Stress Management: Shun the Addictions

(If you are interested in authentic management books, go to “Best Books” at: http://best-book-list.blogspot.com)

(Refer for the most authentic articles on Building Leadership and Management: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

Stress Management: Shun the Addictions

What is Addiction?

Any obsession and particularly an uncontrollable or unstoppable obsession of any thing or any activity is an addiction. Prolonged continuance with the addictions harms the addicted person immensely. The person gets into a habit where he cannot live without that addiction(s). He may suffer mild to serious physical and psychological maladies which over a long run may become chronic. Ultimately the outcomes of practicing the addictions make a person highly stressful and anxious.  

And when a person tries to keep himself away from an addiction or if he is compelled or forced to do so, he experiences discomfort, uneasiness, stress, anxiety, sadness and anger- the withdrawal symptoms. 

Apart from the stresses and resultant illness/disorders, created directly or indirectly by the addictions, all the addictions rob the victim off his time and resources.  Thus addictions are non-productive, non-value adding and waste of time and other related resources. They lead one to latch on to escapism. The addictions generate scars on the interpersonal relationships and that in turn may aggravate the stresses. 

Partial List of Types of Addictions

People may suffer from various kinds of addictions. There are known age old addictions and the modern life contributes to this list of addictions continually. The modern social fabric, technology and other factors give rise to new and newer types of addictions.

A partial list of some of the addictions are given below:

1. Drugs
2. Smoking
3. Drinking (alcohol)
4. Gambling
5. Race
6. Pornography
7. Sex
8. Internet (browsing)
9. Social networking on Internet
10. Mobile phone
11. Tablet computer and apps on it
12. Television
13. Coffee or tea over-drinking
14. Overeating
15. Shopping
16. Overworking
17. Over-exercising

Remedies from Addictions

1. Keep yourself sufficiently busy with productive and value-adding work and your hobbies/interests both at your work place and home. You mind will be occupied and will not get an easy chance to pick up an addictive habit.
2. Prevention or elimination is always better than any cure. So before you get caught by the addiction(s), recognize and understand your drift towards the addiction(s) and apply a break.
3. Try to control/stop the addiction by your own willpower/efforts and get out of it right in the beginning.
4. Make a disclosure of your addictive tendencies early on to someone you can confide in. The support and help from your confidant can go a long way in taking appropriate steps.
5. Consult your family doctor about your addictive tendencies/habits and get his guidance and medical attention.
6. In case of chronic illness/disorder consult an appropriate medical specialist/agency like a psychiatrist or a de-addiction center.

For More Guidance, Assistance, Training and Consultation

Contact: prodcons@prodcons.com

Training in all the soft skills and various management functions/techniques is imparted by Prodcons Group’s Mr Shyam Bhatawdekar and/or Dr (Mrs) Kalpana Bhatawdekar, eminent management educationists, management consultants and trainers- par excellence, with distinction of having trained over 150,000 people from around 250 organizations.

Also refer: (Prodcons Group) http://prodcons-group.blogspot.com/, (Training Programs by Prodcons Group) http://training-development-function.blogspot.com/, (Productivity Consultants) http://productivity-consultants.blogspot.com/

