Quick Relaxation Tool

Stay Calm, Cool, and Collected While Driving

Create quiet and silence. When you’re in the car, turn off the phone and the radio. You can reduce your stress by finding brief moments of quiet during the day.”

Listen to soft music or books on tape while you drive so the process of getting there is enjoyable.

Skip the travel-mug of double espresso and sip some soothing chamomile tea on your commute.

Perform shoulder shrugs at each red light to relieve upper-body tension.

Before you start your drive and when you arrive at your destination, take in three long, deep breaths and release them slowly.

Look for the beauty. Capture one pleasant moment on your drive to work. Notice the sunlight, the color of the sky or the face of a child in the car next to you. It will soften the pressure of going where you’re going.

When you encounter a rude driver, shift your focus to all the good drivers around you. Just five minutes of positive focus raises immune-system function, while focusing on those you resent has the opposite effect.

Leave early no matter where you’re going and avoid the stress of being late.

Just say "No" to raod rage!

Blog Roundup

Feel Good Stuff

A humorous story has it that a newly appointed young clergyman was contacted by a local funeral director to hold a graveside service at a small country cemetery in midwestern USA. There was to be no funeral, just a graveside service, because the deceased had no family and had outlived her friends.

The young pastor started early to the cemetery, but soon became lost. After making several wrong turns, he finally arrived a half-hour late. The hearse was nowhere in sight and cemetery workers were relaxing under a near-by tree, eating their lunch. The pastor went to the open grave and found that the vault lid was already in place. He took out a prayer book and read a few paragraphs. As he returned to his car, he overheard one of the workers say, “Maybe we’d better tell him it’s a septic tank.” Why is it we make our biggest mistakes in public? And some people can’t avoid it … former hockey goalie Jacques Plante wonders, “How would you like a job where, if you made a mistake, a big, red light goes on and 18,000 people boo?” But we should never give up our right to be wrong. Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. It is your right to be wrong. “No (one) ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes,” said William E. Gladstone. Great mistakes are opportunities for great learning. And great learning makes for great living.

Now, that’s something I can get into. I don’t need to be a great person, just one who believes that his life is worth living well. And if that means I need to make some magnificent mistakes along the way, I’ll take that on as part of the price to pay. You and I have a right to be wrong. And if we are to move toward great living, we might even have a duty to make great mistakes. Sometimes we can laugh them off. Certainly we can learn from them. And always, let’s just make sure the next mistake is one we haven’t made before!

by Steve Goodier of LifeSupportSystem.com

Stay in the (k)now,

Melissa
Melissa@know-stress-zone.com
Know-Stress-Zone.com