You’re reading How To Distract Yourself from the Greatest Distraction in Life: Stress, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Have you ever thought about the biggest problem you’re facing in life? It’s not related to your career, relationships, friendships, or studies. It’s related to your mental health, and it’s called stress. When you’re under stress, you cannot focus on anything positive. You are not able to do your best job, and you can’t maintain good relationships with your family, friends, and partner. When you think about it, stress s the greatest distraction you face in your life.

There are many ways to put stress under control. You can never get rid of it, though. Stressful situations will keep haunting you throughout your life and there is no way to become immune to them. The point in stress management is not becoming completely senseless. It’s all about changing your own attitude and maintaining control over your thoughts and emotions under stressful situations.

We’ll show you few tricks on how to distract yourself from stress – the greatest distraction in your life.

Understanding Stress

Before you can do something about it, you need to understand what stress is all about. It is the physical, mental, and/or emotional tension that certain circumstances cause. Before we go any further, let’s explain something really important: stress can be positive, too. Imagine yourself being in the jungle and seeing a lion running towards you. Stress is what makes you run. You can’t stay completely calm and relaxed in such situation, can you? Stress is what triggers a father to save his child from drowning, and it’s what makes you defend yourself or run when you’re under attack.

Without this complex mix of hormones and chemicals the human body releases when it’s triggered by stress, the human wouldn’t have functioned properly. However, your mind tends to prolong the reactions to stress. It doesn’t allow you to forget what happened and relax after the stressful moment you went through. When the stress is prolonged, it causes serious consequences to your wellbeing.

How to Handle Physical, Mental, and Emotional Stress

There are three types of stress you may be facing:

• Physical stress

This is the simplest form of stress, which we all experience at one point or another. What happens to your body after a long, strenuous walk or run? Maybe you’ve spent all day working in the garden? We are often putting our muscles under stress, and we can easily recognize the effects: we feel tired and we may experience pain in different parts of the body.

Physical stress is not that bad. You can easily recover from it by resting and sleeping. A nice massage or a spa session will also relieve you from this type of stress.

• Mental stress

Mental stress is slightly more complex. It’s the type of stress you go through when you’re straining your mind too hard. An accountant, for example, is under great mental stress during working hours. Their job may seem monotonous and simple to an outsider, but they have to deal with tons of numbers and a single mistake can cost them their job. When you’re doing intellectual work, you have to remain constantly focused – that’s putting a lot of stress on you.

This type of stress doesn’t easily go away by sleeping. When you’re straining your intellect throughout the day, your thoughts create a total chaos when you finally go to bed. Accountants often dream of numbers and final bills, and that’s not funny at all.

You can keep mental stress under control by staying aware of it, taking several constructive breaks during working hours, and knowing your limits. If, for example, your boss asks you to write a blog for the website but you don’t have time or skill to do that, stressing out over the situation won’t do you any good. Instead of trying to achieve the impossible, you can start looking for writing services reviews that will help you find a company you can outsource that task to.

• Emotional stress

This is the type of stress that leaves the most serious consequences on our wellbeing. When you’re under physical stress, you can easily recognize it and take a rest to solve the situation. Mental stress is a bit more difficult to deal with, but at least you are still aware of it and you can identify the causes and manifestations. With emotional stress, you cannot always find out the cause. Sometimes you feel bad and you don’t know why.

Every single action you have taken throughout your life left a deep trace in your mental and emotional patterns. You might not remember everything that has happened to you, but your subconscious does remember. That’s where the emotional burden comes from.

When you’re under emotional stress, you experience weird symptoms, such as the feeling of being overwhelmed, frustrated, nervous, and tense. You may also experience several physical manifestations, such as sweating, headaches, chest pain, insomnia, pain in any part of the body, grinding teeth, and much more. You may become forgetful and unable to focus on the work, and you’ll probably be very pessimistic.

The consequences of long-term emotional stress can be very serious. Some people face cardiovascular disease, eating disorder, sexual dysfunctions, and different types of mental problems, including anxiety and depression. It seems like emotional stress can be the root cause of every single health issue you’re facing.

How to Distract Yourself from Emotional Stress

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to get rid of emotional stress. People have emotions, and that’s a good thing. Sometimes those emotions get hurt, and we all need to learn how to handle such pressure. The task of managing emotional stress takes a lot of work, but it’s not impossible. The journey will make you a stronger, more positive, and better person, so guess what: it turns out that all that stress has a positive role in your life after all. Here are some techniques that will help you put this kind of stress under control:

• Meditation

Meditation and relaxation techniques have proven effects for stress relief. Many people perceive meditation as “something you do when you close your eyes and you zone out.” Those are the ones who never tried actual meditation. There are different techniques of meditation, but all of them have something in common: they help you get deeper into your subconsciousness and unveil the reasons for the emotional stress you’re going through. Even Zen meditation, which basically teaches you to think of nothing, has the same effect: it cleans your mind and soul from all accumulated stress.