Other Topics of Interest: Counseling: General and Psychological

(Anger Management) http://controlling-anger.blogspot.com/
(Children’s Behavior Problems) http://child-behavior-problems.blogspot.com/
(Cholesterol Control) http://controlling-cholesterol.blogspot.com/
(Counseling: Psychological) http://counselingfamily.blogspot.com/
(Counseling: Psychological) http://counseling-family.blogspot.com/
(Cross Cultural Etiquette) http://cross-cultural-etiquette.blogspot.com/
(Do This Today) http://do-this-today.blogspot.com/
(Emotions) http://emotion-feeling.blogspot.com/
(Executive Etiquette and Manners)http://executive-manners.blogspot.com/
(Exercises) http://exercises-plan.blogspot.com/
(Family Counseling) http://family-harmony.blogspot.com/
(Health: Homeopathy) http://homeopathy-medicines.blogspot.com/
(Life Management: Competencies) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/competency-matrix/6txz9nck6g3/4#
(Life Management: Effectiveness Management: HSoftware) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/management-in-life-profession-family/6txz9nck6g3/3#
(Life management: I Am Liberated)http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/i-am-liberated/6txz9nck6g3/6#view
(Marriage Counseling) http://marriage-counsel.blogspot.com/
(Ownership on Job) http://job-ownership.blogspot.com/
(Parental Responsibilities) http://parental-responsibilities.blogspot.com/
(Personality) http://human-personality.blogspot.com/
(Qualities of Spouse) http://spouse-qualities.blogspot.com/
(Quit Smoking) http://quit-smoking-plan.blogspot.com/
(Self Development) http://managing-self.blogspot.com/
(Self-confidence) http://self-confidence-improvement.blogspot.com/
(Spiritual Quotient/Intelligence)http://spiritual-quotient.blogspot.com/
(Stress Management) http://managing-stress-strain.blogspot.com/
(Stress Management) http://management-of-stress.blogspot.com/
(Success in Life or Success) http://success-achievement.blogspot.com/
(Success in Life or Success) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/success-in-life/6txz9nck6g3/14#view
(Swine Flu and Its Prevention) http://swine-flu-precaution.blogspot.com/
(Telephone Etiquette) http://telephone-etiquette.blogspot.com/
(Walking) http://walking-plan.blogspot.com/
(Winners and Losers) http://winners-losers.blogspot.com/

Stress Management: Worries Do Not Solve Problems, Actions Do

(Refer for the most authentic articles on Building Leadership and Management: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

Genesis of Worries: Worries Cause Stresses

Worrying is common among human beings. People have expectations, desires and wishes from self and others. These expectations, desires and wishes are the stimulus for giving rise to worries. One is not too sure about meeting some or many of these expectations, desires and wishes. The reason is that they throw moderate to serious challenges, threats and issues of some kind (either real or imagined) that one finds difficult to handle with the available resources and skills.

In such situations the mind often races to imagining/thinking and constructing scenarios of failures, mishaps, accidents, untoward conditions, non-pleasant occurrences, fear, deaths etc. These negative mental orgies are worries. When we are worrying, we are in the midst of repetitive toxic thinking. Many times these negative though yet non-existent outcomes are voluntarily or involuntarily enlarged or exaggerated out of proportion in the ever fertile imagination of human beings giving rise to Himalayan worries or draconian worries. Worry often gives a small incident a big shape.

All such worries ultimately cause stress and if one is already stressed, the stress gets multiplied because of worrying. When you worry, you are likely to feel:

• Nervous and upset because you keep thinking about a problem that you have or likely to have in future
• Uneasy or concerned about something
• Troubled
• Anxious or distressed
• Nagging or persistent concern or mental uneasiness
• Tormented or suffered from disturbing thoughts.

Some Examples of Worrying

You might see the streaks of worrying in the following often expressed utterances or feelings:

• Traffic is my city is a constant concern and I dread taking out my car these days for fear of meeting an accident.
• My major worry is that I may get fired from my job any day and this is killing me every day.
• I worry about my grades in the final examination and if I do not get good result I may not get a decent job. That will be disastrous.
• My husband’s health is worrying me and I cannot sleep. I feel constantly stressed.
• My son has gone to stay in the college hostel, away from me for the first time in his life. I am very worried how he will cope up.
• I have bought an expensive house by borrowing loan and now I constantly worry about our financial situation since I have to repay the loan by giving hefty installments.
• Last week I was at the movie theater watching an interesting movie and I found myself worrying about work. I realized it was no use worrying about something I couldn’t do anything about at that moment but I couldn’t stop it.
• I am flying for the first time and I am quite nervous about it. I don’t even know how to fasten the seat belt and how to call an air hostess.
• I am getting older and I am alone. Who will look after me if I fall seriously ill? I keep thinking about it every now and then and feel stressed.
• I am worried about the environmental pollution problems all across the globe. What will happen of the human kind? What will happen of the future generations?
• This city has no more remained safe for the ladies. You hear ladies getting raped and robbed. It worries me for myself and my daughters.

Worries Do Not Solve Problems, Actions Do

Now you can see that some issues in the patterns of worries cited in the earlier paragraphs are real issues where as many others are fictitious and imaginary. Also the worries seem to be of short term nature and many of them are long term types.

In all kinds of such worrying one gets involved in a negative self-talk. Then it distracts the mind from focusing on solutions to the problem(s) at hand. For example, when a candidate waiting to be interviewed for a job become anxious or worried, he may repeatedly suggest to himself that he may not do well in the job interview and may not succeed to get the job. This toxic thinking may interfere with his focus on answering properly in the interview as the part of the brain that is needed to answer the questions is engaged in worrying.

