FOBlog

Fighting Clutter

This weekend, I stumbled upon a very interesting post from Zen Habits entitled: "The Minimalist's Guide to Fighting Clutter Entropy." How many have you guys have cleaned your room just to have everything slowly clutter in again? Well in this post Leo talked about the different ways to prevent cluttering. So when you clean room, it will STAY clean.

One of his tips is called "One in, two out." Basically it says that for every one thing that goes in, two must go out. For example. if I decide to buy another book today, then two other books must go out. Either I give it out to charity, or sell it to a used book store, or even give it away to a friend. I will for sure try to do this from now on.

Another tip of his that I would also do is a "Regular De-cluttering Session." It sounds like it says, Clean up regularly. I'm going to aim for a once a month de-cluttering session. That way, there's going to be a regular maintenance of it.

"Limited Storage." Put a limit on yourself. Don't allow yourself to have an infinite amount of space. If you allow yourself to think that way, you'll always bring home more and more things. By limiting the amount of space, you will buy or bring home less things (hopefully)

After all this, everything comes down to habits. It is ALL about your habits. You are in charge of your own clutter. Clutter don't just being itself in, you brought it in. One of my habits that ended up cluttering stuff for me would be: I buy things and I don't remove anything, so everything just ended up cluttering.

These are just some of the tips that I will personally use. For more information on the other tips or other ways of de-cluttering, visit Zen Habits.

have a good rest of the day!
-Ed

The Power of Visualization

In my experience as a water polo coach, I always felt that it is very important to be able to visualize a positive goal. My mantra for the kids has always been: "if you can picture it, you can do it!" that and "no mercy." (But that's another story)

This year, I decided to take it a step further and really emphasize on positive visualization. So, before every big game days, we would do sports meditation. At the end of practice I would tell the kids to sit  down, close their eyes, make themselves comfortable and not talk.

When they've calmed down, I would tell them different game-like scenarios. In turn they have to visualize what they would do in that situation or what they ideally should do.  85% of the times the kids played better after the meditation. They were able to execute plays smoothly, apply skills that they've learned more efficiently, and just play better overall.

We finished the season with an overall record of 12 wins and 5 losses. Of course it's not all due to sports meditation; I had a great group of kids, who just doesn't give up. But the visualization during the meditation helped them to realize the goal and figure out the different ways to achieve it.

The power of visualization doesn’t just apply to sports; it can be applied into every aspect of life. You all know the saying "you can do it, if you set your mind to it." Well, your mind can only be "set" if it visualizes the objectives or the goals. I'm not saying that you can just sit there and just visualize. No that doesn't work.

When your mind visualizes something, it is picturing and end in mind, and it will develop ways to achieve that end. However, only YOU can follow through with that. Your mind can visualize and devise ways, but it is up to YOU to actually follow through with the plan.

The power of visualization can be summarizes into these 3 steps:

1. It visualizes an end
2. It will then develop a plan of action
3. Then YOU will have to follow it through. Perseverance is the key.

Remember: You are the executor. Your MIND visualizes and plans, but only YOU execute the plan.

 

Have a good rest of the day everyone

-Ed

"You must see your goals clearly and specifically before you can set out for them. Hold them in your mind until they become second nature."

                                                                  - Les Brown

Relieving Stress Part Deux

Morning everyone! As I promised, here is Relieving Stress Part Deux.

As we talked about yesterday, each person will react differently to stress. So some things may not work for others. But there IS  one common thing: Stress can be a good thing if it is kept at a certain level. Here is a graph that will help you understand.

See how there's "good stress" and "distress?" Look where the comfort zone is at.
It's at the good stress zone. So the key thing is, keeping your stress at that level. Here are few steps that helps me stay in my "zone."

1. Staying Positive
Now, I realized that staying positive is hard for some people, but I believe that staying positive is a good foundation to have. Not just for relieving stress, but also to face other life obstacles.

One can stay positive by removing negative thoughts..duh! But really, remove that can't do attitude with a "yes I can." ( remember that "Bob the Builder?"...YES WE CAN) ..oh silly me. Bob the builder is just what I use to remember staying positive. You don't have to use Bob the builder to remind yourself.

When down in the dump..."think like Bob."

2. Exercise!
Most people don't like exercising. I definitely don't. When people see the word "exercise," they usually respond with "ew." It doesn't have to be like that. Exercise doesn't mean a 10k marathon or 2 hour swim...well if you like that, by all mean do it. A nice simple walk, is also an exercise. During your day, set a time to walk, just a nice relaxing walk around the neighborhood. You can bring a friend or two if you want, have a little conversation as you walk, express your thoughts, share ideas.

3. Meditation
A meditation period will help you clear your head and calms you down. Use this time, to look for what causes the stress in your life. Once you figure out the source, it is easy to eliminate it.

This period will also help you reorganize your thoughts, and prioritize your life. When everything is in order and organized, I can think a lot better.

4. Listening to Music
Music is a big part of my life, I listen to music when I wake up, in the shower, when I'm in the car, when I'm walking to class, well you get the idea.  Music soothes me, well a relaxing music soothes me. But I know people that relaxes with heavy metal, whatever floats your boat.

5. Watch funny movies/ hang out with funny friends
My friends are a hilarious bunch of kids. They can brighten my day anytime anywhere. The key here is laughter. Laugh at jokes, laugh at other people..ha, laugh at yourself.
It's been medically proven that laughing help relieves stress, and I agree! This ties in with staying positive. If you can laugh about a mistake or a problem, chances are your staying positive

Those are some of my personal choice for relieving stress. What are yours? Share!

"when life hands you a T-rex. You ninja kick it in the FACE!"
-Rayne Summers

With "laugh" - lawllllll
-Ed

Relieving Stress Part One.

One of the things that I promised myself before I started this blog, is the promise to help others. Less ranting and more helping. So here is the first part of helpful post on relieving stress.

I know that all of us experienced stress before, whether it’d be from school, work, spouses, friends, sports, boyfriend/girlfriend, and it sucks. Stress will affect your actions and your bodily functions. If you want to know more, here is a very informational site on the effect of stress.

"okay Ed, so we know what stress does to us, how do we fight it?"

Well you can't fight stress, a certain degree of stress is actually good for the human body! When your body experience a certain amount of stress, your blood pressure increase, your heart rate increases, and in turn, your blood flow to your brain increases, which improves your decision making! Neat huh! Hence why some people works well under pressure.

Another thing that stress does is, it moves the blood away from your gut because it's not needed for digestion and instead, it moves the blood to your larger muscles such as your arms and legs muscles. So your muscle would gain a boost in strength and in speed.  Soldiers that's been in combat can testify to that. Athletes also experience that before their competition.

I will show you how I relieve stress in my next post! For now, you can visit American Institute of Stress for tidbits and informations.

Good night everyone,
Ed