Every year, like mystical words from the Dalai Lama, the latest best seller sweeps the globe, revealing how we can achieve our goals. Most contain great advice that’s possible to follow – if you’re sleeping well.

Essentially, it doesn’t matter what your goals are – to be the wealthiest entrepreneur, the neighborhood’s nicest mom, the most tweeted twitterer, or to challenge Apolo Ohno’s speed records – without proper rest you won’t claim the prize. According to a British Medical Journal study, sleep-deprived drivers are as risky as drunk drivers. Lack of sleep can delay healing and contribute to obesity, diabetes and multiple health issues.

My Ideal Pillow presents the five habits of highly successful sleepers.

1. Make sleep a priority. “Think of it as social networking with your body,” says Dr. Mark Hooper, founder of My Ideal Pillow, Wilson, N.C. “Every organ from your brain to your skin will thank you. A full eight hours of rest replenishes your energy and rejuvenates your entire body.”

2. Create the environment. Keep your bedroom exclusively for sleeping. “Shut off the computer and the TV for at least an hour before going to bed,” says Hooper. “Keep the room dark and find routines that help you relax before retiring.”

3. Take advantage of technology. While the bedroom might be the last place you would think of ergonomics, a proper bedding manufacturer would. My Ideal Pillow is the first company to utilize computer precision to design a pillow that conforms to your body shape, age, weight and sleep style. Hypoallergenic down and the finest-quality fibers and materials create the ultimate sleep experience.

4. Align your spine. Leading medical experts know that proper posture doesn’t end when we lay down our heads. Dr. Mark Hooper founded My Ideal Pillow to help solve problems he encountered among patients in his chiropractic practice. “The perfect pillow will provide support for your neck and head to keep the spine in proper alignment,” says Hooper.

5. Don’t take our word for it, check your sources. Reliable news outlets around the country are buzzing over My Ideal Pillow for a good night’s rest. This Wall Street Journal article is quoted as saying about its My Ideal Pillow test run, “Our test sleep was dreamy.” Isn’t that just as it should be?

Source: My Ideal Pillow

“Relaxing with a Mental PDA” Your 5 minutes daily program to Stress management

We all have this favorite expression when it comes to being stressed out, and I wouldn’t bother naming all of them since it may also vary in different languages. But when it comes down to it, I think that it is how we work or even relax, for that matter that triggers stress. Ever been stressed even when you’re well relaxed and bored? I know I have.

Since Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. is unavoidable in life, it is important to find ways to decrease and prevent stressful incidents and decrease negative reactions to stress. Here are some of the things that can be done by just remembering it, since life is basically a routine to follow like brushing your teeth or eating breakfast. You can do a few of them in a longer span of time, but as they say– every minute counts.

Managing time
Time management skills can allow you more time with your family and friends and possibly increase your performance and productivity. This will help reduce your stress.

To improve your time management:

• Save time by focusing and concentrating, delegating, and scheduling time for yourself.
• Keep a record of how you spend your time, including work, family, and leisure time.
• Prioritize your time by rating tasks by importance and urgency. Redirect your time to those activities that are important and meaningful to you.
• Manage your commitments by not over- or undercommitting. Don’t commit to what is not important to you.
• Deal with procrastination by using a day planner, breaking large projects into smaller ones, and setting short-term deadlines.
• Examine your beliefs to reduce conflict between what you believe and what your life is like.

Build healthy coping strategies
It is important that you identify your coping strategies. One way to do this is by recording the stressful event, your reaction, and how you cope in a stress journal. With this information, you can work to change unhealthy coping strategies into healthy ones-those that help you focus on the positive and what you can change or control in your life.

Lifestyle
Some behaviors and lifestyle choices affect your stress level. They may not cause stress directly, but they can interfere with the ways your body seeks relief from stress. Try to:

• Balance personal, work, and family needs and obligations.
• Have a sense of purpose in life.
• Get enough sleep, since your body recovers from the stresses of the day while you are sleeping.
• Eat a balanced diet for a nutritional defense against stress.
• Get moderate exercise throughout the week.
• Limit your consumption of alcohol.
• Don’t smoke.