So, one thing becomes clear that worrying alone cannot solve the problem. Taking some appropriate actions to solve the problems only will put a stop to your worries and the resultant stresses. It is not work or actions but worry that kills. So, when you feel worried, start taking actions on those matters that are the causes of your worries. So in the above-mentioned example if the candidate took extra care to prepare soundly for the interview, he would never have to worry about the interview process because he would have been quite confident of doing well in the interview.

Most of the Worries in Any Case Are Imaginary

Studies show that:

• 40% of what we worry about never happens.
• 30% of problems are over and done before we start to worry about them.
• 12% of our worries are about non-existent health problems.
• 10% of our worries are actually focused on the wrong things.

This leaves just 8% worries worth bothering about.

These findings, even if we take them with some pinch of salt, give us some confidence that there is nothing much to worry about really; after all it’s just about 8% of all the things.

Some Suggestions to Overcome or Reduce the Worries

• Accept what you cannot change, on which you have no control at all (e.g. weather, natural disasters, death).
• Don’t Worry about problems that do not exist.
• Stop thinking for good spells of time at a stretch. You may have to practice it. Meditation can be useful.
• If at all you need to worry, select a specific worry time and worry only during that time slot of the day or week.
• If at all you need to worry, worry only one thing at a time. As they say, live one day at a time or dread one day at a time.
• Those who you can’t sleep because the worries haunt them, should get out of the bed and do something instead of lying there worrying.
• Stop worrying about committing mistakes. Only the people who work can make mistakes. So continue to work without fear of committing mistakes.The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
• Do not take all the burden of the entire world on your shoulders. There are many out there sorting out various problems.
• Share your worries with the people you can confide in. You are more likely to come up with solutions when you consult about your concerns with your confidants.
• Human contacts like hugging a person who can empathize with you or receiving a warm pat on the back from a supporting person can do wonders in terms of giving you the morale boost or the strength you may need when faced with problems.
• Sleep adequately and at regular hours. That will give you the required relaxation to your agitated mind.
• Do regular physical exercises.
• Eat nutritious food.

Most Important Suggestion: Act, Don’t Sit Worrying

Most importantly, get busy in solving the problem, start the action. That is the best thing to do to contain your worries. Follow the step by step approach to solve problems.

First try to understand what is the real problem. Then find the reasons, why the problem? Next step is to work out many solutions that can solve the problem. Choose the ones that are the best and practical. Implementing the selected solution(s) is the crux of problem solving and to get rid of your worries. Finding the solutions but not implementing them will not serve any purpose.

For More Guidance, Assistance, Training and Consultation

Contact: prodcons@prodcons.com

Training in all the soft skills and various management functions/techniques is imparted by Prodcons Group’s Mr Shyam Bhatawdekar and/or Dr (Mrs) Kalpana Bhatawdekar, eminent management educationists, management consultants and trainers- par excellence, with distinction of having trained over 150,000 people from around 250 organizations.

Also refer: (Prodcons Group) http://prodcons-group.blogspot.com/, (Training Programs by Prodcons Group) http://training-development-function.blogspot.com/, (Productivity Consultants) http://productivity-consultants.blogspot.com/

