5 Strategies to Calm the Chaos of Everyday Stress and Take Back Your Power

Are you struggling with getting stuff done?  Is overwhelm paralyzing you from taking action?

So often I see folks just winging it every day. Hop out of bed frantically rushing around to start the day with no real plan for the family, no advance planning of typical daily activities, etc. leaving them depleted, mentally drained, frustrated and disappointed that things are so chaotic and not getting things done as hoped.

This leads to stress, overwhelm, and poor self-care leaving you feeling powerless and lacking confidence.

You must have systems to get organized, manage time and manage yourself to feel more empowered with more clarity and confidence.

I’m sharing 5 strategies that I use in my life to calm the chaos, have more clarity throughout the day and feeling in control with more confidence to take action. Implementing these 5 strategies will absolutely help you take back your power:

1. Use a Life calendar                                                   

Use one calendar that encompasses personal, family, community and work commitments. Get one that is digital; not the paper calendar you hang on the wall or the desk blotter that is doodled on either.

Using this system ‘no important task gets left behind’. Having a calendar that encompasses all aspects of our blended lives is critical to calming the chaos and managing your time effectively.

Sync with your smartphone, tablet and computer. Google calendar is the best and most universal I have discovered. You can even set a time reminder that pops up so you remember where and when to show up or complete a task. With Google calendar you can color code each category, and even give everyone in the family their own color. It can even be shared so everyone is responsible for adding their own stuff – wow, surrender the title logistics manager.

Take back your power with one less job!

2. Use a To-Do list

Creating a To-do list provides clarity of what needs to get done. No more papers floating around to get lost.

Using your To-do list with your calendar will really boost your organization and clarity. Open your calendar/planner and To-do list. Take items from your To-do list and add to your calendar by blocking off the time you estimate needed to complete that task. These items should include the 5 most important things you need to get done today.

If nothing else gets done, you will feel accomplished knowing that the most important tasks did.

3. Establish a Routine for Beginning and End of Day

Routine and structure will help calm the chaos and reduce stress. Our brain loves routine and structure. By establishing a routine, your brain learns this rhythm and helps you stay in the flow which turns into an effortless habit over time.

The beginning and end of the day are crucial times to prepare and control your day. A good morning routine will set you up with a positive mindset, energy and organization for less chaos.

At the end of the day wind down with a routine with daily reflection and planning for the next day. Making your plan the night before, your subconscious mind will work on your list while you sleep, and you’ll be better prepared to take on your day.

4. Just Say No!

One thing that steals your power and causes high level stress is your inability to say no. This can often lead to frustration, anxiety and resentment both towards ourselves and others. Most of us spend our days getting pushed and pulled by other people’s desires and demands.

Essentially, YESing all day to someone else and something else. You look at your schedule and start to feel the anxiety setting in because you know YOU are getting crowded out.

No is beautiful word.

Just say NO to three things for more control and calm throughout your day:

One is interruptions.

Two is multitasking.

Three is people, places and things that will not support and move you closer to your personal, family and professional goals.

5. Take Clarity Breaks

Clarity will only happen by calming the mind (and body for that matter). Lack of clarity can occur from being in a constant state of stress; it’s a brain thing. The sense of overwhelm that comes from lack of clarity can also be from lack of direction and not having a defined purpose.

You need more clarity to let those creative juices flow. You need to lessen your distractions to make better, more thoughtful decisions without that constant sense of urgency.

Take a few clarity breaks throughout the day. It’s a great way to transition from one project to another. Whether it is from work to home, running errands to cooking dinner, or client meeting to picking up kids from school. It also works great when you get stuck or frustrated on a task (or with a person).

Taking a clarity break will help you regroup, be more present and engaged.

Here is a simple and quick Clarity Break exercise:

Sit in a comfortable position. It is best if your back is straight to have your chest open so your breath can flow easily. Set a timer for 3-5 minutes (turn off all electronic notifications to minimize distractions). Close your eyes and let your mind and body just be for a minute or two. Your mind will probably wander with distracting thoughts, as you notice this happen just focus on your breath.

Have your mind’s eye focus on it flowing in and out of your body.

