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This week the Choose You Blog is focusing on the topic of relieving stress and finding peace. My contribution to this cause comes from several different posts I’ve done over the past few years.

These are posts I’ve done on the many different ways we can reduce stress in our lives.

Did you know laughing is good for reducing stress?

Smile and Laugh Your Way to Better Health…

Diet and exercise are important for good health, but did you know laughter is too? If you want to be as healthy as you can be, than laughter needs to be part of your healthy living regimen. Is it?

Here are some of the Health Benefits of Laughter:

• Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases infection fighting antibodies. It increases our attentiveness, heart rate, and pulse.
• People who laugh heartily on a regular basis have lower standing blood pressure than the average person. When people have a good laugh, initially the blood pressure increases, but then it decreases to levels below normal. Breathing then becomes deeper which sends oxygen enriched blood and nutrients throughout the body.
• Laughter, along with an active sense of humor, may help protect you against a heart attack, according to the study at the University of Maryland Medical Center (cited above). The study, which is the first to indicate that laughter may help prevent heart disease, found that people with heart disease were 40 percent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations compared to people of the same age without heart disease.

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Four Steps To Living In the Moment

Are you only concerned with adding days to your life, and forgetting to add life to your days? If so, you are not alone. This is a problem many of us have, and the reason we should all try to make a conscious effort, to live in the present moment.

When we are living in the moment, we are totally immersed in what we are doing. I’m not suggesting in any way, that we should attempt to live in the moment 100% of the time, as much as it would be great if we could, it’s just not practical. To do that, we would be setting ourselves up for failure. What I want you to do, is just make an “attempt” at living in the present moment, this is a positive start, and in the right direction. So, how can you start? Well, you start with “awareness”.

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We all know that nothing stays the same.  And we know that life is constantly changing.  However, I think that we all under-estimate this fact in many ways.  What I mean is…When things are going great in our lives, we don’t think about the times that they weren’t so great.  And, when things are going badly and we are feeling sad, it’s sometimes hard to remember that we were ever happy.  In both these cases, it is important for us to not only remember, but to also reflect.

I think this is important because if we take some time to reflect on the bad days, on days that are going well for us, we can get a better perspective on our lives.  Seeing a bad day from the perspective of a good day, allows us to become “aware” of the notion that time heals.  Something that on our bad days, we may not be able to fully appreciate.

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Is stress wearing you down? Are you worried about the bad economy? Your job? The mortgage? Your health? Your family? If so, you are not alone.

Life is always changing, and that can feel very stressful. But often, seemingly bad things will happen in our lives, that will actually turn out to be the catalysts to something positive. It’s very true that when one door closes another will open. Although it never feels so great when that one door closes. Recently I’ve had several doors close on me. But as hard as it’s been, I can already see that these things needed to happen to bring me closer to where I am meant to be.

There are three things we can do to help relieve the stress in our lives…

Continue reading the full post here.

“Go Confidently In The Direction Of Your Dreams” — Henry David Thoreau

With the pressures of daily life, do any of us really have time to think about our dreams? Do we even know what our dreams are? Kids know what their dreams are, just ask them…What do you want to be when you grow up? It is always such and easy answer for them. But once we do grow up, then what? Is is too late for us?

What if we never realized, that we might have been forgetting to follow our dreams? Worse than that, what if we thought we were following our dreams, but it turned out that we were living a nightmare? Then what? Is it too late? Do we get a second chance at our dreams?

When is it too late to follow your dreams? I would like to believe the answer to that question is never. I think our dreams are ever changing, and ever evolving, just as our lives are. I think that it’s o.k. not to be exactly sure what our dreams are, and it’s also o.k. if our dreams change from time to time. The only thing that is not o.k., is to give-up on our dreams. Because, once you give-up your dreams, you lose hope for your future.

But why then, do so many people give-up or deny their dreams? That is an easy one to answer…They give up because they are afraid, afraid of failure. Fear is what stops us from following our dreams. Fear is the darkness that casts a shadow over our light. And, fear is what we need to overcome if we want to reach for our dreams.

The most important thing to remember…Is to never let go of your hopes and dreams, even when you are not sure what they are. So, take some time to figure out what your greatest dreams are for your life, and then walk confidently towards them, without fear.

More on following your dreams…

• BlogHer Contributing Editor Marie Niles has recently done a post on How To Make Your Dreams Come True and Discovering Your Dream, Purpose or Passion.
• BlogHer Contributing Editor Mata wrote  10 Years From Now — Where is your happiness?

*cross-posted at Be The Change You Want To See In Yourself (from February 28, 2007)

I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about today, and then I came across this interesting article on how reading can reduce stress. Since I love to read, and I also love anything that can help me reduce stress, I thought this would be a great post for today.