Other Topics of Interest: Counseling: General and Psychological

(Anger Management) http://controlling-anger.blogspot.com/
(Children’s Behavior Problems) http://child-behavior-problems.blogspot.com/
(Cholesterol Control) http://controlling-cholesterol.blogspot.com/
(Counseling: Psychological) http://counselingfamily.blogspot.com/
(Counseling: Psychological) http://counseling-family.blogspot.com/
(Cross Cultural Etiquette) http://cross-cultural-etiquette.blogspot.com/
(Do This Today) http://do-this-today.blogspot.com/
(Emotions) http://emotion-feeling.blogspot.com/
(Executive Etiquette and Manners)http://executive-manners.blogspot.com/
(Exercises) http://exercises-plan.blogspot.com/
(Family Counseling) http://family-harmony.blogspot.com/
(Health: Homeopathy) http://homeopathy-medicines.blogspot.com/
(Life Management: Competencies) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/competency-matrix/6txz9nck6g3/4#
(Life Management: Effectiveness Management: HSoftware) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/management-in-life-profession-family/6txz9nck6g3/3#
(Life management: I Am Liberated)http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/i-am-liberated/6txz9nck6g3/6#view
(Marriage Counseling) http://marriage-counsel.blogspot.com/
(Ownership on Job) http://job-ownership.blogspot.com/
(Parental Responsibilities) http://parental-responsibilities.blogspot.com/
(Personality) http://human-personality.blogspot.com/
(Qualities of Spouse) http://spouse-qualities.blogspot.com/
(Quit Smoking) http://quit-smoking-plan.blogspot.com/
(Self Development) http://managing-self.blogspot.com/
(Self-confidence) http://self-confidence-improvement.blogspot.com/
(Spiritual Quotient/Intelligence)http://spiritual-quotient.blogspot.com/
(Stress Management) http://managing-stress-strain.blogspot.com/
(Stress Management) http://management-of-stress.blogspot.com/
(Success in Life or Success) http://success-achievement.blogspot.com/
(Success in Life or Success) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/success-in-life/6txz9nck6g3/14#view
(Swine Flu and Its Prevention) http://swine-flu-precaution.blogspot.com/
(Telephone Etiquette) http://telephone-etiquette.blogspot.com/
(Walking) http://walking-plan.blogspot.com/
(Winners and Losers) http://winners-losers.blogspot.com/

Stress Management: Either You Can be Right or You Can be Happy

For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/

Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/

For free tutorials on “Train the Trainers” program, refer: http://train-trainers.blogspot.com/

Either You Can be Right or You Can be Happy: Its Less Likely that You Can be Both

One of the less thought about and talked about reason (but very important one) for feeling stressed from time to time is one's desire to be "right" or "perfect" all the time. And what is "right" is cooked up by the same person who is trying to be right. Agreed that he/she might have thought about it pretty seriously within the ambit of his own cerebral capabilities and after having read lots of literature on it or by being very observant of the people who seem to be right to him/her etc. Yet, finally, it is solely his/her own perception.

So, despite much of such research, the question is: can he/she be absolutely sure that what he defined as perfect or right was really right or perfect? No one can be too sure about it. It definitely is not sacrosanct or the ultimate truth. Yet some people pursue these mirages of being right and perfect all the time with missionary vengeance. In addition, such tribes do not want to fail or be seen as failing against the benchmarks set by them.

And see below what they try to achieve in pursuit of meeting this perfectness! They seriously practice it in most trivial things of life as well as things of medium and high importance. Here are some classic examples:

• Pronounce each and every word of each and every language correctly.
• Being dressed prim and proper every minute and every hour of all the days of an year.
• Never squeeze the tooth paste tube or shaving cream tube or moisturizer tube or for that matter any such other tube in its middle.
• Following each and every dining table manner and telephone etiquette and every other social etiquette to the letter as described in numerous etiquette and manners manuals authored by all kinds of self proclaiming experts.
• Never leave the clothes on the beds of the bedrooms or on the floors of bathrooms even for a second.
• Make sure that toilet seat is always covered without fail and flush at least twice after having done the thing in the toilet.
• Always eat the perfectly nutritious food in every meal everywhere. Never ever exceed the calorie and other specifications set out by the numerous nutrition experts.
• Always sleep on the right side of the bed and let the spouse sleep always on the left side of the bed.
• Sticking to punctuality in each and every situation.  
• Loading the washing machine or dish washer in the right way- as thought out as right by self.
• All the time trying to set out goals of all kinds and trying to meet those goals and getting upset when not meeting them.
• Pushing the son(s)/daughter(s) to become champions in many things right around their age of 5 or 6 and feeling upset when they fail to meet such expectations.
• Presenting self, spouse and children as the most mannerly creatures of the earth.  
• Never miss the deadlines in professional or any other type of jobs.

and the list can go on and on.

Trying to be reasonably effective and efficient is understandable because that can be met within your capabilities and within your other resources. But then excess of anything is bad. When you set out some crazy ideals for self and are likely to expect them from your spouse, children, parents, subordinates and colleagues,  it becomes too much for yourself and everyone else around you. And then stresses and strains develop because such tall expectations are beyond the available capabilities and resources. That leaves you and others not only stressed but it is likely to disrupt the human relations from time to time. That further adds to your and others' woes.

