***3 Timely Tips to Help You Enjoy Your Moments by Reducing Your Stress!

Whenever you find time to reduce your stress, you can be sure that you will be repaid for your efforts. Stress reduction is one of the surest ways to increase your focus, energy, creativity, and appreciation of life’s moments. And yet, when things get busy or our minds and energies are cluttered, stress reduction is probably not something that comes naturally to mind.

But I’d like to encourage you to consider stress reduction as a core time and energy management skill. Here are 3 stress reduction techniques that I’d love you to try. You can turn overwhelm on its head by using it as an opportunity to exercise your stress reduction skills and immediately increase your presence, your productivity and your pleasure!

Stress Reduction Technique #1: Setting boundaries:

As you set out to practice this skill, make it a game. For every boundary you set and maintain, you “win” that amount of time for something fun - something you truly enjoy. For example, if you set a boundary that has you checking your email only twice a day, how much time will you save? You can then reserve those saved minutes for something you enjoy that fits within that time frame. Keep a list of these ‘time treats’ handy, and then reward yourself right away - after each success. It’s so much easier to follow through on boundaries when you know you'll benefit right away! And the even bigger benefit is that when you do this daily for a month, you’ll establish a helpful new habit.

Stress Reduction Technique #2: Glass half full:

This is an excellent tool for cultivating optimism and broadening your perspective – especially when stressful energy narrows it. Purchase a set of small note cards and, at the start of each day, write a quick thank you to someone who has brightened your life in some way. The wonderful and energizing thing about this technique is that you relive the kindness as you write about it. And as an added benefit, your connections are enhanced when you let people know you appreciate them. You can expand on this technique by thinking, throughout the day, of people you'd like to thank. Focus on the sending out this grateful energy toward others, and pay attention to how it makes you feel.

Stress Reduction Technique #3: Affirmations and Visualizations:

How much time and energy do you spend ruminating over thoughtless words or deeds? This is self-created stress that can be very difficult to recognize and weed out. But the good news is that to convert stress to strength, you can capitalize on how your brain can focus on just one image at a time. When you catch yourself ruminating, you can choose to shift your focus to another image of your choosing.

And each time you visualize and affirm your inherent worth, your grievance recedes from center stage. Then, building on this even further, you can use the senses that are most evocative for you to create your ideal inner space. Recall healing or uplifting music, review personal successes, remember warm interactions or inspiring quotations. Let yourself fully absorb the pleasure.

Each of these exercises focuses your power to manage your time, energy and thoughts in stress-reducing, health-enhancing ways. Recalling kindness, expressing appreciation, reaching out to others, and affirmations all flood your body with endorphins that lower stress. You reinforce your awareness of how much power you possess to make yourself happy, no matter what others may do.

Remember, no amount of time is too short to reduce stress and increase your pleasure. Energy turnarounds don’t have to be difficult to be enormously effective. So start improving your life today by exploring your capacity to reduce your stress and enhance your moments.

And to move toward your Heart-Based Time Success, sign up for our free gift, the Finding Time Success Kit, which includes "The New Finding Time Boundary Template: 9 Simple, Sequential Steps to Find More Time and Recharge Your Energy!" Using a workbook format this powerful and practical time template helps you progress beyond disappointment and frustration. Discover that 24 hours really are enough!

Offered by Paula Eder, Ph.D., The Time Finder Expert.