You can try an online guided meditation for stressful moments, but it would be even better if you started an actual meditation course. Find a good yoga teacher and pay upfront for the course. That will make you responsible to go to every single session and stay committed to the practice. You will notice how you’re becoming calmer by the day. Just like stress leaves traces in your mental and emotional processes, so does relaxation. You’re stressing out every day without even trying, but you have to make an effort to relax.

• Writing

Did you know that keeping a journal can help you relieve yourself from stress? Get a special notebook or start an online diary. It will take only half an hour per day for you to pour your soul out. No one will read it, so you don’t have to be worried about the things you write. But, you do need to be honest with yourself: write exactly how you feel and don’t even think about how it sounds. It’s important to get that entire emotional burden out, so you it will lose its intensity.

• Physical activity

When you’re under a lot of stress, you should keep yourself occupied and distracted with an activity you really like. Gardening, running, walking in nature, exercise… all these things will distract you from the problem and will give you the positive energy you need.

Remember: stress is part of your life, so you shouldn’t be looking for ways to get completely rid of it. The point in stress management is to understand where the tension comes from and control the way you react to it. Hopefully, we gave you the guiding points that will make you a stronger person. Now, you need to make an effort to follow them.

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Louise Coleman is a professional freelance writer with wide experience in covering educational, inspirational, blogging, and traveling topics. Also, she adores writing analytical articles to help people to overview and understand better significant and interesting researches. Apart from writing, reading is her real passion from the very childhood.

You’ve read How To Distract Yourself from the Greatest Distraction in Life: Stress, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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You’re reading Why What Other People Say and Do is Not About You, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

It always helps to remember that what other people say and do is not about you.

Everyone is just projecting their inner space into their outer world.

The way a person thinks and feels in any moment inclines their choices, behavior, actions and the words that they speak. Other people are then on the receiving end of that.

IT’S EASIST TO SEE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE OF THIS

If you can logically see how your own words and actions are not about other people, then you will much more easily be able to see that what others say and do is not about you either.

For example, if you’re feeling good and you’re around someone who is negative, you’re still often capable of letting it go and staying positive, you may even notice you’re able to be more patient and tolerant of them because you feel good. But, on the flip-side, if you’re feeling terrible and you’re around someone who is really positive, you might still let out negativity around them or get frustrated with them, even if they are being nice and it’s a calm situation. This is because you don’t feel good.

In both scenarios, how you are thinking and feeling is defining what you project toward the other person. It is not about them.

Your thinking/feeling cycle (nothing to do with anyone else) drives your choices, behavior, actions, and the words you speak. And if that thinking/feeling cycle is negative in any one moment, and you are not consciously aware enough to interrupt yourself and choose differently, then that is what comes out of you.

This doesn’t deny the fact that people can absolutely trigger you, pushing your hot buttons, leading you to think and feel negatively. Yet irrespective of that, anything you project out into the world or at other people is still coming directly and purely from your inner space – coming out of your beliefs, thoughts and feelings, conveyed in behavior, words and actions.

No one else controls you. No one controls what you think or how you feel. That is your domain.

That inner space you hold is founded upon an accumulation of experiences and understanding built up over your entire life to date – everything you have come to believe, which makes up your “paradigm” (your model of reality) – the lens through which you see yourself, life and other people. You then perceive, interpret, think, feel and react/respond to life around you according to that lens. That has nothing to do with other people. What you say and do is not about other people, not even when they trigger you. Your habitual ways of behaving, any judgement, criticism or hurt that comes out of you toward others, is not about them. It is a projection of your paradigm into the world around you.

AND NOW THE GREAT NEWS…

If you can logically see that this is true for you, then you can also see it is true for everyone else too.

What other people say and do is not about you either. You might trigger them, but their beliefs, thoughts and feeling are inclining their choices, behavior, words and actions, which is all about them and the paradigm they live from, being projected outward or at you.

WE CAN BREAK THE CYCLE

We live in a highly reactionary world. Someone does something or says something as a projection of their inner space, another person feels triggered and reacts. From the triggering of their inner space and negative reaction, they then trigger someone else, who in turn also reacts, and this ripples out with more and more people being triggered and reacting.

We so easily get upset about what someone else said or did, taking that behavior personally, taking the look on someone’s face, what they did or didn’t do, and making it mean something about ourselves.