Many times what is right or wrong is never very clear. Different people do things differently and to each one that may be right. So, on trivial and many other issues, insistence on achieving a particular "right way" may be inviting unnecessary stresses. Yet, on some important issues of life what is realistic and achievable must definitely be discussed and what capabilities and other resources of self and others will be required to achieve them must be assessed.

The whole discussion here does not promote accepting a compromising or sloppy attitude towards life but warns all of us against being obsessed about being "right" or "perfect" (as defined by self) all the time.

Being flexible and setting realistic and achievable goals within the means of capabilities and resources is the golden path traversing on which will be least stressful and yet meaningfully fulfilling.

For More Guidance, Assistance, Training and Consultation
Contact: prodcons@prodcons.com

Training in all the soft skills and various management functions/techniques is imparted by Prodcons Group’s Mr Shyam Bhatawdekar and/or Dr (Mrs) Kalpana Bhatawdekar, eminent management educationists, management consultants and trainers- par excellence, with distinction of having trained over 150,000 people from around 250 organizations.

Also refer: (Prodcons Group) http://prodcons-group.blogspot.com/, (Training Programs by Prodcons Group) http://training-development-function.blogspot.com/, (Productivity Consultants) http://productivity-consultants.blogspot.com/

Stress Management: Most Sound Albeit Bit Difficult Way to Tackle Stress: Developing Competencies

For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/

Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/

For free tutorials on “Train the Trainers” program, refer: http://train-trainers.blogspot.com/

Four fundamental elements of improving your overall competencies and therefore, your capabilities and effectiveness[1] at any given point of time are:
 
· Values
· Knowledge base
· Paradigms
· Willpower

More quality and quantity of these elements within you make you more effective.

These elements are acquired by the human beings from the environment from any of its entities and these can be acquired at any age. Even if you missed out on acquiring them early on, you can catch up with them later in life.

Everyone is free to acquire them and anyone can acquire them. There is no restriction of any sort on any human being.

These four elements finally culminate into making a human being more skilled and more competent. Human beings develop and improve continuously their skills and competencies based on these four elements. Then they use these skills and competencies to perform all kinds of tasks and activities required to achieve the goals set by them for their personal, family, professional and social lives.

The more skilled and competent the human beings become by the acquisition of the four elements, the more effectively they are able to perform the tasks and activities and to achieve the resultant goals or objectives. They feel confident of meeting any kind of challenges in life. They feel that they have the required capabilities to tackle the demands put on them and therefore, stresses and strains do not get created.

So how do we make this model work for you? We give below certain doable recommendations:

1. Set your short term, medium term, long germ and life time goals for your personal, family, professional and social life. The guidelines given below in serial number 2 through 30 are to help you acquire the right kind of overall competencies to make you effective to accomplish your chosen goals.

2. Sharpen your desire to learn the right kind of values, knowledge and paradigms. Become a strong willed person.

3. Learn about the various basic human values. These are not too many.

4. Correct those values that you might have already formed but now you realize that they need review and correction.

5. Formulate your own value structure that will guide you throughout your life. These values will normally not change under ordinary conditions. They are more permanent (as compared to the paradigms).

6. Then always be guided by your values or principles.

7. Do not waver from your values under the trying circumstances. You may face many dilemma situations in your life.

8. There are principled paths guided by values and there are unprincipled paths without any value structure. Both run parallel to each other and never meet. Both may give success. But the principled path will always give you more overall effectiveness in your life. Unprincipled path may even destroy you completely.

9. Knowledge is unending. It is enormous. Try to acquire as much knowledge as you can. It is extremely difficult to acquire all the knowledge.

10. Therefore, start with the knowledge that is required for achieving the goals or objectives of your personal, family, professional and social life.

11. You will need to acquire three types of knowledge: rational knowledge, emotional knowledge and spiritual knowledge pertaining to all the four spheres of your life- personal, family, professional and social life.

12. New knowledge will emerge continually. No one can stop it. Your existing knowledge may become incorrect and obsolete over a period of time. So, keep acquiring new knowledge.

13. Always look out for the most authentic sources of knowledge. Acquire knowledge only from the authentic sources or otherwise you are in a danger of assimilating incorrect or erroneous knowledge and related information.

14. Knowledge backed up and validated correctly by the relevant facts and figures, supported by experiments and real life results is likely to be more authentic. Other pieces of knowledge may be mere hearsay.

