15 Stress-Reduction Secrets

Are you frazzled because of the economy, your house note or the holidays? These strategies can help you take tip-top care of yourself.

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You Are Your Own Ghandi, Mandela and King

Women's rights, peace and social-justice activist Leymah Gbowee, one of three women who shared the Nobel Peace Prize this year, helped organize more than 3,000 Christian and Muslim women to peacefully protest Liberia's civil war, helping to end the horrific violence there. The award-winning documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell (click here to view the trailer) depicts the movement that the women carried out. Not only did they risk their lives to challenge Liberia's leaders, they leveraged all of their power, including refusing to have sex with their husbands until the war ended. 

Many of us are experiencing far less devastating circumstances yet feel powerless to act and unable to overcome them. Gbowee's experience can inspire us. She suggests: 

If you have a situation that seems endless and negative, don't wait for a Ghandi, don't wait for a King, don't wait for a Mandela. You are your own Mandela, you are your own Ghandi, you are your own King. You know your issues, you know your concerns, and you know the solution. Rise up and do something to change your situation around.

Enjoy this 4-minute video interview of her. Watch more of her at OdysseyNetworks.org. 

God Did Not Make Us In A Spirit of Fear

I love this little video reminder that God > fear. 

9 Secrets to a Satisfying Life

Are you on the road to having a satisfying life that will leave you with few regrets? Recently my 109-year-old friend shared some wisdom on how to live a life that will not leave me wishing that I woulda, coulda, shoulda. Her list was simple but oh-so-hard to execute. 

Advice from a 109-Year-Old: Relax. Stop Worrying. Don't Sweat the "Stuff"

Recently I had the amazing opportunity to attend the birthday party of a centenarian. Mrs. Eula Cousins turned 109 this month, and as happens every year, a group of women gathered to celebrate her life. This particular group is what my friend Jackie Radford has labeled a "wisdom circle". It consists of women from every decade of life--from their teens, through young adulthood, through middle age, through the senior years, and though the old-old and Mrs. Cousins herself. And its intention is to share information inter-generationally. "Older women have a lot of information to share, but you have to ask them," Jackie says. Mrs. Cousins' cut buddies consist of a group of 4 or 5 90-something-year-old-women, so experience abounds. Each year, these women share pearls--big fat Hope diamonds, actually--of wisdom, advice for better living, marvel at our lives-- and rejoice that they don't have to live them.

This year our elders kept returning to a similar theme: God has a plan. They repeated this statement so many times--using these words and others--that I wondered if there are things they can see from the vantage point of their senior years that the rest of us cannot because we are too young. So I asked them: From the vantage point of having lived nearly a century or more, can you look back over your life and see patterns, or make sense of what took place, in ways that you cannot when you are younger? That is to say: Can you connect the dots of your life? 

Their answer? A resounding yes. This response made the remainder of their advice make tremendous sense. It was:

 1. Relax. There's no need to worry or stress ourselves out the way that we do. In the end, things are going to be okay.

 2. Become less attached to material things. They're meaningless, our elders told us, and we're way too tied to them. They detract from our peace of mind, hinder our freedom and cause us to worry and stress out too much—major reasons we struggle to relax.

3. Get less caught up in the circumstances of our lives. Just as material possessions come and go, circumstances do also. When you look back on them later in life, the women said, life's happenings mean something entirely different--carry an entirely different significance--than they did at the time that they happened. To me, this suggests that things don't mean what we think they do—that we should stop judging, assigning meaning to and beating ourselves up about them.

We "young" women of the wisdom circle found this advice very timely and wise. And in this post Great Recession/ Depression era, anything we can do to reduce the pressure on our finances and reduce our stress can vastly improve our quality of life. 

Feeling Lost Along Your Journey?

Anyone who steps off of the beaten path to change their career, or follow a Spiritual Calling or dream, is bound to feel disoriented or discombobulated from time to time. Here I share some advice based on my experience of following my passion into my dream career -- a process I embarked upon when I left corporate America in 1992 -- and landing on my feet. Since I began working for myself and pursuing my Spiritual Calling, even thought I'm self employed I haven't looked for work for over 10 years.

