Your Happiness Factor

Managing emotions - Identifying feelings (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Time Management - Pinpointing Those Emotional Blocks to Change My last two posts about Time Management ( The Clock Is Ticking! How Good Are You At Time Management) and ( Time Management: Know Where Time Goes - Keep A Log ) said that the first two steps in managing time are to be clear about your purpose and your direction in life and then to know how you spend your time. Knowing those things and completing the first two steps are important. But often time management improvement plans still fail. This is usually because there are underlying emotional issues. Sometimes people feel guilty about spending time on their own interests. For example, what about the rest of the family – shouldn't this time be spent with the children? Or perhaps you might be anxious about saying no to a colleague and refusing to help them at the expense of time to do your own work. This might be because you lack the

Time Management: Know Where Time Goes - Keep A Log My last post about Time Management ( The Clock Is Ticking! How Good Are You At Time Management?) said that the first step in managing time is to be clear about your purpose and your direction in life.  Now you need to find out how you actually spend your time. The best way to do this is to start using a time log. Record each activity throughout your day with the time taken to complete it. Do this at the time, if you can.The closer to the time, the more accurate you log is going to be,  But at the very least, ensure you record each hour's activity at the end of each day. For example Date    Time           Activity             07.00             08.00             09.00  Etc The period covered should be the whole of your waking day. Everything should be included if you are serious about wanting to a achieve a better balanced and more manageable life.   Keeping a log for just a couple of da

Resolution - better time management (Photo credit: vpickering ) Time may be relative but it is also neutral.  The reality is that there is neither too much nor too little time unless we make it so.  So time management “at the end of the day” is about self-management. If you have a time management problem, the first step is to understand why.  This begins with looking at yourself. In reality, for most of us, 80% of our results come from 20% of our activities – the good old 80/20 Pareto Principle at work again. But first let us work out the extent of the problem. Below are 10 questions. They are all about the signs of poor time management.  So saying yes to even one question suggests you need to improve your time management skills. If you say yes to several questions, you could already be in danger of suffering from stress and even possible burn-out. Are you constantly rushing about from one meeting or appointment to another? Do you find yourself repeatedly ap

Are you stressed-out by your poor work-life balance? Y ou know you have a work-life balance problem when you Don’t have enough time for everything and spend what time you have handling scheduling conflicts, Feel stressed and overwhelmed by trying to balance your different roles. Research for Health Canada indicates four main factors lead to work-life balance problems and stress: Role overload: you don’t have enough time or energy to carry out all the activities required to perform all your roles properly and without discomfort. Work-to-family interference: work demands make it difficult to fulfill family-roles and to provide what family members need from you, for example; Long hours at work prevent you going to the school open-evening   You are so preoccupied with what is happening at work that you can’t enjoy or take part fully in family life, Pressure at work spills over at home and you get into arguments with your partner, your mother or the childr

Image by alforque via Flickr Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed and unable to meet constant demands. As the stress continues, you begin to lose the interest or motivation that led you to take on a certain role in the first place. Burnout reduces your productivity and saps your energy, leaving you feeling increasingly helpless, hopeless, cynical and resentful. Eventually, you may feel like you have nothing more to give. The negative effects of burnout spill over into every area of life – including your home and social life. Burnout can also cause long-term changes to your body that make you vulnerable to illnesses like colds and flu. Because of its many consequences, it’s important to deal with burnout right away and take advice from your coach,  counselor  or medical adviser.  But, if you can, it is best to prevent burnout in the first place Your Personal Burno

Changing your breathing is one of the quickest and most effective was of changing how you feel. When you are feeling tense, a simple breathing technique can help you to relax and still meet the challenges a head.  Here is simple approach for your to try.

We can’t avoid stress but we can learn to counteract it! Relaxation can help to relieve the symptoms of  stress. It can help you calm down and take a step back from a stressful situation . This is particularly important, if you find yourself frequently in situations that make you feel angry or frustrated.  When you feel like that you certainly don’t perform well. Nor can you respond to others in a positive way.  Using a simple relaxation technique will not remove the cause of your anxiety.  But it should help you deal with it in a more constructive way. You can act once you have released the tension in your body and cleared your thoughts. Most relaxation techniques combine breathing more deeply with relaxing your muscles. Don't worry if you find it difficult to relax at first. It's a skill that needs to be learned. It will come with practice. Practise for three to five minutes, two to three times a day! You can use this technique whenever you feel the need to c

This is an extract from a brilliant post by coach Ann Lewis - you can read the rest at the link below and I would recommend it! Ann is author of  Recover Your Balance: How To Bounce Back From Bad Times at Work' (Paperback - Mar ...  http://amzn.to/fkPVl "I recently signed up to Nick Williams’ brilliant Inspired Entrepreneur site and have been catching up with a treasure trove of inspirational podcasts from the past couple of years. They’re recordings of talks given in London by Nick and by invited guests. One ritual that always happens is a request that all participants talk to someone they’ve not met about something that has inspired them that day. That set me thinking. It’s not always easy to find inspiration when you’re off balance. Often you go into survival mode, managing to keep going through a day at a time with not much sense of anything outside the immediate pain. Yet regular inspiration – someone’s achievement, glorious light on a landscape, the fledging of birds