Dealing with relationship issues, money problems or family complications, we can all identify plenty sources of stress.

We can spend hours discussing how that was different in the old days when life was more structured by the roles and traditions and nostalgically sigh as we see that it is simpler to be told what to do.

I haven’t met many people who claim to be stress free, most people I deal with complain about having too much stress, suffer from stress related illnesses or symptoms, such as irritable bowels, mood swings. Fatigue etc. I am convinced that stress has existed even in the good old days, but it may have been known under different names.

Being stressed has become a life-style and I have experienced this first hand. Good stress and bad stress, I have felt the kick and I know tension. I heard the “relax a bit, take it easy, and don’t be so hard on yourself” too often, but I see that successful people tend to be busy. I have always prioritized being successful.

Taking action means doing things; doing things can become doing a lot of things.

Stress also seems to offer a sense of validation and provides us with a feel-good factor of being busy ( can you hear that:” main thing is your keeping busy”)

Stress seems to act like caffeine, giving you the kick that makes you feel alert. You get nervous on it, you feel more nervous without it. I have thrived on the energy derived from my busyness which in turn leads to a higher breathing pattern, less rest, tense shoulders and no desire to do Yoga or any other relaxation thank you very much.

It feels hard to change because I found myself really enjoying this.

It is easy to associate this overtly busy life-style with our image of success and hence being slightly stressed can make us feel like we are on the way to reaching our goals. “There is loads’ going on at the moment. It’s all happening” Only when the wave of busyness recedes do we realize what it has left us with.

But don’t we all feel life gets a bit much at times, everybody gets tired, has low energy phases, surely everybody has it tough sometimes. Who am I to relax when I am young and energetic? Shouldn’t I rather use it while it lasts? Aren’t I meant to work hard, so that I deserve my success, my happiness and wealth I am trying to accumulate?

It was my experience in hospital that made me change my thinking Stomach cramps, that is not what I wanted and yet they were painfully real. So were the commitments for next week. Oops.

Do successful people really need stress? Does anybody really need stress? What makes it so hard to live in a balanced way? Do we have to get ill before we live healthily? Wouldn’t it be nice to have enough energy to enjoy what you’re doing, rather than running out of batteries all the time?

Stress is highly addictive and likely to self perpetuate.

However, lot of stress can be prevented by a little organizational effort. I observed a music manager who was under such stress that he postponed paying his bills; his account gave him grief as he had not moved funds in time, calls to the bank took up more time as was dealing with people complaining about missing funds on his account. He could hardly sleep at night because he felt so stressed he couldn’t switch off. All this could have been prevented so easily by taking the necessary action on time in the first place.

The effect of stress on the voice can be multiple: Tensions in the throat and neck area are more than common, leading to vocal restrictions or limitations.

Do you find it difficult to speak up and be heard without feeling vocal strain afterwards? Do you find speaking for a longer time makes your voice tired? Is your voice hoarse or croaky? Those are definite indicators for tensions in your throat musculature.

Supporting the voice is essential to keep the instrument healthy and strong especially when speaking up; learning how to project is a useful technique in speaking and singing.

However the tensions referred to tend to get in the way of accessing the supporting mechanisms.

A main part of my vocal training has been undoing tensions. As tensions are released in conjunction with voice exercise, your voice will feel and sound freer increasing in resonance and warmth.

At this point, a sound technique will be as useful as building your muscles is in sports promoting safe and long lasting vocal production.

Your voice however doesn’t just react to tension; it can help you release tension as well.Doesn’t it feel good to go: “ouch” when you hurt yourself to scream out a well articulated swearword in a well audible volume (**!?#***).

Have you ever tried humming through pain and feel it easing off? I have successfully “sung” through my wisdom teeth operation. It was a novelty to all but I insisted on using my walkman to guide me through my favorite songs I then howled along to according to the discomfort. The result:  surprised doctors and a good memory for me.

Vocalizing can also be easing period pains. I am a great believer in facing the facts, so when it hurts, I like matching it with sound. It’s good to have the appropriate surroundings for that; busy offices are not recommended; not even for a group session.

A vocal workout can make you feel very relaxed, centered and warm inside.

I always check the mental state of my clients at the beginning of a session to draw their attention to the difference they will be feeling. How many headaches and fatigues have vanished, bad moods dissolved, smiles emerge.

People often comment on me as being a happy person or having a good day when they hear me singing. But I go as far as to say: sing and you will find yourself having a good day!

The vibrations created by using your voice can serve as an internal massage, which relaxes organs and the mind.

The effects are also beneficial on the energetic level balancing your chakras (energy fields); you will feel literally in tune.

Now what can your voice do for you and your stress levels?

Simply and literally voicing concerns can do a whole lot for you.