Many people are simply trying to get through each day, while feeling like everything going on around them is about them, perhaps even seeing evidence in each interaction, look they receive or word they hear, as being a personal attack.

Our “personality selves” (egos) get very affected by others. If we can rise above that thinking, and instead remember what is REALLY going on, then there is a chance for greater peace and flow – individually and collectively.

WE CAN PRACTISE

The next time someone says or does something and you feel triggered, take a deep breath and say to yourself , “What others say and do is not about me. I choose not to react. I choose peace.”

The beauty of this awareness and choice, is that when you see someone projecting their inner space e.g. anger, upset, negativity or rudeness, you can remember… if that is what is coming out of them in that moment, then that must be what is IN them in that moment, and how unpleasant that must be for that person!

You can have a little empathy for them. You know what is going on, and you know what it feels like to be in that cycle, because you’ve been there yourself, as we all have!

Our ability to remain detached, aware, and choosing non-reaction, means we don’t dive in and participate in the negativity party of other people, and we break the trigger/reaction cycle in that moment. We serve ourselves and we serve all of humanity at the same time! We chose to cultivate a peace party, to which we invite all others to join. Who knows, the negative person projecting at you might just change their tune in your calm presence, and join the peace party with you!

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Bernadette Logue is a Transformation Coach & Author, and the founder of Pinch Me Living.  To free yourself of limiting beliefs and negative thinking, and create a powerful new paradigm, visit Bernadette at http://ift.tt/1gyqulu for her “MASTER YOUR MIND” program online with live classes, and join her Youtube community for daily inspiration and mind liberation.

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You’re reading 4 Decluttering Hacks: How and Why to Get Organized, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Getting yourself into an organized lifestyle is not as easy at the morning show hosts would make it seem. After an eclectic run at grad school which featured a half put-together dresser and experiments in paper flooring, I’ve at least learned that much. Looking back on those years, I’ve come to realize that my problem was as much a motivational one as it was a practical one. I simply wasn’t aware of how crucial it was to my health to get organized and, in my brief moments of clarity, I genuinely wasn’t sure where I could possibly begin.

If this sounds like you, then check out my analysis of the science behind organization and some tips of my own to get you off the ground.

Health and Organization

The psychology here is pretty clear: getting organized is good for you. When you’re organized you’re more easily able to identify where the balance in your life lies and, with less clutter, there’s less in the way of stopping you from achieving that balance yourself.

It’s not just the fruit of your labour that’s good for you here. Cleaning things up is itself good for you. Indeed, some therapists use decluttering in their therapy to help patients copes with their organization and other issues.

There’s no two ways about it, then. Getting organized is good for you, but it’s not always clear how to be healthy. I’ll tell you how below!

1. Don’t Just Tackle Little Projects

There are a lot of arenas in which it’s a good idea to divide and conquer, satisfying yourself with completing a few small tasks as frequently or infrequently as you’d like, finally fitting everything together into a completed project long after you started.

Decluttering is not one of these battlegrounds. Unlike other projects, decluttering your life is something that will get undone by waiting around. The good news is that the more organized you become, the less junk will creep up on you over time.

So you need to make a big push to hit your clutter, instead of just moving on thing at a time. Some ways to do this include: scheduling a cleaning party. You can’t clean everything in your house in one day, but a you and your friends can. Try trading decluttering favours and promising food afterwards. Doing a regular spring cleaning is also great idea.

2. Start Big

First things first, try to get rid of larger pieces of clutter. You can make a huge impact on your clutter by getting rid of old appliances or other big items that have stayed past their due. This gives you a morale boost and gives you more space to work with while you figure out the remainder.

Just be careful moving heavy appliances like old washers or refrigerators. These can contain harmful chemicals with greenhouse gasses that can be released if handled improperly, not to mention the backbreaking work of getting this stuff out the door. Don’t be afraid to get some help if you’ve got this kind of clutter.

3. Stay Organized

Don’t let all your hard work be for not. Find ways to preserve your efforts and stay organized. The fact of the matter is that it usually doesn’t take long for clutter to find its way back into your home. Either because we’re always bringing in new things or our haphazard piles of ex-clutter start to unwind.

To attack the first fork of de-organizing, think about frugal living. It’s amazing how much you can do without once you start to really think about what you need. For the second fork, consider how you can store your things in more efficient ways. Often times clutter starts to form when you store a bunch of stuff contrary to the way that you’re going to use it. For instance, throwing a bunch of books that you reference often on a bookshelf far from your desk. One great tip here is to get a set of small lockers and use them to store things. They’ll help out a lot when it comes to keeping stuff of the floor and you’ll find that with several separate compartments you’ll be able to split things up in terms of function. In the spirit of frugal living, you can find discounted lockers that schools aren’t buying up.