Now as your thoughts enter again as you breathe out from your mouth, imagine blowing out all those distracting and worrisome words and thoughts. And then, as you breathe in through your nose, imagine everything that is good in your life and all that you desire coming into your body.

Breath in all the good you received already today; breathe out the worry, frustration and negative.

Ahhhhh…feel better?

Would you like the expanded version with the how-to’s and more strategy? You can have it free http://bit.ly/5-radical-to-crush-overwhelm

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Sources:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3013188/unplug/why-you-need-to-unplug-every-90-minutes

http://blog.healthychoicenaturals.com/discover-your-brains-best-time-to-learn/

https://www.youngliving.com/blog/the-snooze-routine-tips-for-a-better-nights-sleep/

Plan Ahead and Increase Productivity

5 Strategies to Calm the Chaos of Everyday Stress and Take Back Your Power

The PIP chaos reveals the government"s contempt for disabled people | Sharon Brennan

Last yr, when I was waiting for a double lung transplant, my existence felt terrifyingly unpredictable. My lungs were failing, and it was challenging to cope emotionally, but a single factor that created factors slightly less difficult was the fast approach to secure disability residing allowance (DLA). This allowed me to make immediate decisions about getting carers to assist at home, getting the heating on far more, and taking taxis to appointments. It made a extremely hard time that tiny bit a lot more bearable.

Evaluate my encounter to that of Malcolm Graham, a 56-12 months-old from Romford. He was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in September 2013 and applied for private independence payments (PIPs) on advice from Macmillan Cancer help and his nearby Citizens Suggestions. Pips are changing DLA and are supposed to assist individuals, regardless of whether in or out of work, to meet the added fees their disability triggers.

Graham says he has called the suitable department almost every single day in the eight months considering that he applied, and is nevertheless awaiting a last choice. Throughout that period he has endured 10 weeks of chemotherapy and a 10-hour operation in which big portions of his stomach and oesophagus were removed. He has had to rely on family and friends for monetary help, but is now in arrears on his electricity payments and has lately been visited by a debt recovery firm. With out the PIP mobility help he has utilized for, he is struggling to get out and about and says the wait has manufactured him feel ineffective and worthless. Following working for a lot more than 40 many years, he can not understand why the help he wants has been so far unattainable.

Graham is not alone in his wait for a selection. Last week, the public accounts committee report on the disastrous implementation of PIP however once more showed the cold-hearted contempt of the Division for Work and Pensions towards disabled folks. This has permitted us to be treated like guinea pigs, with an unwell-regarded and poorly trialed policy unleashed with tiny concern for the consequences.

PIPs had been at first trialed in the north of England in April 2013 just before currently being rolled out nationally just two months later on. In a very vital report on PIPs, published in February 2014, the Nationwide Audit Office mentioned this rush to implementation meant the DWP “did not allow ample time to test whether or not the assessment procedure could deal with big numbers of claims. As a result of this poor early operational efficiency, claimants face long and uncertain delays.”

By October 2013 only sixteen% of expected PIP choices had been created, partly because assessments by Atos and Capita, the private companies contracted by the government to approach these claims, have been only in a position to meet the anticipated 30 working-day turnaround of applications in 55% and 67% of situations respectively. The DWP had projected that 25% of assessments would avoid encounter-to-face consultations and be carried out solely on paper in actuality this figure is three%.

What is the result of this departmental failure? Terminally unwell folks, defined as those with less than 6 months to dwell, have waited for up to a month – 180% longer than expected – for a response as to regardless of whether they are entitled to government support in the final months of their lives. Beneath DLA the wait was 7 days. Ministers disingenuously protest that PIPs are a various benefit to DLA, when in fact the concepts for giving help to the terminally ill are the identical. What kind of government would make advantage changes that make terminally unwell people’s lives that bit harder anyway?

Mike Penning, minister for disabled individuals, protests that these delays have now been diminished to ten days, but there is no reply for those who are entitled to help but are not terminally ill. Last week’s report states that as a end result of delays of up to six months (despite the fact that charities have found that many candidates wait far longer), “some claimants have been forced to turn to meals banks, loans and charitable donations” although they wait for the rewards they are entitled to.

