly was a rare and greatly appreciated “time off for good behavior” for both of us.

My wish for you — If you’re like us, you have a zillion excuses of why you can’t take an extended vacation.  I encourage you to re-ponder this one.  I admit it can be a pain in the ol’ wazoo making all the decisions regarding just HOW you’ll pull it off, where and when to go, finding a way to do it within tight budgets, coordinating house sitters, if needed, for  indoor pets, (and barn sitters for horse and donkey nuts like us), planning ahead work-wise, packing,loading, unpacking, unloading, etc., etc….but as we again learned, it is SO worth the effort.

For 11 blissful days, we were able to reacquaint and renew our bonds with ourselves and each other without the normal interruptions and diversions of our busy lives…. we had un-rushed moments to better reflect upon this wonderful journey on earth called life, the good and not-so-good people relationships in our lives,  important decisions-t0-be-made that were on our plate….to read books some of which had been in our to-be-read piles for years….to talk and walk together in conversation or silence…..to just be still.

One of my recent posts about the potential consequence of health care procrastination coupled with this one reflects my personal efforts during 2009 at ending at least some of my unwise procrastination habits.  Most of us are experts when it comes to procrastination from years of honing our delay tactic skills.  By the way, a great book on this subject was written many years ago by Dr. Linda Sapadin…while I haven’t read any of her newer books (again, procrastination’s my only excuse), I suspect they are as worthwhile to read as her first book, It’s About Time
The 6 Styles of Procrastination and How to Overcome Them. To this day, I recommend this book to my clients and seminar groups.  It is well written and as an aside, I decided I was guilty of practicing all 6 style of procrastination as described by Dr. Sapadin…I read it initially merely as an additional resource for my clients and workshop groups…and as many of these folks would tell you how it did indeed help them…however, it ended up being a very wise book for me to read for personal reasons and I highly recommend it to you.

I encourage you to do a private self-audit of any areas of your professional and personal life where your delayed health, relationship and/or stress management procrastination may be playing with fire so to speak.  We know when we are about to hit bottom or are in the midst of burnout whether we admit it to others or not or worse, we try to deny it ourselves.  And we know when we are flirting dangerously with ignored health matters and/or vacation deprivation.  I love being with family and friends, I am blessed with a career and business nurtured from my passions, I find peace  and comfort from the outside world within the loving arms of family and the joys of living on a small ranch with our sweet herd of 4-legged family members …BUT…still my husband and I needed a break – big time!  We all do…..breaks from all the good things in our lives and certainly from the not-s0-good …. time to de-stress, be still, play …. time to renew ourselves, our attitudes and our souls.

If this is an area of your life that might need more attention and less procrastination, then I wish you all the best as you make “it” happen.

With wishes for  plenty of “rocking chair” moments,

Nancy

Just thinking today about  easy it is some times to take our closest friends for granted.  If you’re guilty of doing that, make a commitment to change things pronto before it’s too late.  Like all worthwhile and beautiful things in our lives, friendships need nurturing and attention.  And if we just don’t have the time to take care of them, then we sure can’t act shocked or hurt when they eventually fade slowly out of our lives.  True friends lost because of being too busy to take care of these rare, precious “treasures” in our lives remind me of  a quote of a  Norman Cousins’ quote:

On a brighter note, let’s make it a point to call a close friend today…not email, not text…a real, live phone call.  Our day and theirs will be brighter for it and we’ll have a bit more energy in our steps when we return to the busyness of our days.

RT@TulsaBankruptcy Wishing you a happy & safe 4th of July. How about some Recession Fireworks? http://tinyurl.com/lbzqqo

Great cartoon although the painful truth behind it is sad.  I wish you and yours a 4th of July weekend that’s full of fun, good times with family and friends and a safe one.  Also hope we all take time to reflect on why we celebrate this special day in the history of our great country.  And, as we enjoy the surprise, beauty and excitement of all the firework shows this weekend, I for one am going to make some quiet time to think about any “fireworks” that I may be creating within my office and family….even if they are relatively small ones, I am committed to defusing it (or them) asap.  We can create personal fireworks in as many ways as pyrotechniciams can design exciting firework shows for us.  Some examples would be:

• blowing a gasket before we have all the facts about a situation;
• assuming the worse as only a true drama king or queen knows how to do;
• talking excessively loud in a restaurant or other public place;
• raising a ruckus over a really minor event in the big scheme of things;
• taking the most extreme, formal steps to settle a conflict with a colleague, family member, another individual or entity before trying to resolve the matter via alternative dispute options (e.g. plain old fashion sit down and talk session; mediation, etc.)
• last minute chaos at work or home due to our own lack of planning;
• yelling at our kids or spouses for small “stuff” after being professionally polite all day those certifiably real bullies in our workplace;
• being the office troublemaker….you know the type…they LOVE to keep trouble stirred up among the troops, they relish look for the failings of others and are almost always the ones who are super defensive whenever their mistakes are duly noted;
• publicly reacting to what employees did wrong, but rarely acknowledging all they’ve done right (When I’m right, who remembers and when I’m wrong, who the heck forgets?!); and
• overreacting to any hint of a problem, challenge or unexpected change in plans.

This is, of course, just a starter list off the top of my head so I encourage all of us to make a list of the destructive kind of “fireworks” that we personally may be imposing upon those around us.  If we are being brutally honest with ourselves and discover a few “explosive” habits that could stand some changing, let’s  fix it…..we can’t control a lot of the things that happen in our lives, but we can ensure that the only fireworks in our lives are those we enjoy on the 4th of July, New Year’s Eve, and other international celebrations.

Have a super, safe and fantastic weekend ahead and as always, thanks for stopping in for a few minutes…your comments and input are always welcome and enjoyed!

Nancy

The End(s!)

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time.  You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”

(H. Jackson Brown, Jr., Author…including Life’s Little Instructions Books)

Yet another all-too-quick weekend has come and gone and an exciting work week awaits us….hope your weekend was a great one from start to finish.  Mine was special for many reasons including some rare, beautiful hours cruising solo along the glorious Blueridge Parkway which we’re lucky to have almost in our backyard.  I spent several hours just sitting, contemplating this ‘n that and gazing at our beautiful NC Blue Ridge mountains…also got in a few laps around glorious Bass Lake in Blowing Rock – one of NC’s treasures for everyone to enjoy thanks to the generous entrepreneur and conservationist, Moses H. Cone.  Soon I hope to go back to Price Lake (yet another Parkway lake that lured me to its’ peaceful banks today).  Next time, I hope to take my bright banana-yellow keowee kayak which has sat neglected in a dusty ol’ hay barn for far too many years now.  That is going to change soon too due to the joyful memories that resurfaced as I watched the paddlers “cruising” the lake and heard their muffled faraway laughter and happy chattering.

What treasures lie in your “backyard” that like me, you may take for granted as you busily come and go in your community?  Have you visited them lately and acted: (1) as if you were a first-time curious and excited tourist visiting your area; and (2) as if you had nothing — absolutely nothing — else to do except to be still and enjoy the moment at hand in all its glory?  I’ve lived in our incredible NC northwestern mountains for 10 years now and while I’m always reminding clients, friends and faraway family members about all this area of the world has to offer, I am extremely guilty of not totally (and without being on a tight schedule!) immersing myself in the fun, joy and sheer delight of our mountains’ endless treasures.  Yes, I do visit the various attractions from time to time (too many to list, but places like Grandfather Mountain, Linville Gorge, etc., etc…the treasures are truly endless) when family, clients or out-of-town friends ask me to go with them…and that’s certainly fun.  With, however, all the visiting and talking going on, I can’t totally connect with the true essence of these places or certainly not in the way I can when I’m not running my mouth as much or when I’m alone or just with one other person (e.g. a significant other with whom you can be still/quiet with if you know what I mean).  I love doing for and being around our horses and donkeys, but I was reminded this weekend that even the wonderful things in our lives should not be allowed to utilize all our free time….just as we are far better at our jobs and other activities when we live balanced lives and take healthy breaks from our work, we are also wise to seek a wide diversity in our recreational/free-time activities.  Once again, our Moms were so right when they told us…too much of a good thing is ….well, TOO much!  I love and cherish the moments shared with family, friends, our horses and other 4-legged family members.  I’ve been clearly reminded this weekend, however, of how much can be gained from enjoying other activities as well and to do so in as leisurely and quiet a way as possible (e.g.  as my Granddaddy used to say….”Nance, never miss a good opportunity to just shut up!”)……redundancy can be a blessed thing and the lessons re-learned this weekend will serve me well for a long time to come!

Hope you get the chance to do the same in your community sooner rather than later…when you do, I hope you’ll have a few minutes to share your experience on this blog w/our readers…look forward to it!  Have a super week ahead…onward!