What's the Difference Between a Career and a Calling?

People ask my thoughts about this quite often. I have learned to try to operate out of my Calling, which I capitalize to connote the spiritual nature of that work. This leaves me subject to the laws -- the possibilities! -- associated with God's power, as opposed to the laws of man or of the economy, which, for many people, aren't so great for many people. But for a handful of lucky people their Calling is also their career. I hope you find these thoughts helpful.

Invisible "Things" Become Physical Things

Here's some advice on how to connect the dots between so-called coincidences, intuitions, occurrences and other "things" that happen in your life -- "things" that you want to trust but aren't sure that you can. These non-tangible occurrences are often real "things," just on the invisible side of life -- before they take physical form. The problem often is that there's no one to validate them for us. Here are some thoughts about the supernatural side of life.

My Surefire Way of Preventing Writer's Block

Writer's block: the bane of ever creative person's existence. I never have it. Here's why not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S-wA5AlyYY

Another Reason Why Journalists Need to Use Twitter

You can build a following that's interested in you -- not your newspaper or magazine. You. So when you leave, they can find and follow you wherever you go. Even if you don't land a job, you can still communicate with them. You can offer products and services.  

If you find what you're reading interesting, you should follow me on Twitter and join my Facebook fan page. 

How to Decide What to Charge Your Clients

Another question people ask me a lot: "How do you know how much to charge?" To make it as a freelancer, you have to learn your worth -- emotionally as well as financially.

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An Ode to (Becoming) My Mother

Mommy on her honeymoon, as captured by my fatherMany years ago I declared to myself that I would become a global citizen. That I wanted to speak five languages; I wanted to feel comfortable with any person, in any location in the world. I think of this as I fly across the Atlantic, from Philadelphia to Rome to Vienna to the International AIDS Conference, alone—no, solo—neither speaking Italian nor German yet not feeling nervous or afraid. When did I become this woman, so comfortable, confident and secure? How did I birth her out of the anxious perfectionist of my youth, and when? If I have achieved this at 48, who and how will I be at 50, 55, 75, 90, I wonder? I stare these numbers on the screen, having written them in to describe my (future) self for the first time and am surprised that they do not scare me.  

I say a prayer of thanks to my mother. Because of her I do not share the obsession with youth possessed by so many American women. I don't want to turn back the clock or change any of the choices that have placed me in window-seat 9F on US Airways flight 718, now bumping through night's blackness at some incalculable altitude. On the rare occasions when I look at myself closely in the mirror, I enjoy the sunrays that splay from the corners of my eyes, brightening the world with my kindness. I am cool with the halo of whiteness that illuminates my face, surprising me each time I notice the lightness streak across my temple at a new angle--surprising my friends, especially those older than I am, who continue to compliment my "color". Apparently saying the words "grey hair" out loud has become impolite. I find this very bizarre. Fortunately I didn't get the memo. 

My feelings may change, of course—I am comfortable enough at 48 to alter my choices or course in midstream without apology or explanation—but I have no desire to cover my hair color, celebrate another 29^th birthday or pretend that 50 is the new 40. Age is honored in traditional African societies. Elders are respected for achieving longevity, for having solved and overcome the issues of life, for their wisdom, for their collection of friends, for the esteem in which others hold them, for favors that people owe them. Neither wrinkles nor dementia can diminish these achievements.

My mother embraced her maturity, as well. Even as she grappled with breast cancer, feared dying, felt uncertain that the disease the doctors pronounced her cured of was really gone for good, Mommy enjoyed growing older. She took pleasure in her work as a college counselor, felt proud of her grown children, all living in different cities; hot-air ballooned over farmhouses (you can hear the people talking below, she told me, amazed); toured Europe as a member of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus; accidentally on purpose drifted away from her tour guide to walk the streets of Peking, taking pictures of the children who flocked around her, some of whom were seeing their photograph for the first time, and whose excitement revealed her location to the authorities; delivered meals to the elderly every Thanksgiving and Christmas. My mother's sister, Aunt Bonnie, believes that while in Europe my mother visited Vienna.  

