A Conference Board poll taken in 2006 indicated that 40% of Americans had no plans to take any summer vacation.  This was the worst showing in the poll’s 28 years.  Are you among those who choose no vacation?

Taking a vacation of at least a few days, preferably a week or more, enables you to unhook completely.  You can slide into a relaxed rhythm enabling you to thoroughly recharge.

Return to a vacation place that’s comfortably familiar, or go someplace new. Travel to somewhere exotic or simply stay home to complete tasks you’ve been meaning to get to or visit sites in your area you’ve wanted to explore.

The essential thing is to remove yourself entirely from your normal routine. Give yourself enough time to really experience the benefit of distance from your normal life.  You’ll return relaxed and refreshed, better able to handle your daily challenges.  You’ll gain perspective that will help you to deal with the problems you face in your daily life.  You’ll make your good life better.

Jennifer dramatically transformed her life by implementing several of these self-care suggestions.  The relaxation that came with taking brief breaks throughout the day brought down her blood pressure and actually helped her accomplish more at work.  She looked and felt better than she had in years once she joined the weekly yoga class she’d been thinking about. Most of all, Jennifer and her husband enjoy the boost in marital satisfaction their weekly date nights provide and their Hawaii vacation was the trip of a lifetime.

Regular physical activity – running or biking – helps keep you in shape while producing endorphins, those neurotransmitters which provide a natural high.  Engaging in team sports such as volleyball or softball adds the advantage of social interaction to the benefit of exercise as a stress management tool.

Create a practice of regularly engaging in activities that nourish you.

7. Express your creativity

Engage in such hobbies as quilting or playing a musical instrument.  Sign up for a painting or ceramics class.

Jennifer loves her job.  But when work demands threatened to wreck her marriage and her health she came to me for coaching.

Ambitious and hard working, she prided herself on arriving at work early, leaving late and working through lunch.   Her husband had enough when a get-away weekend had to be cancelled for the second time due to a last minute crisis at work. The stress of her job was taking a toll on her health, too.   Jennifer’s doctor suggested she go on blood pressure medication, which she wanted to avoid if possible.

People like Jennifer are high achievers.  They get things done.  When busy becomes busier, however, life balance can suffer.  As pressure builds up to accomplish ever more it becomes harder and harder to find time for self-care.  Something has to give or burnout will result.

Does this sound familiar to you?  If so, to avoid physical or relationship problems add some re-creation to your life on a daily, weekly and yearly basis.  Positive life balance provides stress management as few other things can.

To create appropriate life balance you need to give yourself small breaks a few times a day, create larger re-creation times each week, and make sure to take a vacation at least once a year to thoroughly recharge your life.

Here’s the paradox:  the more you need to create healthy life balance, the harder it is to do.  This means you have to make self-care a top priority.

Block out time in your schedule to make sure you give yourself re-creation breaks, as you would with any top priority activity.  Vigorously defend against threats to your self-care when they come up, as they inevitably will.  When you commit to regular self-care, you’ll feel better, your relationships will improve and you’ll work more productively.

Check back in as we will be going through different ways you can commit to self-care!

5.    Maintenance:

Most people enter the Action stage filled with enthusiasm and excitement.  There is a sense of euphoria as they begin to see positive change and experience the benefits that this brings.

It is much more of a challenge to maintain that change.  As you move further from the negative experiences created by the old behavior, it becomes easier to minimize their costs.  Temptations arise which can be difficult to resist.

Maintenance is the long haul during which old habits are being replaced by new ones.  Lapses are common during the Maintenance phase.  It may be necessary to return to Planning or even to Contemplation to remedy these lapses.

Some people who lapse in the Maintenance stage get so discouraged that they return to Precontemplation.  Don’t let this happen to you!

When you understand that change rarely proceeds in a straight line, you can recognize a lapse as a normal part of the change process and get quickly back on track.

6.    Termination (Transformation):

Once the new habits have replaced the old, maladaptive behaviors you can consider yourself in what Prochaska labels the Termination phase.  I prefer the term Transformation.

