7 Ways to go on a vacation without "You" leaving your desk
In this article we
have suggested 7 ways to go on a vacation without you leaving your desk.
Interesting isnt it? Researchers have analyzed an easy way of doing
this. The following would illustrate their suggestions.
1. The Breath Break:
Heres about the simplest, cheapest vacation youll ever take.
For two minutes, just breathe. Take air way down into your belly. You
should actually be able to feel your stomach rise with the intake of breath.
But havent you been breathing already? Sort of. But as you hurry,
and as you feel the pressure build inside you, your breath becomes shallow,
and you dont get the oxygen you need. Youll especially notice
this when you have to speak in front of a group. Your voice rises and
gets squeaky, and your throat becomes dry and sore.
To combat the ill effects of this oxygen debt, you dont have to
empty your mind or chant mantra or wrap yourself into a yoga position.
All you have to do is breathe deeply and slowly for a couple of minutes
three, four, even five times a day. In private, with your feet up and
your eyes closed would be nice, of course, but you can take a breath break
in the middle of a meeting, behind the wheel of the car, or on the phone.
Nobody needs to know youre sneaking oxygen.
2. The Continental
Drift:
Think of a place of perfect contentment in your life, your own special
island, as Bloody Mary signs in South Pacific. Harken
back to a time when you were truly relaxed and at peace. Or create an
imaginary oasis. Then go there for two minutes. Shut everything else out,
close your eyes and create the scene in your mind. See, hear, feel. Let
warmth and peace wash over you. Youll return refreshed after just
a couple of minutes, and youll know you can go back again soon.
3. Pack up your
troubles:
Something bothering you? Get rid of it. Picture your nemesis, hot branding
iron in hand, sneering at you, ready to poke and prod. If your anger and
frustration has an abstract source give it specific shape. Lack of time
making you crazy? Picture a clock gone berserk, its hands spinning out
of control. Or make time into a huge Indiana Jones style boulder., rolling
towards you with desperate speed.
Then put the image into a bubble and imagine the bubble floating slowly
up and away, becoming smaller and smaller until it finally disappears.
Action movie alternative: Forget the gentle bubble stuff. Blow your troubles
to smithereens. Hey? Are you starting to enjoy this? Great, Thats
what vacations are for.
4. The Shoulder
shrug:
We tend to take out our tensions on specific parts of our bodies. Shoulders
are one of the researchers favorite targets. Without knowing your doing
it, you tend to tense your shoulders as you work. If you dont catch
yourself at it, you end up with a sore neck and shoulders and a pounding
headache.
You can break the tension, save your shoulders, and avert the headache by remembering to relax your shoulders and rotate them slowly and gently for a couple of minutes. On particularly bad days, the results are dramatic. Your shoulders seem to drop several inches, and a smooth warmth flows up your neck. You never even realize how tense you are until you unclench your muscles and relax.
5. The phrase for
the day:
This one takes a bit of preparation, but its well worth the effort.
Collect pithy bits of wisdom, interesting observations, and intriguing
fragments of ideas, funny phrases, anything that snags your fancy. You
can catch them everywhere from the media, from conversation, from your
own boundlessly creative and endlessly curious mind.
Get in the habit of jotting them down as you run across them. When its time for a break, pull one of your gems out, read it a couple of times and let yourself chew on it for two minutes. Dont direct your thoughts. Just let them wander where they will.
6. The object of
your affection:
Hold a picture of a person you treasure, an object that has special meaning
for you, or a talisman (like that lucky silver dollar youve lugged
around with you for years.). Spend two minutes with it, again letting
your thoughts roam. These six work for most of the people. What might
work for you? Why not take a two minute break and jot some ideas down?
7. Advance Resting
technique, for the gifted and talented:
Combine the breathing with any other relaxation activity. Close your eyes
for two minutes and just breathe slowly. Do not think of anything else
and do no think of your troubles. Get the work tensions out of your mind
and just keep a blank mind. Just breathe in slowly first and then breathe
deeply for two minutes. The fresh air that you consume will give you the
extra energy that you need and would get you zapped up with your enthusiasm
level.
Why the two-minute break works:
Will a two minute
break really do you any good?
Yes. It really will. But you may feel uncomfortable breathing from your
stomach the first few times, and you may not notice the effects right
away. But if you stick with it, you will definitely feel the difference.
Heres why?
As you come under fire in the daily wars, your body instinctively reacts tensing muscles and doling out emergency rations of adrenaline and other natural uppers, getting you ready to fight your enemies or run away from them. These automatic responses will work against you when youve got no one to fight and nowhere to run.
These reactions can build on themselves, and you can get caught in a dangerous loop. You sense danger, and your body responds. That response in turn seems to verify the perception of danger and triggers still more response. No wonder you cant relax at the end of the day! But the cycle can work for as well as against you. If you can relax your body, slowing down your breathing, calming your heart, by taking a two minute break, your panic will subside. You will regain focus, clarity and energy.
Researchers have assured
that these techniques have helped people to a great extent. You can prove
that they work for you by trying them for a period before drawing any
conclusions about their effectiveness. Break your day with three or four
of these short breaks for about say three weeks and see if you notice
the difference. But heres a warning, you wont remember to
rest on your own.
You are going to have to build these breaks into your daily routine, and
youll probably even need to plant reminders in the form of a note
in the briefcase, a Post it on the refrigerator, an alarm clock. (Setting
an alarm to remind you to rest!? Whatever works) If you hang around a
computer most of the day as people these days do, you might be able to
program your inanimate partner to remind you, with a beep or a scroll
line (Dont forget to relax) or some such. How about
it? Are you willing to try? You have nothing to lose but tension and that
quiet desperation that has been chasing us all these years.
Researchers have suggested these techniques as it has been tried and tested by various people. These methods have been proved very effective and help people reduce their tensions and manage their time effectively and efficiently. A research conducted in the business city of the United States of America has proved that 8 out of 10 people have been benefited by trying out the above mentioned techniques. You can also get benefited. Start Now.
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