But you don’t even need words: The power of an “ahhhh” has overwhelmed many: try sitting on a chair “aaahing” as you feel into your different body parts. It can even feel scary when you realize how much emotion you can feel coming up through your voice.

We know that your voice says a lot about your emotional state; an attuned ear can hear the way a person feels by listening to their voice quality. Why not turn this around and increase the tone quality to make you feel better?

Singing is a great way to release stress and getting in touch with your inner world. Awakening your intrinsic awareness leaves you feeling more alive and energetic.

Singing is not only for professionals. Everybody can sing. I am not saying it will sound great but it will feel good. There is a lot of expectation attached to singing in terms of sound, success and status. The good news: you don’t have to sing to use your voice, toning and chanting requires far less pitching than Bach cantatas.

Find yourself a safe place to experiment and play with your voice and to find out how much pleasure it can give you. There are workshops for non- singers as well as singers, sound healing and chanting groups.

Using your voice is a natural, inexpensive and highly effective way to feel good.

Feeling good releases stress, brings life back into perspective.

Go for it. Free your voice and sing out!

For more information and workshops please contact Evelyne Brink, International coach for voice and stage performance.

ABC coaching Achievement builds confidence.

0207 7511199

07905 933227

www.evelynebrink.com

www.abccoaching.co.uk

The answer is rather simple actually and it lies in good time management.  Companies around the world are hiring executive coaches and time management experts to enhance the performance of their staff and improve efficiency, thus minimising stress and improving overall productivity.  Hummm, I wonder, do such gurus possess a magic pill that they hand out in their seminars that suddenly creates extra time?  Or ancient alchemical formulas they reveal to the selected few?  Perhaps a magic key to other dimensions of time?  No, nothing as dramatic as that.

The cornerstone of good time management is actually about being honest with yourself to identify your time thieves.  Time thieves can shroud themselves as pointless texts, emails, meetings, small talk around the coffee machine, catching up on childish gossip, surfing the net and even rifling through your desk.  In fact, some experts claim that on average we actually work less than three hours a day, and the rest of the time we waste on the above mentioned thieves.    Secondly, dedicating the first few valuable minutes of our morning to identifying our high priority tasks and low priority tasks can be invaluable as it will help organise our time thus increase our efficiency.

I have worked with some very high powered executives who have wasted precious time on small/low value tasks and later realised that these tasks can be like rabbits that multiply and derail your focus.  It is paramount that you identify what is worth your time, and focus on tasks of higher priority to cover more ground during your working day.  Even needless perfectionism can be the biggest time waster.

Since time management can be a broad subject to distil into this newsletter, let me leave four important points that Brian Tracy talks about in his personal success program.

The 4 Rules Of Time:

1- Time is perishable.  It can’t be saved, only spent.  So it’s vital that you decide what is of low value and what is of high at the start of your day in order to use your time wisely.

2- Time is indispensable.  There is a 10/ 90 rule that makes a lot of sense.  If you spend 10% of your day intelligently planning how to achieve your goals for the day, you end up saving 90% of the time you would have wasted otherwise.

3- Time is irreplaceable.  Time is all that matters in relationships, and how we express our love to our loved ones is by spending time with them.

Q: How do children spell love?

A: T I M E

4- Time is essential to achieving your goals.  By identifying your goals at the start of your day, or week, you’ll have a clearer picture of how to use your time to get things done and have enough time to play.  Working efficiently and productively is not always about manpower, but mind-power.  In other words, working smart, and not just working hard.

Let me finish off with a final point that is food for thought.  I recently had a client who wanted to finish his MBA without seeing a drop in the quality of his performance at work.  Within a 90 minute session, we identified his time wasters, eliminated them and suddenly created ample enough study time that was spent on completing his MBA.  His time wasters were, frequent after work drinking, excessive socialising and freezing in front of the TV whenever there was a football match or anything else that piqued his interest and distracted him from getting on with the task in hand.

There is plenty of time to do so much more, it’s simply about identifying what will serve you in the short and long term and what will harm you.

Until Next Time……Live Don’t Just Exist.

Call now for an intro session to manage your time more efficiently.

Tel:  +44 (0)207 602 5477

taymour@guiding-light.net

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”
R.W Emerson

Have you noticed how sometimes all is going well during your day, the lights are green, you’re energetic, light hearted, your favourite pastry is not only available but fresh from the oven at your local cafe, even people at the office smile and say good morning; but something shifts during the day and it starts to go downhill from there.  Well, that something is your thoughts.  All might be going well until you remember what someone once said that upset you, or how last month you had an argument with your brother, or even a painful day five years ago.  Such thoughts will automatically derail you from your positive day and throw you into a downward spiral of thoughts that can leave you feeling drained and bitter.  Thoughts are energy, and for something to happen in your reality (good or bad), it must first happen in your thoughts.  After all, like attracts like: Bad Thoughts & Bad Reality and vice a versa.