4. Be Mindful

Whatever you do to get organized, do it mindfully and with respect for the environment. All too often it’s popular to “get organized” by taking a garbage bag around the house and tossing everything that may or may not be junk inside. Ta-da! Everything’s clean.

Or not.

When you do this you’re not only running the risk of discarding dangerous items improperly (like appliances with those GHGs that we talked about earlier). Perhaps even worse, when you treat your junk like junk you can deprive people in need. They say that one declutterer’s junk is another’s treasure and that couldn’t be more true. Find ways of donating the things you don’t need anymore and do good when you declutter.

These are some of my tips for following the science and getting healthy through organization. Let me know how your decluttering projects went in the comments!

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Nick is a violist and writer from Boise, Idaho. When he’s not writing he likes to find new ways to organize his viola practice and ride his bike in the beautiful Boise foothills. You can find Nick on Twitter @cesare_nick.

You’ve read 4 Decluttering Hacks: How and Why to Get Organized, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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You’re reading 4 Ways to Get Your Motivation Back When You’re In a Rut, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Do you ever struggle to get motivated?

Maybe you know exactly what you need to do, but when it comes down to it you just don’t have the energy?

I know the feeling.

Sometimes we have plenty of good ideas running around but when we sit down to make them happen, we just don’t have the willpower to follow through. From time to time all of us can get caught out; hitting the snooze button, opting for the unhealthy lunch option or get distracted by Facebook or Netflix.

But the issue isn’t necessarily that we lack intrinsic motivation.

A lot of the time it is that we’re stuck in a lazy or tired state, and just willing our way out of it isn’t going to work. In fact, it could just do the opposite, tiring us out and depleting our mental reserves, particularly if our willpower is low.

Luckily there are some pretty straight forward ways to get ourselves out of that state and get our motivation back.

1. Recharge properly.

Many of us struggle to get motivated not because of a lack of purpose, but because we simply don’t take enough time to recharge properly.

Willpower (and by association our motivation), acts like a muscle – and you need to make sure you are resting properly in order to start the day fresh and ready.

Here are four simple but powerful ways to make sure your body and mind are really recharging:

• Turn off all electronics in your bedroom and stay away from screens for at least two hours before you go to sleep.
• Don’t consume caffeine after 3pm, it has a half-life of 5 to 6 hours and has shown to disturb quality of sleep if taken even 6 hours before bed.
• Sleep with a blindfold, most people allow unnatural light into their room which can also disturb sleep quality.
• Spend regular time doing activities that stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system such as yoga, meditation, stretching and the sauna

2. Energize your body

Most people don’t realize that they are actually running at 50% of their potential a lot of the time.

Remember that our energy primarily comes from the food we eat, but we also get it from water and sunlight.

Make sure first and foremost you are eating foods that are easy to digest. Our body spends 33% of its energy on digestion, and only 12% on physical activity, so eating heavy and processed foods that are not easy to absorb will make you sluggish and not allow you the energy to perform at your best – this is why we experience food comas after eating too much.

Another trick to do this is to splash water on your face and wrists for around a minute. James Zacny at the University of Chicago found that because these areas have more nerve endings this energizes us and makes us more alert.

3. Watch or read something inspirational

A lot of people think that this is just another form of procrastination, but reading an inspirational biography or watching an inspirational movie or documentary can give you just the jolt you need to get started on a new project or just finish what you’ve got on your to do list.

It’s important here to be clear beforehand on exactly how much time you’re going to spend doing this. There’s a big difference between setting aside a couple of hours for a movie and spending the next week re-watching every episode of Game of Thrones!

4. Speak to someone

Sometimes all we need to get out of a funk is just to get out of our own heads.

When you’re feeling tired or lazy it’s good to talk to one of your friends or family members who are usually buzzing with energy.

As social creatures, the vitality of others can be infectious, and when we have positive social interactions our brains release oxytocin which helps motivates us to action.

 

How do you get motivated when you’re feeling lazy and tired? Let us know in the comments!

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Attention Pick The Brain Readers!

Want to ensure you take full control of your mornings and spend less time feeling lazy and tired?

Grab a free copy of our new eBook: MORNING MASTERY: The Simple 20 Minute Routine For Long Lasting Energy, Laser-Sharp Focus, and Stress Free Living.

Ben is a freelance writer, and the co-creator of Project Monkey Mind—a new blog for the 21st century solopreneur and young professional who wants to lead a more free and fulfilling life.

