I know it’s hard to believe, but we are still here. The reason for our silence is that we’ve just moved house and have only just recovered internet access.

However, we’ll be back before you know it with tips on moving house, more on teeth grinding, the next installment in our series on giving up cigarettes and tips on handling a sweet-tooth.

I should warn you, first of all, that if you’re not used to doing something like this, it will feel silly. Deal with it.

I can honestly say that when I was first taken through an exercise like the one below, I felt like I had learnt to relax for the first time in my life. It was a complete surprise when I later discovered that I could use that feeling of relaxation to combat future stresses that I would encounter.

So, if your wondering if you can use your imagination to relax and reduce stress, I’m living proof! Enjoy these 10 steps to relaxation and stress-reduction, through the simple act of visualisation:

Use Your Imagination to Relax and Reduce Stress

Sit comfortably in a chair.

1. Close your eyes and simply take a deep breath.

Breathe in through your nose, with the same intention that you would smell a rose. You can almost feel the end of your nose tingling.

As you breath in, imagine filling your abdomen, your lower lungs and then your lungs. (Some people have said that it helps to imagine your lungs are just behind your belly button as you are breathing in.) You are practicing deep ‘diaphragmatic breathing’ (rather than shallower higher lung breathing), so when you breathe in, your abdomen should expand.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a great post over at Dumb Little Man, entitled, 7 How-to-be-happy Lessons That Kids Can Teach Us. I wanted to link to it, because as the father of 3 – yes, three! – girls, I can vouch for every word.

Here are DLM’s points, with some commentary from me at the bottom:

1. Living in the present
2. Single Focus While Doing Things
3. Use of Imagination
4. The future is limitless
5. Always Joyful
6. Inherent Goodness and Trust in Others
7. Absolute Faith In Getting Their Wishes Fulfilled

All I want to add to these points is that I don’t believe it’s enough to connect with our ‘inner child’. In reality, such a construct may not even be helpful for us.

What is more beneficial is going out and living these lessons. Things like this cannot just be learnt through observation. These lessons, like all great lessons, can only be learnt through experience.

So, don’t just ‘get in touch with your inner child’, as if something like that can be accessed at will. Instead, get in touch with yourself. Discover that you never stopped being that child. The adult you are now didn’t surpass that child, replace it or reject it. Instead the child gave birth to who you are – and you owe your adulthood to that playful, wishful, joyful sprite. Instead of ditching that child, to simply be recalled when it’s convenient, it might be more helpful to think of growth as the wearing of an extra layer clothing. We don’t take our underwear off when we put our trousers on. And we don’t take our trousers off when we put our coat on! Quite the opposite, most of us check that we are first fully dressed before putting an outer jacket on venturing on.

Why then would we think that we can function as an adult without first acknowledging and accepting the child within?

I don’t want to belabour the point, so I’ll leave it at this:Don’t use the innocence and energy of kids as some kind of metaphor to learn from. Instead, see it as a challenge to be lived? If you’re up to the task…

Now, with that rather long caveat, go and read the whole thing.

Over at my anabaptist spirituality blog, Leaving Münster, I wrote a birthday reflection on what lessons I encountered last year. It was an act of self-discipline, as much as anything, because I tend to get fairly melancholy around my birthday. So, I thought it would do me be good to intentionally – and publicly – well, think happy!

Anyway, I wanted to repeat a popular quote of Abraham Lincoln’s that I used in that post:

“When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.”

Preach it, Abe!

I no longer think of myself as a religious person. (I’ll blog one day about how I realised I’d finally lost my faith whilst I was in the middle of preaching a sermon!) However, if I had to be, I’d sign-up to this do-gooding, feel-gooding spirituality.

What about you?

Smoking cessation is the big topic right now and seems like it has been for an incredibly long time. I’m guessing that by reading this you have an interest in giving up, wanting to help someone give up, or have already given up. Whatever one it may be, I can’t promise instant 100% success; I’m not a professional and I don’t have an ounce of cessation training in me – but I recently managed to quit smoking, so I’m going to put together a small series on ‘how I gave up smoking’, in the hopes that it might help someone else.

This first of three posts will look at preparation, why I think it’s important and how it helped me.

Preparation

All the big things in life will require some sort of preparation – and in most cases even the small things in life – so why would we presume that giving up cigarettes deserves less consideration? There are a variety of areas that would benefit from some preparation, but personally most of my preparation was carried out just by thinking. You may have already given up something addictive and will therefore understand the process you have to go through, mentally and physically, in order to come out the other side in one piece. But for most of us its our first addiction and – fingers crossed – soon to be our last.

The first area I believe you should consider is the motivation for giving up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Our latest author, Claire, is going to begin publishing a series of posts on giving up smoking.

This will be a three-part series, consisting of:

1 – preparation
2 – the actual quitting
3 – the aftermath

I’ve had a sneak peek and it’s good stuff. More importantly, it works!

I’m not sure I’ve ever met a shy monkey! Nevertheless, research recently carried out on young rhesus monkeys may hold the clue to a deeper understanding of anxiety, stress and shyness is human children.

The research, carried out by the HealthEmotions Research Institute and Department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, showed that those with the most anxious temperaments showed higher activity in the part of the brain that regulates emotion and triggers reactions to anxiety, e.g. the fight or flight response.

The brains of people suffering from anxiety and severe shyness in social situations consistently respond more strongly to stress, and show signs of being anxious even in situations that others find safe. In other words,

“The brain machinery underlying the stress response seems to be always on in these individuals, even in situations that others perceive as safe and secure.” (Dr. Ned Kalin, chairman of the SMPH Research Institute)

The current research suggests that the reason is it is hard for some one with an anxious temperament to “calm down” is because they are wired in a way that tends to keep them tense and anxious. Their ‘calm’ is already more wound-up that most people’s stress!

But does it have to be that way? Read the rest of this entry »

Well, after a fairly prolonged absence – for which my wife should be held responsible due to the birth of our third child! – we’re now officially back.

In the coming days you can expect further posts on quitting Cola and reducing tooth grinding. However, our newest author, Claire, will also be starting a new series on giving up smoking and I’ll be adding some practical memory tips.

So, stay tuned!

I’ve been meaning to post more on how to stop grinding your teeth, along with pointers to tactics that I’ve found helpful. However, the truth is that not much has worked so far! Hence, not much posting!

So, in the spirit of full disclosure, over the next few of posts I will discuss ‘how not to stop grinding your teeth’. First failed attempt: alcohol.

I’ve got a couple of posts in the pipe-line on teeth-grinding (or “bruxism”, to use the medical term), but in the meantime…

Who couldn’t use a little bit more good luck?

Richard Wiseman, professor at University of Hertfordshire has made a study of lucky people. Why are some people lucky and others not? Can you learn to be lucky? These are questions that drive his research and they are the focus of his first book The Luck Factor.

In his research, Wiseman interviewed thousands of people and even ran a project called Luck School, where students could learn to be luckier. The results of this work reveal that people are not born lucky. Instead, lucky people use basic principles to create good fortune.

Mary Jaksch goes on to discuss 7 Strategies for Good Luck, taking five from Wiseman’s research and adding two of her own: Read the rest of this entry »