Ten Quick and Easy De-Stressers

A few good relaxation techniques can save your life, because stress is more than just unpleasant. It's also dangerous to your health. Disciplined practices such as meditation can help relieve that stress, but what if you don't have the time or motivation? Maybe you need to try a few of these simple, quick ways to relax and de-stress...you'll feel so much better for it too!

1. Hug someone. Giving a hug means getting one. As long as it's from somebody you don't mind hugging you, this really can be relaxing.

2. Interrupt routines. Go talk to that man sleeping on the bench, or eat lunch on the roof. Just doing anything that breaks you out of your habitual patterns can relieve stress.

3. Have a hot shower. It relaxes your muscles, and any break from more stressful activities can help too. Some find that an alternating hot and cold shower is even more relaxing.

4. Try watching your mind. Spot the stresses lurking just below the surface (hunger, worry, money, a phone call you need to make, a deadline to meet), and you can resolve them and feel more relaxed. If you practice this mindfulness exercise, it may become one of your favorite relaxation techniques.

5. Try laughing. Your own experience shows that this helps you relax, right? Go find someone that knows all the best jokes or just has a great sense of humour, or find something funny in front of you.

6. Use relaxing music. Keep your favorite relaxation CD or MP3 at the office, in the car, or wherever you'll need it most.

7. Leave the room for a while. This can really help if the things in the room or related to it are triggering your stressful thoughts. Why not get out for a little while?

8. Breath deeply. Try five deep breaths through your nose. Close your eyes and pay attention only to your breathing while doing this. It's like a mini-meditation, and perhaps the most effective of the quick relaxation techniques.

9. Drink some chamomile tea. Chamomile tea seems to have a calming effect on the nerves. Any hot tea without caffeine may be relaxing.

10. Walk a while. If you have at least ten minutes to spare, walking is one of the best relaxation techniques. While you're at it, find a pretty place to walk.

Naturally, it is ideal if you can change yourself, so you're naturally more relaxed all the time. Perhaps the thought of the work involved in this just stresses you more. In that case you might have to take it slow, so why not start with one or two of the simple relaxation techniques above and then slowly progress to meditation?

Self Belief: Tune Your Mind to Win

There is a saying that winning and losing are two sides of a coin. All of us would like to be a winner in all our endeavors, but unfortunately very few of us succeed. But there are some people who always turn out to winners. All of us know someone who always is a winner.

Whatever they do, anything they attempt, they meet with success. Be it business, playing a game of cards, finding a date or even if they were to enter the Olympics…hey presto! They are the winners. You know for sure that they’ll win against the odds and find their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Its like they just wouldn’t accept anything but victory. All we do is admire them and wonder how they do it time after time.

Have you ever wondered why winners always win and losers always lose? Perhaps you would like to be let into their little secret. Winners EXPECT only winning. That’s the catch! Sounds pretty simple. Well it is.

Now pause and take a minute to think…. a winner foresees his success. He knows he’s the one who’ll win. He has tuned his mind to win. Most of you have run a race sometime or the other in your lives. What was your mindset before the race? Did you think you’d win before you ran the race or did you contemplate winning only when you were in the race? Perhaps you hadn’t even thought positively and had already seen yourself as a loser.

Whether they are dealing in real estate or buying a car or just about anything, a winner EXPECTS to get exactly what he wants. Even for the Olympics, you bet they’d bag the gold hands down. And they do. And sometimes they do it against all odds. It is this EXPECTATION that makes one a winner, scoring over the rest. There are many athletes who have won against all odds. If we just look around us we can see people who win all the time.

Do you also want to be a winner? What you have to do is…

Keep your eyes closed and imagine you have a particular aspiration in life. Relax and concentrate. Let your mind focus only on the fact you are going to achieve your aim.

Now, shut your eyes once more and EXPECT that YOU WILL achieve your target. Observe a subtle change. Do you not feel more confident?  That’s the difference between letting our mind ponder and waver too much about anything.

Perhaps you can win or lose. But the EXPECTATION has only one likelihood…. winning. You are almost there.

The answer now lies before you. So what do you do next? Apply your mind with full intensity, concentrate on your goal and EXPECT TO WIN. Before any venture, just take a deep breath, relax and pause…. to think and ….TO WIN. Think of the aura of success around you. Bask in that glory of success. Now that you have set your mind on winning, you are surely going to be a winner.

Everything you are going to do or say will spell triumph.
Now that you know the path to winning, the rest is easy. And the chances are you WILL win. One hundred percent. All you require is mindset to win.