Exercise on a regular basis. Exercise is necessary to keep your mind sharp, your body feeling good, and your creative thinking peaked. Combine that with stretching, proper diet, good sleeping habits and deep breathing and you are ready to make the climb.
- Stretch… keeps muscles fit and aid relaxation
- Eat right for all over good health
- When stress is high, watch your weight … weight gain effects self esteem and effects your ability to move easily
- Get a full nights’ sleep… 7 ½ 9 hours per night. 3 hours a night is not enough. If you have a few nights of sleep loss, rejuvenate yourself with a long night sleep
- Take vitamins. Ask your health care professional what you need. A male or female multi vitamin at least, is a great idea.
- Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. ‘In with the good air, out with the bad air’ sparks energy, concentration, creativity
- EXERCISE. If you have trouble fitting an hour of exercise in your day, schedule 3 work out sessions a week, at the beginning of the week. Treat it like a regular appointment and STICK WITH IT. Take exercise one day at a time, so that it becomes habit (just like brushing your teeth). Exercise is NOT necessarily an aerobics class, or 10 mile run. A brisk walk 3 times a week is great! Set a realistic program for yourself.
- Try to look your best. Your outside covering often reflects what is going on inside. If you look good, you feel even better.
- Nurture yourself with a message, a long walk, a few hours at the movies. Whatever you can do to fill up your energy reserve tank, will be more energy you can expend to function efficiently.
If you are mentally and intellectually prepared the climb ahead is easier. When climbing a mountain, it’s imperative to know your route, what you need to do to achieve success, what the potential obstacles are, and what your mental challenges might be. The climb up the mountain requires positive attitude, perseverance and ability to adapt to change. What mindset is necessary to climb the mountains in our lives?
- Be a learner. In business or at home, learn all you can about your topic, about your competition, and about potential obstacles. How? …. Network, read, web search, join interest groups, go to lectures and find a mentor who will show you the way. Being informed makes the unforeseen obstacles that appear in your life, much easier to handle.
- Adopt the ‘ADVENTURE ATTITUDE’ insures that life is always fresh and new. The ‘adventure attitude’ is about looking at life with a child’s attitude: curious, excited, optimistic, questioning, and full of possibilities. Then everyday tasks are forever full of life and creativity.
- Positive attitude is your choice. Your situation may not be your choice but how you deal with it is. You may skew your situation to be positive or look at the negative as a chance to learn. The positive approach boosts energy, creativity and productivity.
- Take breaks including walks, laps around the desk, chats with friends, coffee breaks, etc.
- Travel one step at a time. It’s wonderful to have goals to strive for and a past to use as a reference, but the best way to travel is one step at a time. Work moment by moment, hug your babies moment by moment, nurture yourself moment by moment and diet moment by moment. Those moments add up to be productive and precious chunks of time.
- Have a structure with rewards after tasks are done… make sure they are rewards that are personal: gifts, food, family time, messages, etc. This will give your something to look forward to in the tedium of everyday tasks.
- Multi-task. If you are starting to burn out on one task, give yourself permission to put it aside, and then go back to it later with a fresher view. Try going to a different location to get your work done.
- Try new things. Push yourself out of your comfort zone. Venturing out of the zone of the familiar and into the unknown will show you a new way of looking at things. Pushing yourself and taking risks, makes life exciting and fresh.
If you are physically and mentally prepared and healthy, your emotional health has a better chance of being stable. If you find that you are facing a lack of emotional energy, there are a few ways to give yourself a boost:
- Lighten your load. You will travel easier, faster and safer up your mountain if you carry a light load. Get rid of all the extra baggage you carry around: issues from the past that you can’t change, extra obligations that you said ‘yes’ to that are just too much to handle, ‘stuff’ that is in the way, and relationships that sap you and drain your energy. Unloading emotional baggage will set you free.
- Surround yourself with YES people. This is your support group of people who accept you with all of your faults. They believe in you, and don’t expect you to be perfect. Often we find our lives are tapped by those who drain our energy from us. Having the YES people in your life, will help to boost your emotional energy when you need it.
- Don’t expect yourself to be perfect. Nobody is perfect, and by setting that standard of perfection for ourselves, we will feel unfilled and unworthy. Perfectionism leads to the cycle of procrastination, resulting negative self-esteem and more procrastination. There is no such thing as failures, or perfection…. Just lessons to be learned.
- Know that you aren’t always in control. Even if we are in good shape, are prepared do the best we can do, and are ambitious, there are some things that are beyond our control: other people, events, environment. Do the best with what you have and then let go of control.
- Life in balance… Standing on one foot is an unsteady position. When all of your energy is directed in one place, the load is great and stability is compromised. Keeping your life in balance means making precious time for all the different facets of your life: spiritual, family, social, community, mental, physical, financial and professional.