The DWP is lurching from 1 crisis to an additional, with genuine folks suffering genuine discomfort as a end result. David Cameron needs to urgently get to grips with what is taking place inside of that division. That procedure must start off these days, with a demand to Iain Duncan Smith that he publicly accepts accountability for the struggling that Graham, and the thousands of others like him, have gone through due to his department’s incompetence. Graham says he will get choked up just pondering about his predicament. He demands a determination – and an apology.

The PIP chaos reveals the government"s contempt for disabled people | Sharon Brennan

Federal Bungling Of ObamaCare Verification Creating Nationwide Chaos In Medicaid Departments

Co-authored with Nic Horton, Policy Analysis Analyst at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

Increased Medicaid enrollment has extended been heralded as a rare “success” of the ObamaCare rollout. Lately, CMS launched a new report boasting about growing enrollment in Medicaid. “These gains are produced attainable by collaboration among CMS and the states that operate these applications,” CMS explained. But how many of the new 6 million enrollees actually meet the eligibility demands for Medicaid?

Some state officials have began to push back on the claims of the Obama Administration on Medicaid, and a number of have quietly began to eliminate ineligible people that have been enrolled due to continued concerns with the federal website. The number of examples that have grow to be public from about the nation call into query the validity of these Medicaid enrollment numbers, painting a dire picture for taxpayers and the actually needy.

Last July, the Obama administration announced that — by executive directive — it would delay ObamaCare’s income verification needs. As an alternative, men and women who wanted to obtain overall health insurance via the ObamaCare exchange would be on the “honor system” and self-report their earnings without having any evidence necessary. This modify was only supposed to impact enrollees in state-based exchanges, but troubles with HealthCare.gov have produced chaos for states with a federal exchange as effectively.

States proceed to grapple with the collateral harm of ObamaCare’s implementation. However, the bungling of the overall health law’s rollout is wasting even far more taxpayer bucks and hurting even far more sufferers in need.

Quickly to be Secretary of HHS Sylvia Mathews Burwell may possibly have to answer for the developing variety of improperly enrolled folks onto Medicaid under the ACA due to continued problems with healthcare.gov. (AP Photograph/J. Scott Applewhite)

The Federal “Fix”

The federal government’s failure to confirm applicant earnings has put states in an unworkable circumstance: there is no way to establish if an applicant should go into Medicaid, into an exchange plan, or if that applicant is eligible for any sort of taxpayer-funded subsidies at all. To “solve” this dilemma, the administration announced in December that it would offer states “flat files” of incomplete eligibility data obtained for the duration of the exchange application approach, but, in the meantime, would let states to go ahead and enroll people in Medicaid. Even the loudest cheerleaders for ObamaCare could’ve envisioned how horribly incorrect this might go.

Politico stated at the time that this maneuver by the administration forced states to:

make a decision whether they’re prepared to chance the integrity of their Medicaid plans to sign up people more rapidly.

Some states rolled the dice now individuals and taxpayers are getting forced to settle up with the property.

Fraudulent Medicaid Enrollment Surges

Final December, HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said, “Claims from some states about our process for testing the Medicaid eligibility and enrollment systems are inaccurate.” It appears her data is as incomplete as the fed’s earnings verification information.

Texas

Take, for illustration, Jason Hawkins of Plano, Texas. Mr. Hawkins Hawkins earns $ 50,000 a yr and has a family of 3.  Primarily based on his cash flow, he is ineligible for Medicaid, but the fed’s HealthCare.gov gave him the go-ahead for free taxpayer-funded wellness care.

Texas officials also confirmed other significant flaws in the files they received from the federal government.  A lot of of the candidates supposedly eligible for Medicaid in Texas included people who did not even reside in the state and folks who are previously signed up for Medicaid.

Florida

By February, the federal government offered data on tens of thousands Floridians it determined to be eligible for Medicaid based on applications processed by the ObamaCare exchange. After overview, Florida officials found that significantly of the data was totally unreliable, containing duplicate applicants and candidates that had been certainly ineligible for Medicaid.

Federal Bungling Of ObamaCare Verification Creating Nationwide Chaos In Medicaid Departments

NHS shakeup has produced confusion, chaos and suffering, says Labour

Shadow care minister Liz Kendall has revealed major failings in Greater East Midlands commissioning support unit. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

The government’s reorganisation of the NHS has led to major failings by “unaccountable bureaucrats” in the commissioning of care for highly vulnerable people, the shadow care minister Liz Kendall has said.