Social support
Social support is a major factor in how we experience stress. Social support is the positive support you receive from family, friends, and the community. It is the knowledge that you are cared for, loved, esteemed, and valued. More and more research indicates a strong relationship between social support and better mental and physical health.

Changing thinking
When an event triggers negative thoughts, you may experience fear, insecurity, anxiety, depression, rage, guilt, and a sense of worthlessness or powerlessness. These emotions trigger the body’s stress, just as an actual threat does. Dealing with your negative thoughts and how you see things can help reduce stress.

• Thought-stopping helps you stop a negative thought to help eliminate stress.
• Disproving irrational thoughts helps you to avoid exaggerating the negative thought, anticipating the worst, and interpreting an event incorrectly.
• Problem solving helps you identify all aspects of a stressful event and find ways to deal with it.
• Changing your communication style helps you communicate in a way that makes your views known without making others feel put down, hostile, or intimidated. This reduces the stress that comes from poor communication. Use the assertiveness ladder to improve your communication style.

Even writers like me can get stressed even though we’re just using our hands to do the talking, but having to sit for 7 or 8 hours is already stressful enough and have our own way to relieve stress. Whether you’re the mail guy, the CEO, or probably the average working parent, stress is one unwanted visitor you would love to boot out of your homes, especially your life.

During the holiday season, we all may make questionable choices, like wearing knitted snowman sweaters, overindulging at the dinner table or serving turducken. But according to administrative staffing firm OfficeTeam, the decisions professionals make before going on vacation can mean the difference between a relaxing respite or a harried holiday.

“Taking time off provides an opportunity for employees to recharge and come back to work refreshed,” said OfficeTeam executive director Robert Hosking. “However, those who don’t lay the proper groundwork before they leave may find themselves constantly connected to the office while on holiday breaks or overloaded when they return.”

OfficeTeam offers eight common vacation missteps and tips for avoiding them:

1. Carving out time at the last minute. Coordinate vacation dates with your team as early as possible to avoid scheduling conflicts or a lack of project coverage. Be sure to let your coworkers and other business contacts know when you’ll be out. If taking on your tasks is a burden to colleagues, bring in temporary professionals to help while you’re gone.
2. Acting like a turkey. Use your out-of-office features wisely by including an alternate contact on your voice-mail or e-mail notices. This ensures people get immediate assistance and assignments stay on track.
3. Ruffling colleagues’ feathers. Forgetting to cancel or reschedule meetings planned during your vacation is discourteous to others who set time aside to talk to you. Also, mark your time off on any group calendars so people know when you are not available.
4. Committing a technical ‘fowl.‘ More than a few employees have returned to work after a vacation only to discover they are unable to log in to their computers. Prevent this from happening to you by changing any soon-to-expire passwords before you leave.
5. Overstuffing your inbox. Examine the storage capacity on your e-mail inbox to ensure you have plenty of space to receive large-size files while you’re away. In addition, clean out your voice-mail box.
6. Letting your vacation be gobbled up by work. If you must check in with the office while on your break, let coworkers know in advance the specific times you will be accessible. Making yourself too available can detract from the benefits of taking a vacation.
7. Forgetting to give thanks. Express your appreciation to colleagues who take over key projects while you’re away. By providing all the information they need to complete tasks ahead of time, you’ll make it easy for them to cover for you. Also offer to return the favor when they’re out.
8. Not clearing your plate. Avoid scheduling meetings for the morning of your return so you can spend the time getting up to speed on assignments and catching up on e-mail.

Hosking noted that creating a pre-vacation checklist can provide peace of mind for employees before their break. “It’s easy to overlook minor details when you’re on your way out of the office,” he said. “Having a written record of tasks that must be completed prior to your departure can help you tie up loose ends and make the transition back to work more manageable.”

Source: OfficeTeam