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Take 5 Minutes to Find a State of Blogger Wellness

Filed Under Business Life, Successful Blog | 18 Comments

Not long ago, I asked Pamir Kiciman about his ideas for a guest post. Pamir writes for Reiki Help Blog about practical spirituality. I wasn’t disappointed when his first response said, “I really see no content to help the person doing the biz, it’s all about the tech, biz itself, content, clients, selling, etc. . . . So my idea for your readers is a piece about being healthy at the desktop, some practical, easy-to-use self-enhancing methods to engender wellness for even better output.”

Take 5 minutes to do what Pamir suggests. I did.

Blogger Wellness
by Pamir Kiciman, BA, RM. CHt

Lay of the land

You’ve identified your niche, settled on a blog platform, know your categories, have a SEO strategy and have put yourself out there on the Live Web. Way to go! It’s fun, exciting and fast. Your blog has a clean design and nifty widgets, comments are coming in, people Digg your content and you feel legit.

You social network, your workspace is simple, you love the resolution of your LCD monitor and your chair is ergoncomfy. You’re ready for another day on Web 2.0, or rather the Web on steroids! There’s the Twitter notification, the new comment too and your buddy IMs, a potential client fills out your contact form. Meanwhile your lover texts you about dinner and romance.

Life is good. Or is it? You have nagging tension in your shoulders, your mouse hand hurts and you want to replace your neck. The next morning none of these are too noticeable. Well, at least until the fifteenth email. Then discomfort creeps in again.

After some time, you numb to the physical symptoms although they persist. Yet productivity drops. Your monitor doesn’t look so hi-def to your bleary eyes, and you feel lethargic, even resentful. You feel you don’t have a single original thought to contribute and everything is an effort.

You promise yourself to do something about it before it gets to this point next time, but when you scour the Web next to nothing comes up for desktop health. Until now. In fact the first page of results in Google returns links about getting your health record on your desktop. If you search ‘blogger wellness’ Google asks if you meant ‘blogs health’ because that’s a nice little category.

Antidotes to blogger stress

There’s a natural function of your body that is with you 24/7/365. This function takes place in its quiet way independently of you. It has a job to do and it doesn’t wait for you to show up. Thankfully. It follows a rhythm and doesn’t waver or hesitate. It comes in and goes out like a finely-tuned clock, and doesn’t expect anything. Selflessly it serves you, while you mostly ignore it.

Can you guess? It’s your BREATH!

Nature has so arranged it that the diaphragm will expand and contract on its own, oxygen will enter and carbon dioxide leave, the lungs will fill and empty keeping you alive. After all, during sleep you don’t notice your breath, why should you when awake? You have so many more important things to handle!

Have you ever watched a healthy baby breathe? See that little stomach go up and down? Notice how easy and natural it is for them. Their breaths are full, smooth not jerky, starting at the abdomen they breathe and fill the lungs. They exhale all the way. There isn’t any constriction or unusual noise in the breath.

This is the breath you’ve forgotten. This is the breath you put on automatic pilot. Your breath is the one friend that you can ill afford to take for granted. It doesn’t require a cell phone or e-mail. It’s free and loyal. It doesn’t argue back.

But breathing without awareness means you’re not getting half of what you could from this resource. The breath obviously brings oxygen into your body and takes carbon dioxide out. The action of the diaphragm massages the internal organs. Even these mundane benefits aren’t properly available if your breath is shallow or high in the chest, or if you catch yourself not breathing for a few seconds (it happens quite often!).

More than all the biological factors of the breath, what it really brings is the new in essence form. Undoubtedly there is more than nutrients, water, oxygen and heartbeat that sustains you. If you think about the longterm effects of stress, you realize that it sticks to your organs, muscles and mind long after the stimulus that created the stress is gone. When you breathe with awareness, you also replace old stuck energies of all kinds with freshness, and each conscious breath becomes a house-cleansing.

Five-minute Breathing

Recommended for daily use at your monitor, 3 times a day for 5 minutes each time.

  • Turn off your monitor & sound, as well as cell phone. Turn away from your monitor if you like.
  • Sit comfortably in your chair with your spine erect but not rigid.
  • Keep your feet flat on the floor, legs uncrossed.
  • Hands are comfortably in your lap.
  • Get a sense of your posture & purpose. This is your time.
  • Tune into your body. Simply observe your body’s natural breath, without changing it.
  • Get to know your breath, how your body breathes, and all the sensations and feelings associated with it.
  • Gradually deepen your breath and make it slower and longer.
  • Direct your diaphragm to expand slowly, inhaling slowly, making sure the breath starts in the abdomen and fills the lungs from the bottom up.
  • Consciously direct on the exhalation, making sure to exhale slowly and all the way down.
  • Continue breathing like this for the rest of the five minutes.
  • You may reach a calm, heightened sense of awareness.
  • After practicing daily for a while, breathing may become minimal toward the end of the allotted time.