Are you stressed about the economy? Your job? Your kids? Politics? It’s no secret that life is very stressful these days. So…What can we do to reduce stress? Apparently, reading a book is one of the best ways to reduce stress.

Reading is the best way to relax and even six minutes can be enough to reduce the stress levels by more than two thirds or 68%.

New research by consultancy Mindlab International at the University of Sussex says reading works better and faster than other methods to calm frazzled nerves such as listening to music, going for a walk or settling down with a cup of tea.

Are you a reader? Does it help you relax and de-stress?

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Is stress wearing you down? Are you worried about the bad economy? Your job? The mortgage? Your health? Your family? If so, you are not alone.

Life is always changing, and that can feel very stressful. But often, seemingly bad things will happen in our lives, that will actually turn out to be the catalysts to something positive. It’s very true that when one door closes another will open. Although it never feels so great when that one door closes. Recently I’ve had several doors close on me. But as hard as it’s been, I can already see that these things needed to happen to bring me closer to where I am meant to be.

There are three things we can do to help relieve the stress in our lives…

Read more »

A few weeks ago I was flipping through the million channels on my TV trying to find just one thing worth watching (which isn’t an easy task). Luckily I found Dr. Wayne Dyer on PBS.

I read my first book by Dr. Wayne Dyer (Real Magic) about twelve years ago, and I’ve been hooked ever since. So when I watched his seminar on PBS that was based on his latest book, of course I had to run out the next day and buy it. This one is called Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life, and it’s his interpretation of the 81 verses of the Tao.

[The Tao Te Ching was written five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, and offers advice and guidance for living a balanced life.]

As I read, I came across aspects of this wisdom that are helpful in my quest for better health and weight loss. So, even though I’m no philosopher (obviously), I thought I would share some verses that stood out for me. They offer guidance for healthy living and even weight loss. Here are three.

[Keep in mind that I am only pulling the parts of these verses that I find most relevant to good health, this is by no means a complete look at any of these verses.]

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This is a movie I remember watching when I was very young. I always thought it was called Shangri La.

Here is the movie in its entirety.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE MOVIE – Lost Horizon (1937)

[cross-posted at Be The Change You Want To See In Yourself]

Dream On – An Inspirational Video

This is a great inspirational video that I posted here several months ago. I thought it would be nice to post it again.

Also See:

Inspirational Quotes Set To The Music of John Lennon’s Imagine

Who Will “Stand By You”?

It’s Never Too Late To Follow Your Dreams

How to Learn From Life’s Greatest Lessons

I love this…I thought you might like it too.

image from

HOW WE CAN CREATE PEACE AND LOVE IN OUR LIVES – BY LETTING GO OF ANGER AND HATE – by Catherine Morgan

If we wish peace for ourselves, me must first wish peace for others. How do we do that? I think a good place to start is to take “hate” out of our thoughts and mind. It’s easy to say you’re not a hater, but to truly live a life without hating is not that easy. Here are a few suggestions….

1. Start with yourself. Stop hating yourself. Stop hating your weight, your looks, your job, your face, your inabilities, and on and on. This first step might be the most difficult, but it is also the most important. Learn to love yourself.

2. Stop hating the uncontrollable situations in your life. Things like; the traffic, the news, the bills, the check-out girl, any circumstance in your life that makes you angry but that you have no control over.

You can be conscious of your emotions at these times. When you feel yourself getting impatient in a traffic jam, use this time to reflect on your need to learn how to be more patient. Realize that this hold-up may actually keep you from being in an accident yourself, acknowledge that traffic isn’t the enemy unless you let it be. Do this type of refection with all the uncontrollable inconveniences that you hate in your life. Take some time to reflect, see the uselessness in your anger.

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HAS THE WORLD LOST IT’S EMPATHY? — by Catherine Morgan

We all see the news, and feel badly about the wars, the starving, the homeless, the poor, and all the other sad things we are seeing on television. On a smaller scale, we all know people with hardships, going through divorce, struggling with health issues, having financial problems, and many other difficulties affecting our families and neighbors.

When we hear all these stories, we feel great sympathy and sadness. But, I think what we don’t do, is feel empathy. To feel empathy, you have to be able to put yourself in that other person’s shoes, and feel what they must be going through. True compassion comes from a place of empathy, not sympathy. In fact, most people don’t want our sympathy, and I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way. What I am saying is that people don’t want us to feel sorry for them, they want us to have compassion and empathy for them.

