Clutter isn’t just physical

I am slowly trying to get rid of the things that clutter up my life and prevent me from accomplishing some of my goals. This clutter can also cause stress with not knowing what to do with it. while I was going through my emails the other day i realized that I had another clutter that keeps building up and prevents me from having better time management. I realized that all those emails we get every time we buy something online, or answer a survey, or sign-up for a deal at a restaurant or grocery store we are now on their email list. My mail box is full of emails I never open. Yes, I delete them but they keep coming and coming. finally today I decided I was going to do something about it. I started “unsubscribing” to them. I felt so good. Before, I felt like if I “unsubscribed” I would miss out on a great deal or opportunity, but if I didn’t read them how was I going to get that great deal.
It will feel good to not have to open my email to find all those junk emails anymore. The down side is I may not be getting as many quality emails as I think I am.

Good Deeds Can Help Ease The Pain

Saturday I had the opportunity to be part of a great team. United Way of Southern Nevada partnered with their partner agencies to hand out a million dollars in gift cards to those who needed it the most in our community. We called it “Summer Santa.” We had an anonymous donor donate One Million Dollars for that purpose. 2,000 gift cards at $500 apiece were distributed to those families and individuals that the agencies determined were in such financial hardship.

The recipients didn’t know what they were receiving. They were told, by our partner agencies that do direct service to go to the location that we had selected to hand out the gift cards. We didn’t advertise the fact that we were handing out gift cards so as to not have people just show up that weren’t on the list. That would have created a negative situation. We told them recipient what they were receiving after they had been verified with the proper I.D.

Most of the families and individuals that I handed out cards to broke out in tears. They couldn’t believe this gift came to them while they were down. Several of the families  told me that they had been homeless for long periods of time and they had just moved into a place and didn’t even have furniture. One family had been sleeping on the floor for months. Their was a couple with a child and another on the way. an older lady at the receiving a gift card at the table next to me almost passed out. That day a lot of people’s lives changed for the better.

It’s days like this that puts my life into perspective. I am going through some financial challenges, and have been suffering from a bad back/neck for the past several months that at times seems almost dibilitating, but for those few hours having the opportunity to help others, and hear their challenges I didn’t notice my pain. I’ve learned that no matter how hard life can get there is someone out their going through tougher times and if they can do it, maybe I can too.

Can you laugh at Yourself?

Do you take yourself too serious? Can you laugh at yourself? Every day I see people that don’t know how to lighten up. They take themselves way to serious, so much so that when they make a mistake they just mentally beat themselves up for it. No one is perfect and even though we all want to do the best we can we have to understand that we will make mistakes, but when we take ourselves so serious and over react to the smaller mistakes we are allowing ourselves to stress out and this will lead to making bigger mistakes.

I realize that we cant laugh off every mistake but over reacting is just as harmful if not more to making more mistakes.

Alowing yourself to find your in your imperfections will allow you to recover faster from your mistakes and will also ingretiate yourselves to your co-workers.

April is National Humor Month

It should be no coincedence that April is National Stress Awareness Month and National Humor Awareness Month because humor and laughter can help us cope with stress. According to the Mayo Clinic laughter has short term and long term benefits to help reduce stress.

The Mayo Clinic says the short term benefits from laughter may:

• Stimulate many organs. Laughter enhances your intake of oxygen-rich air, stimulates your heart, lungs and muscles, and increases the endorphins that are released by your brain.
• Activate and relieve your stress response. A rollicking laugh fires up and then cools down your stress response and increases your heart rate and blood pressure. The result? A good, relaxed feeling.
• Soothe tension. Laughter can also stimulate circulation and aid muscle relaxation, both of which help reduce some of the physical symptoms of stress.

The May clinic goes on to mention the following long term benefits of laughter:

• Improve your immune system. Negative thoughts manifest into chemical reactions that can impact your body by bringing more stress into your system and decreasing your immunity. In contrast, positive thoughts actually release neuropeptides that help fight stress and potentially more-serious illnesses.
• Relieve pain. Laughter may ease pain by causing the body to produce its own natural painkillers. Laughter may also break the pain-spasm cycle common to some muscle disorders.
• Increase personal satisfaction. Laughter can also make it easier to cope with difficult situations. It also helps you connect with other people.

Remember just because April is National stress awareness month that stress doesn’t just occur during the month of April but the other elevin months can be just as stressful it is important to incorporate humor year round to help relieve your stress.