At every age my mother lived a life of meaning and of service. This is the model that I long to live up to—a rich and joyful, time-tested way of living that served her so well. The way of life that made the golden flecks in her forest-green eyes sparkle, that caused her to spin in circles and shout "Yipee!" whenever she greeted me at the airport, that lay down the footsteps that I hope to trace, as I hurtle above the clouds toward the rose-colored horizon, toward Rome, toward Vienna, my destiny. 

International AIDS Conference, Vienna, Austria

In 2008, I had the incredible experience of attending the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City as a volunteer journalist in the media delegation convened by the Black AIDS Institute, the only think tank in the U.S. focused exclusively on Black people and HIV/AIDS. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life, as I witnessed people from around the world convene to solve one of our time's most pressing problems. The display of humanity was amazing. In the same room you might find a scientist from Zimbabwe, a transgendered Spaniard, an Indian academic, a Ukranian intravenous drug user, a Japanese sex worker, an American mother -- I had never experienced anything like it. 

Before I left for Mexico City (I have posted a couple of photos here), I had promised several friends that I would blog about my experience. I didn't. Overloaded with work (reporting on a daily deadline and ghostwriting for the Institute's president and CEO, Phill Wilson), exhausted by the 4-hour, 6-mile round-trip commute back and forth to our hotel -- if the pollution wasn't so bad, I could have walked it easily -- and I trying to engage and experience the conference. I just couldn't get it together. When I returned I learned that my friends were disappointed, so this time I promise to do better. 

This year I will lead this delegation of journalists. Our goal is to report to the Black world, and particularly to Black Americans, scientific, sociological, epidemiological, etc., findings and learnings relevant to Black people, who are disproportionately affected by HIV (go here for African American stats). Funding has been withdrawn as the demographics of the disease have turned Black and Brown (including Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Pacific Islanders in the U.S.). The mainstream media consistently overlooks our stories, which is not surprising given the lack of diversity in newsrooms. But in an increasingly interconnected world, the struggle to end HIV/AIDS in the United States is not and cannot be separated from the wellbeing of other people here at home and around the world. (I see an awful lot of interracial, intercultural and international relationships these days. You'd think that people who didn't care for humanitarian reasons might be concerned out of plain old self interest.) Black America's struggle to end the epidemic is connected to the struggles of other Black people, marginalized people -- often women, children, racial/ethnic and sexual minorities -- and poor people around the world. What affects one of us affects all of us. We are one -- or so I've been told.

Each day of the conference, we will publish the Black AIDS Weekly, an electronic newsletter I run for the Institute, to bring this information to public awareness. While on these pages I will share my personal observations and experiences, in hopes that I can inspire you to take better care of yourself (by practicing safer sex, for example, or by obtaining appropriate care and treatment if you are already HIV-positive); to require of your representatives, social, civic and religious leaders that they inform themselves about the epidemic and take the steps necessary to end it, not just in Black America, but in all of America and around the world; and to make the world smaller so that we can see that we share more in common than is different about us. I hope to post daily during the conference.

Dare to Think Outside the Box

I am a big proponent of "lifestyle design," the concept coined by fellow Princeton grad Tim Ferris, author of the Four Hour Workweek. Great minds think alike -- only Tim's mind is clearly must greater than mine. I was designing a new lifestyle in my imagination back when I was only 27 and in corporate America -- I just didn't have his cool language to describe what I was doing. Or the vision to make a business out of it -- some of the people who love me the most thought I had lost my mind!

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Tools for Organizing Your Work and Managing Your Time

Every successful freelancer must be able to juggle a number of clients. Here are my favorite time- and organization-management tools.

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"Do Unto Others" As A Business Model

When you live right -- for example, by serving others -- you don't always have to look for work; often, work finds you.

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Why I Love to Hang Out with Kids

Sometimes hanging out with a bunch of kids is the most effective way to get my work done.

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Help Yourself

Sometimes when you think you're helping someone else, you find they are actually helping you.

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Be the Biggest Version of You that You Can Muster Up at the Moment

Sometimes opportunities are not about you; they are about somebody else.

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Help Somebody Else

When somebody asks your assistance, give it. This little anecdote illustrates why.

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