A few months ago, I had a very determined client who wanted to shift her life for the better.  After careful probing, she came to realise that her actuality was fantastic, she was healthy, attractive, independent and very intelligent; but her reality was full of painful past memories, a patronising critical voice inside her head (which she believed and listened to) and a very subjective and limited view of life that no doubt dampened her spirit.  As soon as we addressed this and distinguished her actuality from her reality, she suddenly smiled and became aware of how powerful her limited perception and thoughts had been breaking her days rather than making them.

By now you’re probably wondering what on earth the difference between actuality and reality is.

It’s quite simple really- actuality is a very objective perspective of your life as a whole.  It is free from opinion and is limitless in opportunities and possibilities.  A person may have gone through a bitter divorce, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll never find love again.  Likewise, an entrepreneur may become focus on the actualities that exist in order to maximise the potential of his business plan.  In other words, your actuality is an unbiased angle on your life that can always provide windows of opportunity and potentials to shift things for the better.

Reality on the other hand is a highly subjective and limited perspective on your current situation.  Your reality is a product of your past experiences (good and bad), your beliefs (limiting ones or otherwise) and your emotionally fuelled understanding of your life as a whole.  A person may have a fantastic business idea, but because of his negative and pessimistic circle of friends and family, ends up extinguishing any hope of success.  Most negative and depressed people tend to live in a limited reality that disallows their potential to flourish.  Additionally, optimistic high achievers with a positive “Can Do” attitude tend to approach life from an unbiased angle thus being more aware of the actualities that exist rather than just their own reality.

This does not in any way, shape or form mean that you should ignore your understanding of your world, after all, there are many good lessons that you’ve learned from your past experiences that have contributed to how far you’ve come.  However, if you feel that there are areas in your life that can do with some fine tuning, then by all means explore other perspectives that might be just outside your comfort zone and in the realm of actuality.

Try the following:

1) Spend five minutes a day to relax and go inside to clean your internal dialogue.  This is the voice inside your head that fuels your thoughts.  Speak kindly to yourself as though you’re encouraging a young person who’s full of potential, or even your own best friend.

2) If something doesn’t go how you had hoped, re-frame it.  In other words, change its context to see the good in it and carry on forward.

3) Live in the now.  Imagine how you’d drive if you spent 90% of your attention focusing on your rear view mirrors.  Learn from your past, thank it and the lessons it has taught you and centre yourself in the present.

4) Improve your attitude to life and what it has to offer. “There is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes” Billy Connolly

Until Next Time……Live Don’t Just Exist.

Call now for a constructive session for yourself or a loved one.

Tel:  +44 (0)207 602 5477  taymour@guiding-light.net

Dr. Roger Callahan

Many of you have probably seen the likes of Paul McKenna demonstrate a bizarre tapping treatment on TV for anxiety, fear, phobias and even compulsion.  This unusual tapping technique is called Thought Field Therapy.  Created by Dr. Roger Callahan, read more: www.tftrx.com

I’m not going to get into the scientific genius behind it and bore you, but I am going to ask you to try the following

sequence when you’re feeling anxious, overwhelmed or worried.

First things first, notice how anxious you are, think about it and focus on the feeling.  On a scale of 1-10, (10 being very anxious and worried and 1 being it doesn’t bother me that much, or I can hardly focus on it) Where would you rate your anxiety.  Once you have given your feeling a rating, do the following as you keep thinking about that anxious feeling:

1) Tap the side of your hand (the Karate chop area) about 20 times. Then switch hands and to the same to the other hand.

2) Tap under your eye 10 times

3) Tap 4″ under your arm pit – 10 times.

4) Tap 2 inches under your collarbone (chest) 10 times.

Now (9 Gamut Sequence):

Tap between your tiny finger knuckle and ring finger knuckle - about 1 inch towards your wrist continuously as you do the following & keeping your head still.

a) Close eyes

b) Open eyes

c) Look down to the right

d) Look down to the left

e) Rotate your eyes in a full clockwise circle

f) Rotate your eyes in a full anti-clockwise circle

g) Hum a few bars of “Happy Birthday”

h) Count 1 to 5

i)  Hum a few bars of “Happy Birthday” again

Now stop tapping your hand and repeat the above steps 2 to 4.

Then notice the change that may have occurred.  Rate your anxiety from 1-10 again.  Repeat accordingly.

© Dr. Roger Callahan  – Tapping The Healer Within.

TFT is one of the most effective and remarkable methods to deal with a variety of emotional challenges ranging from past traumas to phobias and anger.

Here’s what a recent client said after a TFT session: “Thank you so much Taymour, I feel fantastic !! It seems like a huge weight has been lifted off me & that dark cloud has disappeared”