15. Read a lot. Read every day. Read authentic literature. Do not waste your time reading inferior or erroneous literature.

16. Attend courses, seminars and workshops to listen to the real experts to enhance your knowledge.

17. Acquire knowledge to help you enhance and sharpen your “willpower to do” or “willpower to perform”.

18. Often revise those concepts and their related details that are very important in life and may be difficult to understand and assimilate.

19. Teach others what you learnt. Your learning will become more effective. You will get more clarity on the subject when you start teaching.

20. Always be on lookout for the implementation aspects of what you are learning so that you can implement the knowledge properly.

21. Paradigms or your day-to-day thinking patterns guide you to take particular directions and steps towards accomplishing your various tasks and activities that ultimately steer you towards your goals or objectives. There are hundreds of them in your mind. Therefore these should be absolutely correct and up-to-date.

22. You should derive your paradigms essentially from your values, knowledge base and related information base. Keep checking frequently to ensure that these three remain in consonance with each other.

23. Since a repository or directory of all the latest paradigms is not available or published anywhere, keep your eyes and ears open to sense the new and emerging paradigms in all the spheres of life. Grasp them and internalize them.

24. Keep introspecting the appropriateness or correctness of your paradigms on an on-going basis. Frequently correct your wrong paradigms or mindsets.

25. Develop flexibility for accepting the correct paradigms even if they are quite in divergence with your existing mindsets.

26. Develop those paradigms that will help you to sharpen your “willpower to do” or “willpower to perform”.

27. Decide on the skills and competencies that will be required by you to effectively tackle the tasks and activities that will lead you to your goals and objectives.

28. Use your values, knowledge and paradigms to learn, develop and master those skills and competencies. Practice them lots to achieve the highest level of expertise in them.

29. Implement those skills and competencies to carry out your tasks and activities.

30. Keep moving towards achieving your goals or objectives by applying your values, knowledge, paradigms, willpower to do and skills/competencies.

---

[1] HSoftware (Human Software) (The Only Key to Higher Effectiveness authored by Shyam Bhatawdekar and Dr Kalpana Bhatawdekar

For More Guidance, Assistance, Training and Consultation

Contact: prodcons@prodcons.com

Training in all the soft skills and various management functions/techniques is imparted by Prodcons Group’s Mr Shyam Bhatawdekar and/or Dr (Mrs) Kalpana Bhatawdekar, eminent management educationists, management consultants and trainers- par excellence, with distinction of having trained over 150,000 people from around 250 organizations.

Also refer: (Prodcons Group) http://prodcons-group.blogspot.com/, (Training Programs by Prodcons Group) http://training-development-function.blogspot.com/, (Productivity Consultants) http://productivity-consultants.blogspot.com/

Stress Management: Life Style Suggestions (Tips on Daily Life)

Given below are certain simple suggestions or tips on how to lead your daily life. Improving your life style itself can reduce the existing stresses and control the occurrence of stresses in your life.

• Prepare for the next day's important items of work on the evening of the day.
• Do not keep awake late in nights.
• Sleeping between 10 PM to 11 PM will be a good idea.
• Sleep for around 7 to 8 hours every night. Therefore if you sleep at 10.30 PM, waking up around 6 AM to 6.30 AM is a good idea.
• Wear loose and comfortable clothes while sleeping. Do not wear tight and uncomfortable clothes.
• Before sleeping take stock of the meaningful work your did during the day. It will give you the satisfaction of having achieved something on daily basis and you might get sleep as soon as you hit the bed and may get sound sleep.
• Do some planning for the day, week , month and year ahead. Setting up objectives/goals/targets will facilitate their achievements in smoother and efficient manner. Do not rely only on your memory. Write down. Making the lists helps. Refer: (Goal/Target Setting) http://goal-target-setting.blogspot.com/ 
• Learn and practice time management. Set priorities for work. This way you will not crowd your day with unnecessary and non-value adding work and will use your time on important and value adding activities without feeling stressed. Refer: (Time Management) http://time-life-management.blogspot.com/
• If you have to cook, simplify the meals and use the home/kitchen tips throughout your work weak. For useful tips, refer: http://tastetherecipes.blogspot.com/2011/03/celebrating-my-100th-post-drink-and-few.html and http://tastetherecipes.blogspot.com/
• In addition to spending time on your professional work, set some time aside and do your hobbies, play an outdoor game, do gardening, read light literature and watch an interesting program or movie on television.
• Go for a walk frequently during the week (for around 45 minutes to an hour at one time). Exercise few days in a week. Refer: (Walking) http://walking-plan.blogspot.com/ and (Exercises) http://exercises-plan.blogspot.com/
• Socialize with people. Weekends can be used for this purpose.
• Spend lots of time with your family as often as possible.
• Love your family members unconditionally and demonstrate it by hugging them and expressing, "I love you lots and lots and lots." Develop intimate emotional relationship with your family members.
• Learn to listen and listen a lot. Refer: (Listening) http://listen-skills.blogspot.com/
• Learn to praise others and praise them well. Refer: (Positive Strokes) http://positive-strokes.blogspot.com/
• Share your emotions and feelings with those who are intimate with you.
• Go out for picnics, excursions, sightseeing and travel few times in an year.
• Indulge in eating leisurely breakfasts, lunches, evening tea and dinners with your family on many of your weekends.
• Do eat out once in a while in a relaxed environment.
• If you are married, develop intimate emotional and physical relationship with your spouse.
• Do not try pleasing everyone around you.
• Laugh a lot. Do not take life seriously all the time. Lighten up. Develop your sense of humor.

