Recognising Stressful Situations

A huge part of dealing with stressful situations and managing to be able to regain your state of calm when things start to go off course is recognising what an impending stressful situation looks like. Of course, this isn’t always going to be possible as some stressful situations in your life may be genuinely out of the blue, but for the most part, you will at least be able to notice when your stress levels begin to rise.

Noticing Your Stress

When you are starting to feel stressed out, you will notice your stress levels rising. You may feel nervous, agitated, sweaty, faint, or you may start to get a headache. Understanding the physical symptoms which you experience when you are stressed is key to noticing when your stress levels are rising, recognizing stressful situations, and getting everything back under control.

One of the worst mistakes that you can make is to try and ignore your stress and hope that it will go away – this will not work. In order to best manage and get control over the stressful thoughts and emotions, it’s absolutely essential to accept them before attempting to deal with them. Once you have noticed a stressful thought, it is easier pin down the cause of your stress in your attempt to deal with it.

How to Manage Stressful Thoughts

However important the ability to notice stressful and anxious thoughts may be, it’s a useless skill if you do not know how to deal with and manage these thoughts once you have dealt with them. There are a multitude of different ways in which you could deal with stressful and worrisome thoughts and feelings, and it is really down to you finding out which coping techniques and methods work well for you.

Some common coping techniques include:

• Breathing techniques;


• Taking a break;


• Listening to music;


• Going outside;


• Taking a walk;


• Switching off your phone and other connected devices;


• Talking to somebody you trust, or


• Eating a healthy snack.

Of course, these are all different techniques, and whilst some may work great for others, they may not be what suits you. You may also find your own personal coping techniques which are not listed here. In the end, dealing with stressful thoughts, feelings and situations is all down to finding what works best for you and applying it when these situations arise.

Finding Your Techniques

When it comes to discovering which relaxation techniques for dealing with stress work well for you, it is absolutely vital to have patience with yourself. If you have never used any anxiety-busting or stress-busting techniques before, it can often take a while for you to discover which ones actually make a difference to you as compared to those which don’t work at all.

The key here is to try not to be disheartened if a certain technique doesn’t work for you – it’s OK, you can just try another one. You also need to be aware of the fact that relaxation and stress-busting techniques not working when you try them could make you feel even more stressed. However, once you have figured out what works well for you and know exactly when and how to use it, you will have made a huge step in controlling your stress levels and encouraging a life which is calm and collected.

Finding Your Stressors

We all have things in our lives that stress us out more than others. Understanding what causes you to feel the most stressed out is absolutely vital to taking control of your life and your stress levels. When you’re stressed about something but not quite sure why, it can make you feel even more stressed – some people end up in situations where they are stressing about their own levels of stress, further intensifying the condition.

Being able to pinpoint your stressors in life not only means that it is easier for you to know what to avoid in order to keep stress at bay, but it can also help you stay in control as you will be able to better prepare ahead for most situations which include your particular stressors. Discovering what stresses you out the most is all about being totally honest with yourself.When you are feeling particularly anxious, you should ask yourself what it is that you are worried about.

Sometimes, you may find that small things which would not usually worry you are stressing you out if this is happening, you need to understand that it is usually the result of a knock-on-effect from other stressors, perhaps over an extended period of time. It can be helpful to enlist the services of a therapist when dealing with your stressors, especially if you suffer from a lot of stress which is related to a traumatic past experience.

Being In Control

The key to a life which is calm and has minimal stress is to be in control of it at all times. Staying in control not only means being on top of thing such as your diet, finances, and lifestyle, but also your own thought processes and energy. Staying in control of your own mind by making sure that your body and mind is getting the right nutrition, adequate exercise, and little harm from bad lifestyle habits is absolutely important when it comes to achieving a life which is calm and relatively stress-free.

Understanding how to harness your thoughts is one of the main goals of managing stress and anxiety. Rather than allowing your thoughts to run away with you, being in control – both physically and mentally – means that you can catch stressful thoughts when they first appear and use a range of techniques to deal with them efficiently.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder of Women Flix and Founder of Beautifly Digital 

https://msha.ke/yolabastos/ 

Six Core Success Rituals

Each area is important to create balance in your life. If you ignore one of the six core areas of success, then, you will not be able to function at your best. You will have a sense of lacking in your life and might even waste your time trying to fill the void with the wrong things.

The six core areas of success are listed below:
1. Physical Health – The emphasis can never be too much on how important it is to ensure you do all that is possible sustain your physical health. It is quite logically that one of two things will occur if you do not maintain your physical health. It is either that you will have to spend your fortune on medications and doctors or you will be snatched to an early death due to some form of health issue. Exercise, eat healthily, get adequate sleep, and drink a lot of water can assist in keeping you healthy.

2. Emotions – Your emotions affect your mind. If you are mentally unhealthy or unstable, then you cannot make objective decisions. A decision that is made when someone is emotionally unstable can wreak havoc on your life and has the potential to become very drastic, which we have all either heard, read or experienced personally.