A new tier of commissioning groups, which were created under Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms, employ 9,000 people and spend more than £700m, were commissioning complex care with little monitoring of quality, she claimed.

Kendall spoke out about the 18 NHS Commissioning Support Units (CSUs) in England after uncovering major failings in her own area of the east Midlands. The CSUs were created as a result of Lansley’s Health and Social Care Act because the GP-led clinical commissioning groups – the centrepiece of the reforms – were considered too small and inexperienced to commission all the healthcare.

The shadow care minister, who is MP for Leicester West, uncovered a catalogue of failings by the Greater East Midlands CSU (GEM), which has one part-time person monitoring quality standards in their domiciliary care providers even though they procure care from 84 providers.

The failings identified by Kendall included:

• An 89-year-old bed-bound man with Alzheimer’s in need of care throughout the night whose family were not told that the company appointed by the commissioning group initially did not have enough staff. When the carers did come in they failed to change the man’s incontinence pads overnight.

• A 21-year-old terminally ill man who was discharged after 10 weeks in hospital without the correct support. When Kendall spoke to the man’s caseworker she said she was not aware he had been discharged from hospital.

• A 74-year-old man with dementia who was given four days’ notice to leave his care home after his funding for NHS Continuing Care – available for those who need support in their own home or a care home – was withdrawn as part of an annual review on the grounds that he was no longer taking medication. The man’s daughter said he had stopped taking medication to assist his condition, which has worsened.

Kendall said: “The real culprit here is the government and their massive backroom NHS reorganisation. This has put unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of commissioning care for some of the most vulnerable people in this area. Labour warned the reorganisation would cause chaos and confusion and that patients would suffer – and that’s precisely what has happened.

“Ministers must apologise to families and get a grip of the mess they have created. GEM should be stripped of its role in commissioning NHS Continuing Healthcare and a single, accountable person with the right skills and experience put in charge so that these unacceptable failures can be prevented from happening again.”

NHS shakeup has produced confusion, chaos and suffering, says Labour

NHS shakeup has created confusion, chaos and struggling, says Labour

Shadow care minister Liz Kendall has revealed major failings in Greater East Midlands commissioning support unit. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

The government’s reorganisation of the NHS has led to major failings by “unaccountable bureaucrats” in the commissioning of care for highly vulnerable people, the shadow care minister Liz Kendall has said.

A new tier of commissioning groups, which were created under Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms, employ 9,000 people and spend more than £700m, were commissioning complex care with little monitoring of quality, she claimed.

Kendall spoke out about the 18 NHS Commissioning Support Units (CSUs) in England after uncovering major failings in her own area of the east Midlands. The CSUs were created as a result of Lansley’s Health and Social Care Act because the GP-led clinical commissioning groups – the centrepiece of the reforms – were considered too small and inexperienced to commission all the healthcare.

The shadow care minister, who is MP for Leicester West, uncovered a catalogue of failings by the Greater East Midlands CSU (GEM), which has one part-time person monitoring quality standards in their domiciliary care providers even though they procure care from 84 providers.

The failings identified by Kendall included:

• An 89-year-old bed-bound man with Alzheimer’s in need of care throughout the night whose family were not told that the company appointed by the commissioning group initially did not have enough staff. When the carers did come in they failed to change the man’s incontinence pads overnight.

• A 21-year-old terminally ill man who was discharged after 10 weeks in hospital without the correct support. When Kendall spoke to the man’s caseworker she said she was not aware he had been discharged from hospital.

• A 74-year-old man with dementia who was given four days’ notice to leave his care home after his funding for NHS Continuing Care – available for those who need support in their own home or a care home – was withdrawn as part of an annual review on the grounds that he was no longer taking medication. The man’s daughter said he had stopped taking medication to assist his condition, which has worsened.

Kendall said: “The real culprit here is the government and their massive backroom NHS reorganisation. This has put unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of commissioning care for some of the most vulnerable people in this area. Labour warned the reorganisation would cause chaos and confusion and that patients would suffer – and that’s precisely what has happened.