You’ve read 4 Ways to Get Your Motivation Back When You’re In a Rut, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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You’re reading The Importance of Myopia: Why Multitasking is a Myth, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have struggled to multitask. Perhaps you’ve been surprised at how easily you switch off from one task when you’re trying to do two things at once. Even something as seemingly simple as texting while watching TV demands a lot of cognitive energy. It’s actually pretty hard to reply to a message while giving the TV our full attention, which is why we often end up rewinding Breaking Bad after realising we’ve completely missed the last two minutes.

Curiously, despite the mounting scientific evidence that multitasking actually makes us less productive, we continue to treat it as an as aspirational trait. This holds especially true in the workplace. The theory goes that if we can reply to a client email and whip up a presentation in tandem, we’re getting more stuff done…right?

Actually, it couldn’t be further from the truth: multitasking makes us more prone to errors, impairs our performance and renders us ripe for distraction. Focusing on one task at a time boosts productivity, improves the quality of our work and can even make us happier.

The Myth of Multitasking

Have you ever tried reading a book while talking on the phone, or choosing something from a menu while talking to a friend? How about trying to park your car in an awkward space while listening to the radio? Chances are that you probably switched off from one of these tasks.

This is because our brains struggle to give their full attention to simultaneous tasks, which is why we often end up rereading pages of books, asking the waiter for more time to check out the menu and turning off the radio while we try to park!

Switching focus is pretty harmless when we’re doing something like reading, chatting or watching Netflix, but the game changes when it comes to things like driving, cycling or walking. It’s an established fact that using our phones while driving is dangerous. Our brains divert our attention to texting or talking and we become less aware of our surroundings – ergo, we are more susceptible to errors on the road.

It’s equally as important to be mindful of our surroundings as pedestrians, too. A recent study tested the ability to focus while using multimedia devices on the street. It put college students onto a virtual street and armed them with smartphones and audio devices. It found that the students listening to music or texting were more distracted, putting them at greater risk of collision with vehicles.

The Importance of Focusing on One Thing

The brain performs best when it can focus on one thing – or ‘monotask’. When we give a task our full attention, we are complete it more meaningfully, are less prone to errors and can get into a state of ‘flow’ (that awesome feeling of being completely and utterly engaged in what you’re doing).

A recent Dutch study supports this. The researchers found that people performed best at Sudoku and wordsearch puzzles when they completed the puzzles one at a time, rather than when multitasking. Similarly, an American study found that kids (unsurprisingly) got better exam results when they didn’t multitask revision, texting and Facebook.

So, I think I agree with science – it’s pretty clear that we should eschew multitasking in favour of focusing. Here are some ways that you can improve your focus.

Find Your Distractors

What distracts you in your day-to-day life? Is it texting, emailing, chatting to colleagues? Try to complete this sentence at least three times: ‘I get distracted by…’

Use this to find out what you need to avoid in order to focus properly. If you’re a compulsive texter, put your phone on silent and out of reach at work and social occasions. If you find that colleagues distract you, try ‘plugging in’: wear headphones and listen to some classical music. This will improve your focus and deter people from disturbing you unless it’s urgent.

If you’re a sucker for your inbox, try imposing some structure in your email checking schedule. Check your email only three times per day and work through your emails in batches. If you are required to check your inbox more regularly, where possible, do it after completing a task and answer the most important emails first.

Get Into a State of Flow

Have you ever been fully absorbed in doing something that you’ve completely lost track of time? As well as boosting your productivity, doing one thing at a time makes it more likely to experience ‘flow’, the mental state of being fully immersed in doing something. By encouraging feelings of fulfilment, the state of flow is known to foster happiness.

Artists are famous for being so in the zone that they forget to eat or sleep. This is not limited to art – anyone can experience flow, from businessmen to nurses, to teachers to athletes. The state of flow is characterised by a feeling of mastery, in which one’s attention is so fully absorbed that there is no room to get distracted by thoughts of other things. It is not possible to experience flow when you multi-task, since your full attention is required.

Get into the flow by committing your undivided attention to a task. Try it with something that isn’t too complex or too easy: if it’s too difficult and you may become frustrated, and if it’s too easy you risk boredom.

These simple changes can greatly improve your focus and reduce stress. You will also probably find that dedicating your attention to a task will make you feel a lot more satisfied when you have completed it. (Remember how great it feels to turn in a piece of work you truly completed to the best of your ability?) In turn, this mindfulness can make you feel happier.

So, say it with me: No to multitasking! Use your brain to its full capacity and free yourself from distractions for a more productive and mindful you. I promise you’ll see the benefits both at home and at work.  

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You’ve read The Importance of Myopia: Why Multitasking is a Myth, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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