All the six core areas of success are correlated. Take for example, if something happens to trigger your emotions in a negative way – you are feeling sad, or you might be angry - you can always exercise to calm yourself down. It is not only your negative emotions that you need to learn to control because if you are too excited or happy, but you can also make a wrong decision. For example, if you are overzealous you might spend money on things which you do not need, and that money could have been invested in something that will increase your income. Life is about creating the right balance in everything you do.

3. Relationships – Your relationships can affect your health and your emotions. A toxic relationship will leave you with feelings of despair and anger. Unhappiness and rage can lead to depression. Depression will affect your progress, either by you losing time to work, or by you making decisions, which will ultimately result in failure.

The benefit of good relationships will create heaven for you on earth. The world in your eyes is at peace because your heart is full of love, and your mind will have its cover made from thoughts of joy. You will function better. You will be more eager to get up in the mornings because you are grateful for another day to be with the ones you love.

Examine your relationships, and see how they are impacting your life. If being around someone makes you feel burdened, or you feel as if that person is pulling all your hope, and joy out of you, then that is a toxic connection. You need to disconnect from that person. Relationships that motivate you to become better or the ones that help your ideas sparkle are what you need in your life.

4. Career or Business – Observing the attitude people display at their place of work can always tell who loves their job from who do not. If you are not in the job or business which makes you feel that this is what you were born to do, then you might be in the wrong field. Your career or business must leave you feeling fulfill no matter the obstacles you face daily. The belief that the world could not exist without you doing that business or career find its resting place in your mind and heart. When in the right field, it will be easier to keep focus, and because of the passion you have for your career or business, failure cannot convince you to quit.

5. Finances – “Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the “gotta have it” scale.” – Zig Ziglar
Wealthy and happy is all of us heart’s desire. However, if you want to be wealthy, it might take years of hard work to become rich, but it only takes a minute with a bad investment, which will result in you losing all your money. If you do not have money, it might make you unhappy because you cannot buy the things you need to support yourself or family. Not having money can also prevent you from investing in your career or business.

However, you can have money and still not be happy, because there is unbalance in one of the other five core areas of success. Never spend money on things just because you want to impress others. That is definitely not a ritual of successful individuals. The wealthiest people live humble lives.

For example, Bill Gates has topped various billionaire lists for years. He can afford his own private jet. Bill Gates is known to comfortably sit in the economy class on airplanes when he is traveling.

Warren Buffett, with all his billions, is very much content in his home, which he bought for less than forty thousand dollars many years’ ago. He also still makes his billion dollar transaction discussion on his flip phone, which he has not replaced for any of the high-tech cellular phones that are available today.

They give back a portion of their wealth to various charitable organizations. Sometimes it is a charity that they have started or one that is already in operation. Even after death, the richest individuals are sharing their fortune. A lot of affluent individuals are willing their fortunate to charities. Melinda Gates and Bill Gates have a grant-making foundation where they give away billions to different charities around the world. They have also encouraged other billionaires to donate some of their fortunes to the less fortunate.

You must also adopt this principle of giving back to the less fortunate. Just as how you will start practicing the other success rituals, this is one habit you must also develop. Allocate whatever you can afford to charity now, and as your wealth increases, then, you increase the portion for charity as well.

6. Spirituality - No matter what your religion preference may be, spirituality is an important aspect of spiritual success. Spirituality can be found all around you, from the time you spend in nature, to meditation, to your religious practices. Spirituality has the ability to ground you and keep you close to both your own personal feelings and help you work through anxiety and emotion which will enable you to make sound and important judgments. Choose a spiritual ritual for yourself and stick with it each and every day.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder of Women Flix and Founder of Beautifly Digital 
https://msha.ke/yolabastos/ 

Managing Your Finances and All that it Takes

People can be classified into two – the spenders and the savers. 

Of course there are stereotypes cast for both extremes. 

The spenders would use up all of their income (and even beyond their income by using credit cards) in order to buy everything they want. You know a person is a spender if their first instinct when they receive their salary or a bonus is to go shopping. On the other end of the spectrum are the savers, who sometimes have the unfortunate reputation of being misers.

Wise financial managers are somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. Of course, it doesn't make sense to just save up every single dime you have and forego pleasures you can afford such as a simple vacation simply for the sake of saving. It also doesn't pay to spend every single dime as if the fate of the world depends on your shopping habits. 

The best approach when it comes to money is to save a little and spend a little. You ve probably heard your grandmother remonstrate you with this adage when she found out you bought a flashy car. In today's materialistic world, you are bombarded with commercials that tell you to buy this and buy that, regardless of whether you need an item or not. This is the reason why some people are living beyond their means – they just have to buy the newest gadgets obsessively, even if they can't afford it.

In order to buy these items, they resort to using their credit cards or even taking out a loan without considering if they can manage the monthly payment. If you can use a credit card wisely, you have one of the tools for effective financial management. However, you need to show real discipline to be able to handle credit cards. This is because a credit card in your pocket is an ever-present temptation when you go shopping. After all, you can buy just about anything within your credit limit.