“Ministers must apologise to families and get a grip of the mess they have created. GEM should be stripped of its role in commissioning NHS Continuing Healthcare and a single, accountable person with the right skills and experience put in charge so that these unacceptable failures can be prevented from happening again.”

NHS shakeup has created confusion, chaos and struggling, says Labour

Care.data is in chaos. It breaks my heart | Ben Goldacre

When sharing private health-related records is proposed, vague guarantees and an imaginary regulatory framework are not adequate. Photograph: Owen Franken/Corbis

I am embarrassed. Final week I wrote in help of the government’s strategies to gather and share the health care information of all individuals in the NHS, albeit with enormous caveats. The investigation options are massive, but we presently knew that the implementation was chaotic, with poor public data, partly due to the fact the checks and balances on who gets accessibility to information – and how – have not however been devised or implemented. When you are proposing to share our most private health care information, vague guarantees and an imaginary regulatory framework are not reassuring.

Now it really is worse. On Monday, the Wellness and Social Care Details Centre admitted providing the insurance coverage market the coded hospital data of hundreds of thousands of sufferers, pseudonymised, but re-identifiable by anybody with malicious intent, as I explained final week. These have been crunched by actuaries into tables exhibiting the probability of death depending on different functions such as age or ailment, to assist inform insurance premiums.

We can fairly disagree on regardless of whether you uncover this use of your medical data acceptable, but the process must be competent and transparent. The HSCIC has now told the BBC that this release of your medical information broke the rules, and that there may have been other similarly erroneous releases: but it will not say more until finally “later this year”.

On Tuesday, at a overall health decide on committee hearing, things acquired worse. HSCIC stated it couldn’t share documentation on these releases because it had all been done by its predecessor physique, the NHS Information Centre – even however the HSCIC replaced the NHSIC in 2013, and is in the very same constructing, performing the exact same occupation, with virtually identical personnel and all the old information. Additionally, the actuaries’ report utilizing the hospital information carries the HSCIC’s brand – not the outdated NHSIC 1 – with the HSCIC’s admitted total consent. If HSCIC disapproves of NHSIC releasing this information – or regards it as unlawful – why did it add its logo and approval to the output?

Also, is it actually accurate that release to the insurance coverage business is unacceptable to the HSCIC? Its very own information governance evaluation from August says that access to person individuals data can “enable insurance businesses to accurately calculate actuarial danger so as to provide honest premiums to its [sic] customers. This kind of outcomes are an crucial aim of Open Data, an important government policy initiative.” Is that document binding? What are the rules? Are there previous dodgy information-sharing arrangements, agreed by NHSIC, that the HSCIC is nevertheless honouring, with data still flowing out of the constructing?

This is chaos. Then, on Thursday, to make issues worse, public well being minister Jane Ellison appears to have misled parliament, telling it that the information released by the HSCIC was “publicly available, non-identifiable and in aggregate type”. This is utterly untrue. It was line-by-line information – each personal hospital episode, for each and every personal patient, with unique pseudonymous identifiers– which was then aggregated into summary tables by the actuaries.

To summarise, a government body handed above parts of my health care records to folks I’ve by no means met, outdoors the NHS and health care research community, but it is refusing to tell me what it handed more than, or who it gave it to, and the minister is now incorrectly claiming that it by no means occurred anyway.

There are folks in my profession who think they can ignore this problem. Some are murmuring that this mess is like MMR, a public misunderstanding to be corrected with better PR. They are wrong: it is like nuclear electrical power. Health-related information, rarefied and condensed, presents large electrical power to do good, but it also presents huge dangers. When leaked, it can’t be unleaked when lost, public trust will take decades to regain.

This breaks my heart. I really like big health-related datasets, I operate on them in my day job, and I can feel of a hundred lifestyle-conserving uses for greater ones. But patients’ medical records include secrets and techniques, and we owe them our highest safety. In which we use them – and we have employed them, as researchers, for decades without having a leak – this have to be done safely, accountably, and transparently. New major legislation, governing who has accessibility to what, need to be written: but that’s not adequate. We also need to have vicious penalties for anyone leaking healthcare data and HSCIC needs to regain trust, by releasing all documentation on all past releases, urgently. Care.information wants to function: in medication, data saves lives.

Care.data is in chaos. It breaks my heart | Ben Goldacre