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EAP Newsletter - August 2002

In This Issue:

BAD NEWS...AND GOOD NEWS ABOUT OVEREATING

"SORRY...I CAN'T TAKE YOUR CALL RIGHT NOW"

VACATION ON A SHOESTRING

PLAN NOW TO RETIRE IN COMFORT

PERSONAL GROWTH

BAD NEWS...AND GOOD NEWS ABOUT OVEREATING

First the bad news. The U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Physical Activity and Health recently noted that only 22% of Americans exercise in any way on a regular basis. The leading cause of catastrophic disease (high blood pressure, obesity, and osteoporosis) can in great part be attributed to our lack of useful exercise. In fact, upwards of 250,000 deaths per year in our country occur due to this lack of exercise. Throw in America's fixation with salty, greasy fast foods and the equation grows even more lethal.

Now the good news. Many overeaters report that they snack when sad, lonely or bored. But a recent clinical study at Case Western Reserve Medical College found that research subjects who tended to overeat found they were able to resist the urge to munch by simply reminding themselves that those snacks would not help them feel better. Dr. Roy F. Baumeister summed it up this way: "Most people recognize that junk food won't elevate a down mood. By simply reminding themselves of this fact, they were able to reduce between meal snacking by 65%."

So if you're feeling blue or having a "pity party," Dr. Baumeister suggests the following three steps:

• Be clear and brief. Consise, articlate messages are more likely than rambling monologues to prompt a return call.
• Find a link. If you have something appropriate in common (an acquaintance, an alma mater, etc.), mention it briefly.
• Be specific. Indicate as precisely as possible what action you'd like the person to take (e.g., call back for a five minute discussion on a certain topic, schedule a meeting, etc.).
• Facilitate the response. When you give your phone number and e-mail address (if appropriate), speak slowly and clearly.

• Have you car checked before you leave, especially for parts like belts, hoses, water pumps, batteries, radiator caps and brakes.
• Board pets with friends or family. Kenneling your dog for two weeks can cost $150 or more. Pet-sit for friends who will return the favor.
• Carry picnics to theme parks. By catching a trolley back to the car and dining under a tree, a family of four can save approximately $25 and eat more healthful meals.
• Check for coupons and other discounts when you get close to your vacation spot. Weekly newspapers, visitor centers and chambers of commerce are good sources.
• Consider staying with friends or relatives near where you plan to vacation. For summer travel, consider staying in empty college dormitories. Contact the school for room rates and availability.
• Vacation in the off season. Parks and beaches are less crowded, and hotels are cheaper.

1. Make a retirement "wish list."

Do you want to travel? Buy a vacation home? Your retirement goals will help determine how much money you'll need.

2. How much will you need?

Your retirement expenses will probably be around 80% of your current expenses.Remember to factor in inflation - about 4% each year.

3. Estimate how much you'll receive for other sources.

Call the Social Security Administration at (800) 772-1213 for an estimate of your Social Security benefits.

4. Figure out how much money you'll have to provide.

For example, if Social Security and pension benefits will provide 40% of your retirement income, the other 60% must come from you.

5. Start closing any gap between your income and expenses.

Here are some options:

• Cut expenses.
• Invest more money in your retirement plan (e.g., 401k).
• Take more risk with your investments.
  

Your financial planner can show you how to prepare successfully.

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PERSONAL GROWTH

Crisis Is An Opportunity For Growth

"There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity." - General Douglas Macarthur

Each of us has to struggle with the challenges life brings us without fully understanding why. What does seem apparent is that growth would probably not occur if the lessons were always easy. Given this view, you can stop asking, "Why did this happen to me?" and instead ask, "What is this meant to teach me?"

Instead of regarding anxiety, stress, and depression merely as reactions to life crises, you may be surprised to discover that such crises can represent a call to realize your full potential. Often, the life lessons that are hardest, the ones that push you to your absolute limit - tend to be the ones that have the most to teach about relinquishing control and taking the risks necessary to realize your deepest aspirations.

Perhaps at some point in your life you may have been fired from a job, had your spouse tell you he or she wanted a divorce, or lost a close family member. Whatever your particular life crisis, such events can push you beyond your ordinary comfort zone to achieve what you normally would not have attempted.

Be Willing To Give Up the Comfort Zone and Its Illusory Sense of Control

"Don't play for safety - it's the most dangerous thing in the world." - Hugh Walpole

The comfort zone is our personal arena of thoughts and actions within which we feel comforable. It consists of all the activities in which we have engaged or the thoughts we have experienced often enough to feel comfortable doing or thinking these things.

Anything new to our experience lies outside this comfort zone. When we do, think, or feel these new things, we experience discomfort. For many people, it is a given that discomfort is a sufficient reason not to do something. Staying within the comfort zone is the primary barrier to living our dreams. Alternatively, change implies some loss of control. As humans, we tend to feel most comfrotable when we feel more in control of our lives. It is difficult to accept that we are not, in fact, in control. We can control our choices, our actions, and our attitudes, but we cannot control the consequences of these. We cannot control our environment, especially other people and their reactions to us.

Trusting that most problems eventually work out can go a long way towards helping us feel more in control and keep change in perspective. Rather than fearing and struggling with those occasions where circumstances don't obey our expectations, we can all benefit by learning to go with change. Either we find a solution to a crisis or we learn to alter our attitude towards the problem so that coping becomes easier. When you look back over the crises you've encountered in your life, you'll find that in most, if not all, cases, the situation eventually worked itself our.