I’m pointing this difference out because, we need to see that without empathy our sympathy is just a judgement, and being judgemental is never helpful. When we can “truly” empathize with the hardships of our neighbors, our families, and others in our lives, we are then in a position of compassion and kindness towards them. Even if we are not in a position to alleviate the struggle of the person we are empathizing with, we will be conveying compassion towards them and not pity. While your pity is a judgement, your compassion is a kindness, and kindness is what we all need in our lives.

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ONLY KINDNESS MATTERS — by Catherine Morgan

Jewel has a song, and in it she sings….”In the end, only kindness matters”. Those are very profound words. I would even say, that these are words to live your life by. Because, it is so true. In the grand scheme of things, we are here on earth only a very short time. Many of us spend much of this time being angry at people, making judgments on others, and generally just not being as kind as we could be.

So, the question then becomes….How can we change that? How can we live a more kind life? Well I think, that like everything else we can’t be too hard on ourselves. After-all, we live in a harsh world, where many times people are not even being very kind to us. But, that’s no excuse either. Remember when our mom’s told us, “treat others the way you would want them to treat you”? Well it seems that, somewhere between kindergarten and junior high, most of us forget this little bit of wisdom. But, I say we bring it back. Don’t get panicked, I’m not suggesting anything radical. But, maybe just some baby-steps in the right direction.

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HOW WE CAN CREATE PEACE AND LOVE IN OUR LIVES – BY LETTING GO OF ANGER AND HATE – by Catherine Morgan

If we wish peace for ourselves, me must first wish peace for others. How do we do that? I think a good place to start is to take “hate” out of our thoughts and mind. It’s easy to say you’re not a hater, but to truly live a life without hating is not that easy. Here are a few suggestions….

1. Start with yourself. Stop hating yourself. Stop hating your weight, your looks, your job, your face, your inabilities, and on and on. This first step might be the most difficult, but it is also the most important. Learn to love yourself.

Read more »

FOUR STEPS TO HELP YOU SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS — by Catherine Morgan

We all carry around stress and worries about problems in our lives, some of us more than others. If you are one of those people that can’t stop worrying about all the problems in your life, then this article is for you. Worrying about our problems only adds to our problems, and no amount of worrying about a situation is going to make it better. Letting go of negative thoughts and worries is an important step in our overall happiness. Hopefully these steps can help you get passed some of the problems that have been bothering you, and allow you to let go of the negative thoughts that block you from your true happiness.

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FIVE STEPS TO FORGIVENESS — by Catherine Morgan

When we are angry at people in are life. When we aren’t talking to people in our life. When we hate people in our life. When we are doing these things, we are weakening ourselves, we are hurting ourselves, we are hating ourselves. That is because, when we don’t forgive, we are allowing our heart to be weighed down with negativity. But, we already know that. So why do we do it? Why don’t we forgive?

My theory is; that we really don’t know how to forgive. I mean, saying you “forgive” someone, isn’t really “forgiving” them, is it? What if there were actually steps you could take to forgive? Kind of a “12 step” program for forgiveness, only with less steps. See if this works for you. Because, when you forgive someone, you are pushing anger out of your heart and making more room for love to get in, and love is what really matters.

STEP ONE: WHY ARE YOU ANGRY AT THIS PERSON? You would not believe how many people are angry about something and don’t even remember why. So get a piece of paper out and write down why you are mad at this person. It may be one thing, or it may be a whole list. Just write it all down.

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Four Steps To Living In the Moment — by Catherine Morgan

First, be conscious of what you are thinking. Make a mental note whenever you find yourself focusing on something negative. Are there certain things that come up more than other things? Most likely, your negative feelings are based in something from your past, or something you fear in your future.

Second, write down on a piece of paper, some of the negative thoughts that are coming up more than others. Just try for two or three right now, you don’t want to be overwhelmed. If in a few days, you find that this exercise was helpful, then by all means, go back and work on a few more issues. Just take it slow, no rush, no pressure.

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FINDING PEACE AND HAPPINESS IN MOMENTS OF SILENCE — by Catherine Morgan

Where did the saying “I just want a little peace and quiet” come from? Obviously, from someone who understood that peace can only exist in silence. The noise of life is like a barrier that stands between you and peace. But, quieting the noise with silence can break down this barrier, and open the door to the peace that is within you.

Quieting your mind, for even just a few minutes a day, can make all the difference in the world. You can have a full day of work or family related stresses, but in a few minutes of stillness reclaim the peace that is sometimes lost in our stressful lives. Using a guided meditation can be very helpful with this process.

As silence is the road to restoring our peace; peace is the highway to our happiness. You can have everything you ever wanted in life, but without peace you may still have trouble finding true happiness. Even if your life is very troubling or stressful, happiness and peace does not have to allude you, just find yourself some moments of silence. But, don’t take my word for it. Give it a try. Get yourself some peace and quiet.