When done, take a moment to feel your presence in the room, open your eyes and continue with your day.

Thanks, Pamir. I’m feeling better already!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Business Rule 3: In PRM, the First Test Always Outweighs the Final

Filed Under Business Life, Perfect Virtual Manager | 9 Comments

People Relationship Mathematics

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In the world of textbooks, I worked on problems in Discrete Mathematics for kids. Discrete math includes finite algorithms that do not go on beyond a particular problem or scenario. I have decided that in order to keep the world in balance, I’m adding to that a distinct pattern I’ve noticed about business, PRM — People Relationship Mathematics. PRM is about what folks mean when they say, “do the math.”

In general career management, PRM is more diverse and applicable than traditional mathematics. Every thing we do relates to the people and how we relate to each other. If we do the math on that idea from the very first moment, business life can be much more of a pleasure. Take it from me — I remember well the days I didn’t know that.

Let’s start from the beginning. Beginning — that’s a great word. There are more beginnings than we might suspect. Here are a few:

  • first day at a new company
  • first day in a new role
  • first day with a new boss
  • first day with a new client or new customer

Any one of those and you’re the new guy all over again. Whether you go to work at a home office or one down the road, Personal Relationship Mathematics says you have to show up.

Showing up is like long division, a whole lot trickier than it looks. Showing up requires paying attention to everyone and everything that’s going on. It also means doing the best work that you’ve ever done–beginning, middle, and end.

Day one –- that’s 100 days in PRM –is when you build a concrete foundation. What people think, decide really, about you now will determine whether they will forgive you then. The relationships you forge on the proverbial day one are your safety net.

Do the PMR to pass the first test. The first test always outweighs the final.
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No Worries

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 25 Comments

I've been thinking . . .
When I was traveling to other countries, what I was most likely to bring home were a tiny change in my accent and a word or phrase that became mine forever. I also bought lots of books and an occasional other thing, but who knows where they went?

Considering my love of words, I think I ended up with a nice collection of souveniers.

One word I got from the Brits was Brilliant! It’s a lovely word for describing something wonderful and magical.

From the Italians, I carried home a pair Prego, Grazie. How much more musical could welcome and thank you sound? I want a life filled with the two of them.

In OZ, the land of the Australians, I couldn’t leave without No Worries. They’ve become my weekend words.

“No Worries.”

I worked out a while back that worrying about things I can’t change doesn’t make stuff any better and doesn’t make me feel good either. In fact, worrying makes me cranky. I get to feeling sorry for myself.

Talk about a way to blow weekend — being cranky ranks right up there.

So I subscribe to “No Worries” weekends.

(I have my meltdowns on Thursdays, if I really need one.)

Liz's Signature

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Don’t Let Burn Out Singe Your Brand

Filed Under Business Life, Motivation/Inspiration, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Survival Kit | 1 Comment

Pulled Wire Thin

Recently I shared emails with SOB Dr. Deborah Serani about blogging, brands, and work stress in general. I asked her whether she had information regarding stress and burnout and within seconds I had an article in my gmail inbox. Now there’s a doctor who doesn’t make you wait!

Personal Branding logo

I know it happened to me on my last major project. Timelines were tighter than humanly possible. Work piles were taller than the people working on them. Personalities were pulled wire thin. Everyone’s personal brand was summed up in “When will this be done?”

We Didn’t Know We Were Burned Out

Burn out was a serious problem–folks were working nights and weekends. They were coming in early and leaving late. Getting help wasn’t an option. This was intellectual property, by the time we caught someone up to speed the project would be done.

The worst part was we didn’t know that we were burned out.

Burn Out Is Serious

Burnout is a serious problem. It can tear down all you’ve done to build a reputation–your personal brand. It can cause folks to lose trust in who you are. It takes your confidence. It can steal your job.

Dr. Deborah Serani has a simple way for you to tell if you’re stressed and burning out and offers some things you can do about it if you are. Click the screenshot you’re worth it. We need you and your brand, thinking outside of the box.

Burnout Article Dr. Deborah Serani Screenshot

Thanks, Deb. It’s great to have a Dr. on our side.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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