Category: stress
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“I wandered lonely as a cloud”
Fayteen’s recent blog post about how we all need to take mini-vacations throughout the year reminded me of one of my mother’s favorite poems. Wordsworth begins: “I wandered lonely as a cloud/That floats on high o’er vales and hills,/When all at once I saw a crowd,/A host of golden daffodils….” He ends with these lines:…
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Three warnings for gulpers
We talked in our last blog post about my brother James’ observation that people can be divided into gulpers and sippers. Gulpers, he says, are thirsty for life. They enjoy life. Sippers, however, are afraid their good luck or wonderful experience won’t last. They are the type who sip slowly and conserve their drink. We…
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My perfect summer vacation
I didn’t go to Bermuda or Lyford Cay in Nassau this summer. I’ve had wonderful vacations in both of those locations, but this summer I was busy taking care of my daughter while she was being treated for breast cancer and I had limited time for trips. This summer I found another location that was…
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Feeling happy?
I was hurrying just a bit to mail a package at the post office when I noticed the man standing behind me. He was talking on his cell phone, and I suddenly felt annoyed about his “noise pollution.” Because I was tired and I had had a busy day, it didn’t take much to make…
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Can you create your own Walden Zone?
As we explained in a recent blog post, Williams Powers writes in his book Hamlet’s Tables about how Shakespeare’s Hamlet used his “tables” to make a list when he felt distracted. Of course, Hamlet’s tables were much different from the list that shows up on our computer screen or telephone. Hamlet wrote on pages made…
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A little advice from Shakespeare and Hamlet
As William Powers reminds us in his book Hamlet’s Blackberry, London during the late 16th and early 17th centuries was a bustling, chaotic place. People were bombarded with pamphlets, advertising placards, commercial and public documents. Soon they would be reading the first newspapers. How could people cope with this busy world? They used an innovative…
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Sometimes it’s good to share the stress
I still remember the joys of parenting two lively young children—and also I remember a few stressful days. My husband Jerry was traveling a great deal for business, and I was busy with my own small business, and we were trying to spend as much time as possible with Mary Elizabeth and Jay Anyone who…
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What’s driving you?
Most of us are familiar with the inner critics we talked about in our last blog post—the perfectionist critic, the do-it-all driver, the fake and fraud critic who tells us we’re not good enough, the pleaser critic who keeps telling us what we need to do so that everyone will like us and the comparer…
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How can you quiet your inner critic?
Almost all of us have an inner critic—or inner critics, says Stacey Sargent, a professional coach and speaker. Who is your inner critic? During a recent webinar sponsored by the Association of Women in Communications, Sargent identified five possibilities. The perfectionist critic, who finds fault in everything you do. The do-it-all driver. This critic is…
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Too many things to do? Make a list.
Fayteen is busier than usual keeping up with her business and helping her daughter Ranna get the treatment she needs for breast cancer. Plus, she just spent a few days in the hospital herself. Joy returned from a short trip and will be leaving again in a few days for the University of Tulsa to…