Stress Management: Lack of Self-esteem or Lack of Self-worth

Lack of self-esteem or lack of self-worth is one of the causes of stress.

Feeling of lack of self-worth emanates from a lopsided pattern of thinking or from your destructive view of the self.

At times it is because of constant comparison of one's achievements with those of others by self or by other people making one feel less of an achiever. Some of such people also get into a habit of always feeling awed by others' achievements and creating an inferiority complex in themselves. For them grass is always greener on the other side or neighbor's wife is always more beautiful than mine syndrome.

Other times it is setting up unrealistic goals and not achieving them.

Some people look down upon their successes all the time. They rate their achievements as insignificant. They believe that they could have achieved more than what they did so far. They are unnecessarily harsh on themselves.

A habit of only looking at failures more than looking at the successes and discounting most of the successes as not worthy of being called as successes also leads to lack of self-worth.

It also happens sometimes that one has not really done an objective assessment of one's success or achievements and has created a false feeling of being a loser because of one reason or the other. It may be fictional all you know.

We also come across situations when the person stressed due to lack of self-esteem is aware that he had not been putting in efforts towards achieving something that will boost his self-worth. This often time happens due to apathy towards life due to laziness or lack of will power.

In all of these situations one thing is sure that the feeling of lack of self-esteem will suck any person into a vicious circle that can be called as diminishing spiral of self worth. The feeling that I do not achieve much most of the times will further put a brake on one's actions and that will further result in non-achievement. Thus it constructs a diminishing spiral and generates lots of stresses all along.

One needs to break this diminishing spiral. For this it important to think straight and objectively about the self- shun the fictional and destructive thinking.

From now onwards, start thinking more about what you achieve on an every day basis and reduce thinking about what you could not achieve. Count your achievements or successes of the day, howsoever insignificant they may seem to you or to others. They are your successes and so, count them. Also think about those strengths of yours which helped you achieve those successes. It will be good habit to write them down as your daily journal and keep on accumulating your successes into this journal.

In addition, try to recall all of your previous achievements and successes from your childhood till today- the day from which you have decided to review your achievements on a daily basis. Document all of these life long achievements also in your journal.

Include even your normally termed very small achievements. Examples: "I told my kid a nice story that delighted him". "I help my wife in cooking". "I completed the official assignment in time today". "I bargained and saved money in today's purchases". "I checked my anger throughout the day". "My interpersonal relationship with my boss improved significantly today because I came to his rescue in a top level meeting". "I enrolled myself in an evening MBA course". "I did not get promotion but I did get a good raise".

As you keep adding your new successes and achievements in your journal on a daily basis, also revise or re-visit your previous achievements and successes by reading and re-reading them. It is your affirmation system- affirming to you that your are good, you are a winner.

By doing this you are shattering your own bleak picture that you had imagined about yourself and bringing in the desired brightness.

That is the start of reversing the spiral. You have now arrested it's tendency to diminish and now it will start increasing in the right way. It will turn into a positive spiral and your self-esteem or self-worth will start improving day by day. In days, the improvements will be more synergistic.

And finally, the continual improvements in your self worth will pull you out of the stresses and strains.