Play! It reduces stress, helps solve problems and increase your overall well-being

Playful adults have the ability to transform everyday situations, even stressful ones, into something entertaining. - Lynn Barnett

Do you ever sometimes look around at everyone and think, why is everyone so damn grown and stressed about everything with their stupid white picket fences pretending to be all prim and proper and focusing on the bloody "adult problems" they love talking about which must somehow make them feel like they're adulating properly. It's backwards. It's not what we were born to do. Its counterproductive. Actually yes you can achieve amazing things and still play just as children play. In fact you are MORE LIKELY to achieve amazing things by doing so.

Playing triggers the release of endorphins, the body's natural feel good chemicals which as we all know creates an over-all sense of well-being and can even temporarily relieve pain and improve brain function. people that play don't experience less stressful things, they just perceive them and handle them differently.

Why?

  • Play generates optimism, makes perseverance fun and leads to mastery.
  • Play fosters empathy
  • Play refreshes long-term adult relationships
  • Play is fun, it can be hilarious which is refreshing, and creates the capacity to share a lighthearted sense of the worlds ironies

Some of my personal favourite play things are:

1. Finger Painting

2. Paint fights during said finger painting

3. Dancing in shopping centres

4. Playing practical jokes on people

5. Morning Kareoke in the office

6. Chasing butterflies

7. Playing with my dogs as if I too were a dog

8. Going to the bounce centre and pretending I can fly

9. Laughing and making fun of my own "failures"

10. Being the most hilarious person I know and laughing at my own jokes

 

Originally published on HannahDalby.com

How to Create Upward Momentum in Your Business (and Life)

If you don't do the work to keep moving up, you're doomed to go downhill.

-Geoffrey James

If there's anything that's true in business and in life, it's change. And change means that each element of your business and your life is either improving or deteriorating. Because nothing ever stays the same.

Take your health, for instance. Depending upon the choices you made during the day, your body is either stronger than it was yesterday or it's weaker. You've either extended your life or accelerated your demise. There's no in-between.

Similarly, depending upon the actions you took during the day, you have either grown your company's revenue, profit, and potential or you've shrunk them. There's no in-between.

A couple of days in a downward direction won't kill you or your business. However, it's extremely easy to build momentum when you're headed downhill. Building upward momentum is more difficult. It requires constant effort.

Here's how you build upward momentum:

  1. Make a list of at least six areas of your life and work that are important to you.
  2. Resolve to take at least one action, every day, to improve that area of your life.
  3. Schedule those actions into your daily routine.
  4. Execute on your plan.

For example, here's my list from a few years back:

(The orange points in the list are Hannah's current list for a Savage Example )

  • Sales. Call or email at least one prospective client.
  • Sales. CALL at least one prospective client. Consultants that get on the phone always win over the ones that email all day
  • Health. Do at least 15 minutes of aerobic exercise.
  • Health. Do at least an hour of exercise I LOVE doing
  • Family. Make at least one person in my family feel incredibly loved.
  • Family. Message, email, call, snapchat, message, visit, as many family members as possible
  • Networking. Call or email at least one business contact.
  • Networking. CALL at least one business contact. See above point on calling. 
  • Financing. Take at least one action that give me more control over my finances.
  • Financing. Check in with finance manager on activities daily. I am not a finance genius. I should not be in charge or in control of this. 
  • Creativity. Do at least one creative activity that's not business writing.
  • Creativity. Spend an hour every day doing creative things. Finger painting, turning mango's into men, making gifts for friends and family. 

What I've discovered is that acting upon those resolutions, day after day, week after week, create upward momentum in the areas of my life that previously had a tendency to get shoved aside and therefore go downhill.

What I also discovered is that, because these small actions ensured that I would give attention to these areas of my life, I usually found myself doing more than the minimum that I resolved to do.

Just as important, knowing that I was address these otherwise-neglected areas freed me from the burden of worrying about them when I was hard at work.  That allowed me to get more done in less time.

Try this method for a week.  Once you feel the upward momentum, you won't want to stop.

Note from Hannah: Once you have the upward momentum, your life will amaze you every day, and it will be almost impossible to stop unless you consciously make the decision to stop. 

Originally published on Inc

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2018 Goals? Done! – with a little more of this, a little less of that

New Year’s resolutions have been around for thousands of years. It comes at a time when people look back at the past year(s) and make an effort to improve in some or all aspects of their life as a new year begins. The promises run the gamut from physical to mental also usually from possible to improbable. But, regardless they serve as a goal. We all know that the statistics show that these New Year’s resolutions often don’t last long. What I don’t like about them the most is the feeling of failure and guilt you put yourself through once you inevitably fail to achieve the ambitious goal you set. Even when we are doing better than we were doing at the beginning of the year, because we’ve got this big fat number or target in our face, we fail to see the small progress we are making, and end up throwing in the towel because you’ve got 20kg to lose still, rather than choosing to focus on the 10kg you’ve lost. 

This year rather than make bold, strict statements that would fade within the first few months of the year, create yourself a  MORE/LESS list of our resolutions for 2018. Rather than emphatically say “I will no work any 15 hour plus days this year, and I will never consume sugar again” which is ridiculous because business requires us to do some crazy shit sometimes to keep it all together, and the only available food source during that time is whats available on Uber Eats, and what survived the last 3 weeks in the pantry. You either end up with malnutrition or fail your goals and feel bad about it.

So your new goal will look something like this…

Less Overworking, More Adventures…

Less Sugar, More Water. 

This should work more effectively than a sometimes overwhelming list of “bad” things we do and wondering how we will ever give them up. It will show us the direction we want to go in a gentle, guiding way. In the very first week you can achieve everything on your list with just a little more of this and a little less of that which makes you feel amazing and super motivated to keep doing a little more and a little less. You will amaze yourself at what you end up achieving by the end of 2018 🙂

 

Download your FREE More Or Less Goals Worksheet here

 

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