In Transformation, the desired change has been accomplished.  With the new behaviors established, you are no longer the same person.  You couldn’t imagine going back to the old behavior patterns. You have achieved your goal.

Understanding the process of change will help you achieve your goals and make your good life better!  If you would like to learn more about the six stages of change, I heartily recommend Prochaska’s book, Changing for Good.

Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon.  Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine.  Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.

To Do Lists are terrific for managing your ‘to do’s’. You don’t need to worry about forgetting what it is you need to do. You don’t need to keep track in your head of the multitude of items once they are written down. When you’ve accomplished a task you can check it off your list, providing a momentary sense of triumph.

Here’s the problem with To Do lists: they are like the hydra, the many headed monster of Greek mythology. When any one of the hydra’s heads was cut off, two grew in its place.

If your ‘To Do’ list is kept electronically, the completed items disappear as soon as you delete them to be replaced immediately with the next tasks which arise, or those you’ve been postponing. If you maintain your To Do List with paper and pencil, you cross off the completed items and add new ones. When the list becomes too much of a mess, or you turn the page to begin a new week, you copy over the not yet completed tasks and start all over again.

Either way, no matter how many items you accomplish, there’s a never-ending phalanx of new items ready to immediately take their place. The focus always remains on all of the things you have yet to do, while your accomplishments disappear out of your consciousness and into the ether (or your waste basket).

This can become daunting and, ultimately, discouraging. You may feel like a hamster scurrying furiously on its wheel, never making headway against the constant torrent of To Do. The sense of never being able to accomplish enough undermines your confidence and self-esteem.

To get legitimate satisfaction from all that you’ve accomplished, and build your confidence and self-esteem, create a companion for your ‘To Do’ List: an ‘I’ve Done It!’ List.

It’s easy to lose track of or minimize your real accomplishments. Keeping a record of what you have achieved provides you with concrete evidence you can use to provide encouragement and build your confidence.

When you complete a task, rather than simply deleting it from your electronic To Do List or crossing it off your paper and pencil one, transfer it to your ‘I’ve Done It!’ List. Make a habit of referring regularly to your list of accomplishments to remind you of the progress you are making on important projects in your life and boost your self-esteem. Any time you feel overwhelmed or discouraged, get out your ‘I’ve Done It!’ List, and enhance your confidence by reminding yourself of how far you really have come.

By focusing on your accomplishments, you will build confidence that energizes and empowers you to tackle your ‘To Do’ List with renewed vigor. The increased self-esteem you experience will lead to further success, helping you to make your good life better.

Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon.  Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine.  Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.

Are you procrastinating, overwhelmed by the size of an important task you need to complete?  When faced with a big job, think small.

It’s easy to become paralyzed when the job you need to do seems too big to handle.  In those situations it’s helpful to remember the salami image.  There’s no way in the world you can stuff an entire salami in your mouth, but you can polish it off easily one slice at a time.  The thinner the slices, the easier it is to do.

It’s crucial to break any big job into doable steps. When faced with a daunting task, first identify the steps necessary to reach your goal.  The smaller the steps, the easier they are to accomplish.  Once you get moving by taking baby steps, you develop momentum. That momentum will help you move forward, enjoying the task as you go.

The operative word here is “doable.” Most people stymie themselves with unrealistic demands.  Unwilling to be satisfied with small steps, they end up doing nothing. It is important to delight in any progress you make while working toward a goal, no matter how small that progress may seem.

A client came to me recently seeking help to finish his doctoral dissertation.  He needed a Ph.D. in order to get the job he wanted and he couldn’t get his Ph.D. until his dissertation was complete.  He had been working on the dissertation for over a year. By the time he came to see me he had done no work on it at all for several months and was completely stuck.

My client and I identified fifteen small steps that would enable him move forward.  We determined that he could reasonably expect to complete the first two of those steps by our next session.

“I couldn’t be happy with that,” he protested.  “I’d feel like I hadn’t done enough if THAT were all I accomplished!  I’d need to get at least eight of those steps done to feel satisfied.”  Of course, even five of the steps we had identified would have been too much to realistically accomplish in one week. Overwhelmed with so much, my client would have fallen back into his old pattern of doing nothing.