FEAR: An Enemy of Growth, a Friend of Mediocrity

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face ... You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Fear is the greatest impediment to our doing something about our goals. In a crisis, we often feel afraid because we have lost our present security. Yet this very loss may spur us on to handle fears that have routinely held us back from reaching our goals.

Perhaps you feel trapped by your job, marriage, by loneliness, or possibly by a chronic illness. These feelings of entrapment may reflect a deeper avoidance of taking the very risks that are necessary to realize your full potential. Common obstacles that hold us back from attaining our personal best include fear of failure, fear of personal rejection or the disapproval of others, fear of our goal involving too much work, time, or energy, fear that our goal is too unrealistic, or fear of change itself.

The resolution to any fear is to face the fear and go forward in small increments. Fear is part of the price of progress. The things you fear will either come true or they won't. Your fear will not affect this outcome in either direction. Fear serves only as a detour - if you allow it to do so. Your most cherished dream can be one of the best antidotes for fear. Your dream can help you hurdle your fear and spur you on to action. Dreams can enable you to positively channel your fear. The successful person who takes risks and moves forward feels the same feelings of fear as the individual who allows fear to stop him or her. The first individual does not let fear dominate, while the other does. Unfortunately, when fear succeeds in preventing you from engaging in an activity, you never discover whether your fears are truly justifiable.

Fear often causes procrastination until a crisis forces us into action. Procrastination is basically a means to remain safe and unhappy. As John F. Kennedy said, "There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction."

Failure Is An Inevitable Part of Growth

"Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work." - Thomas Edison

We all fail. That is the inevitable truth. Perfection is impossible. The real issue is not whether we are going to fail but whether we are going to fail successfully. Failing successfully means profiting from our failure. Someone who has failed can learn from his or her mistakes and move on. The other choice is to give up. The individual who internalizes failure by labeling him or herself as a failure has little hope for improvement. It is critical to separate failure from who you are.

Sometimes failure is a sign that it is time to change direction. To stay on the path of continual improvement, you must take responsibility for your actions and learn from your mistakes. After you have failed, ask yourself the following questions: What have I learned?; How can I turn this experience into success?; What do I need to do?; With whom do I need to consult?; What resources might I need?; Where did I succeed?

Two core principles regarding turning failure into success are:

1. determaination to learn from failure, and

2. consistent refusal to be stopped by failure.

The more times you try at a thing, the more failures you are likely to experience and the more successes as well.

Take Responsibility For Your Life

"I discovered I always have choices and sometimes it's only a choice of attitude." - Judith M. Knowlton

Your current attitude is a choice. It is not what happens to you externally but what you allow to happen within yourself that counts.

When things don't go according to our plans, the human tendency is to look to people and situations outside ourselves to blame for the crises we encounter. The next time you experience failure, think about why you failed instead of who is to blame. When we realize that the cause of something is in ourselves - if even in our reaction to a legitimately negative external event - and we accept that we are one of the few things in the universe we have the ability to change, we can begin to acquire a sense of the power we have to channel our lives and our futures in the direction of our dreams.

You may not be in control of what happens to you, but you are completely responsible for your reaction to external events. This is true of the past as well. You may have been psychologically injured in the past, but it is your responsibility to make a decision to take steps to overcome that injury. You connot blame others, past or present, for your problems.

Discover the Power of Creative Visualization and Affirmations

"It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head." - Sally Kempton

"Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change." - Ingrid Bengis

We are often our own worst enemies in terms of envisioning worst-case scenarios for troubling situations or thinking self-defeating thoughts. The use of creative visualization can be quite powerful in breaking this pattern. Creative visualization is the ability to see in our mind's eye beyond our present situation. With visualization, we can creatively invent what does not yet exist to propel us towards the development of our highest selves. The practice of creative visualization is even more powerful when combined with affirmation. These are self-statements that convey that you are achieving or have already achieved a desired goal, personal quality, of state of being. The use of creative visualization, especially when coupled with affirmations, can sustain you through a crisis and move you beyond your previous limits.

Victor Frankl, an Austrian psychologist who survived the Nazi death camps, found that the single most important factor in the lives of his fellow survivors was a sense of future vision. Those who survived had a compelling vision of an important life work they felt they had left to do. Survivors of POW camps in Vietnam and elsewhere have reported similar experiences. Additionally, the use of imagery has been shown to arrest and even reverse the process of cancer through enhancing immune system functions. In yet another domain, sports psychologists have taught creative visualization to athletes who have subsequently demonstrated marked improvement in performance.

The use of creative visualization and affirmations can empower us to transcent fear, doubt, discouragement, and many other things that keep us from accomplishing our personal best. Visualization and affirmations can powerfully affect the choices we make and the way we spend our time. Lacking this vision, we react to whatever is urgent, the impulse of the momment, our feelings and moods, and so forth. The use of positive imagery and affirmations, on the other hand, clarifies purpose, provides direction, and empowers us to perform beyond our ordinary resources, especially when an unexpected crisis arises. A vision can become a motivating force so powerful and integrated into every aspect of our being that it becomes the driving force behind every decision we make.

When we use creative visualization and affirmations on a daily basis, our lives eventually begin to mirror what we see in our minds. The positive thoughts, images, and statements we generate determine our attitudes and behaviors, which in turn can lead to powerful results in our lives.

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The above articles were gathered from a variety of news sources.

Employee Health Systems 2002

info@employeehealthsystems.com