How often are you like my client?  Unable to live up to unrealistic expectations, do you end up doing nothing at all?

If there is an important project that you are stuck on, ask yourself, “Am I insisting on too much from myself?”  If your expectations are unrealistic, you may thwart your own progress.

Examine whatever daunting task you are facing.  Break it down into the smallest possible steps. Set realistic goals related to accomplishing those steps.  By giving yourself permission to take baby steps, you will begin moving in the right direction.  The progress you make will encourage you to keep going. In this way you will eventually achieve your goal.

In fact, my client felt great after completing the two small steps he set out to do that first week.  Getting at least something done was a definite improvement over the inactivity of the preceding months.  The following week he accomplished the next small segment. Before long he was rolling ahead toward completing his dissertation.

When you allow yourself to be satisfied with baby steps, you, too, will achieve your goals and make your good life better.

When you worry you are lost between your ears.  You are focused on some feared outcome in the future.  Though these thoughts and feelings may consume you, whatever you are imagining is less real than what is around you.  Take a deep breath.  Turn your attention to your surroundings. Notice anything in your environment that you can appreciate – the beauty of nature, someone you love, some music you really enjoy.  Whatever your worry, it’s a hypothetical situation off somewhere in the future.  The moment you are living in is real.  It is a gift.  That’s why it’s called the present. Appreciate it fully.  It’s really all you have.

Focusing in the present helps to put what you are worrying about into a larger perspective.  You can see that while your concern is a part of your life, it is only one part of a much larger whole.  When you focus on what works in your life, you diminish the power of your worry.  When you re-channel your worry energy in more positive directions, you’ll be sure to make your good life better.

Keep a journal in which you record all of your worries.  You can carry a small notebook wherever you go and keep a running account of your worries throughout the day.  Or you might want to keep a notebook next to your bed and each night before you go to sleep record the major worries of the day.  Worries have a way of circling endlessly in your head.  One worry can seem like twenty when it comes around again and again.  When you write your worries down they become more manageable.  Sometimes a worry loses its power when seen in black and white.  You can go back over your worry journal weekly or monthly.

It can be extremely instructive to review your worries and notice the actual outcome in each situation.  Often the things you worry about never occur.  Other times they happen but you handle them just fine. This powerful lesson in reality can help you reduce your worry in the future.

Being willing and able to endorse your excellence has a number of benefits. Here are some of them:

1. Familiarity with your own strengths provides awareness of the qualities that can help you to succeed.

When you set a goal for yourself it is important to know those characteristics which have helped you to succeed in the past. If you are aware of your strengths and willing to acknowledge them, you can consciously utilize them to help you achieve your goals in the present.

Your strengths may be diligence or enthusiasm or perseverance or any other character trait that has helped you to succeed in the past. Whatever they are, these strengths will always be available to you. You can draw on these same strengths to achieve your goal in the present, no matter how daunting it may seem.

If you would like to learn more about your own strengths, I highly recommend you visit the website www.authentichappiness.com. There you will find the VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire which measures 24 character strengths. It takes only about 20 minutes to complete this questionnaire and it is free! You will have a list of your top strengths. Awareness of these strengths will help you answer the question, “How can I ever accomplish THIS???”

2. When you acknowledge your successes you become an expert in what you can do to achieve your goals.

When you recognize what you do that works, you can build on your successes to reach your goals. Pay attention to the tiny winning choices that you make. Notice the differences they make in your life.

Are you more effective when you take a brief break a couple of times a day? Do people react differently when you treat them with greater kindness? When you become an expert on the outcome of your choices, you learn what behaviors work. You become keenly aware of what you need to do more of to succeed. When you are empowered in this way, the choices you make will create your success.

3. Honestly present your excellence to others.

There are certain situations, such as job interviews, where success depends on your being able to affirm the contributions you have made. This is not bragging when done in a matter-of-fact manner.

A simple acknowledgement of your strengths and accomplishments conveys necessary information while projecting the self confidence every employer seeks in a potential hire.

As you practice endorsing your excellence it will become easier. After all, it is natural to feel good about how great you really are!