Ideally, you should pay the entire outstanding balance per month to avoid finance charges. If you can t, you must remember to set a personal limit as to the amount of credit card debt that you want to have. Most experts recommend an amount equivalent to your one month salary at the most. 

This will ensure that you won't have an impossible time paying for your bills if you ever have to leave your work.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder of Women Flix and Founder of Beautifly Digital 

https://msha.ke/yolabastos/ 

Mindset and Wealth: How to Grow Your Wealth

Can you really ‘think yourself rich’? I’m here to tell you that it is not only possible, but that it is also actually the best chance you have of making a lot of money. Many of us dream of living in a large luxurious house in a sunny country, we imagine wearing smart suits that exude power and confidence and we wish that we didn’t have to make so many hard choices because our funds can’t support the lifestyles we want to lead.

If that sounds familiar, then you need to make a change. And as with ALL things, that change starts with you and your mindset. If you want to be wealthy, then what are you doing about it? 

And is there any chance that you may, in fact, be going about it the wrong way?

Wealth and Your Career

Ask the average person in the street what they would hypothetically need to do in order to become richer and 99% of them will tell you the same thing: get a better job. Okay, fair enough. They are not wrong per say. Indeed, getting a better job won’t hurt their income and that in turn will likely mean they get richer at least a little.

But in fact, this is not the whole story. And what’s more, is that this isn’t even the main part of the story. Wealth and salary are not inextricably linked. They are related sure, but only to a small degree. If you wanted to see an equation telling you how to get wealthy, then it would really look like this:

Wealth = Income – Outgoings
So, let’s say that your income is determined solely by the amount of money you are making at work. Even in that scenario, you still have another, equally as important factor. That is your outgoings. If you earning a cool million dollars a month but you also waste a million dollars a month of lavish holidays and on nights out and clothes, then you are ultimately not going to be very well off. Rather, you’re likely to lose money over time.

But if you are earning a more normal $2500 a month but you only spend $500, then suddenly you are saving $2000 per month. In 12 months, you’ll have $24,000 saved away. That’s a decent down payment on a house! So, you now have two options. Two ways to get richer. One is that you seek to get a better job and increase your income and the other is that you save more money and spend less.

How to Spend Less

When I was at university, my summer job was working at a yacht club. Specifically, I was a waiter in one of the restaurants there that was actually paid for and owned by the clientele of the club. The club was located in Sandbanks, England – an area that is also sometimes referred to as ‘millionaire’s row’ because it has among the most expensive real estate in the world along the seafront.

So, these are people who own yachts and who belong to a club that is situated in one of the wealthiest parts of the world. Suffice to say that they were not struggling for cash. And of course, what many people would point out to me is that this should likely result in pretty big tips!

Except that’s not what happened. In fact, I received some of the worst tips I have in any job. I had a lady call me over to secretively give me 20p (around 30cents) for my hard work. She literally told me to buy myself something nice. And this is bearing in mind that it is standard practice in England to tip 10%. The meals usually cost close to $150.
I told my Mum this and her response was: how do you think they got rich, dear?

Makes sense
Look, I’m not here to tell you you should become stingy with tips. But what I am telling you is that the wealthiest people recognize that every little bit adds up and makes a very big difference in the long run. Your aim now is not to fritter. That $3 coffee you have every morning on the way to work is actually $15 over the course of a week. $60 over a course of a month and $720 over the course of the year.

That is a tiny amount and that’s before we have even considered all those other things you likely pay for that you don’t really need. Maybe your Spotify account, Netflix, 100+ TV Channels, gas for the car for all those trips you don’t really need to make. It adds up. Worse are all those larger purchases we make on an impulse.

These are things like clothes that we think will make us look smart, games consoles, PCs, overly advanced phones. How much did your phone cost you? If you’re on a contract, then chances are you’ll be paying $700 or more for it. Now ask yourself how much more that phone really does than something for $300. Do you really need the fastest processor around? Considering that even an old phone can play everything in the app store?

Do you really need a 30 megapixel camera? Or a 4K screen? Can you even see the difference between 4K and 1080p?The real problem here is marketing, the internet and other people. We have unfortunately been conditioned to associate these items with success and to find them highly desirable. We want to get the latest phone, car, computer etc. because it looks so sexy in those adverts. But the reality is that these things don’t really bring us happiness.

Likewise, we are told that we need to buy a large house, go on lavish holidays. Is this really for us? Or is it so that we can look successful to others? I’m not telling you to cut back on all the things that make you happy here. There is no point in having wealth if you aren’t going to enjoy it and have a better quality of life for you and your family.

All I’m telling you is to make sure you are certain of what it is that does make you happy. And that often means deciding what you don’t need and what you should be prioritizing. Have you always dreamed of a beautiful big house? Then why not stop going on those big holidays for a while? Why not stop buying widescreen TVs? And how about considering getting that big beautiful house in a less expensive area?

Heck, if you move to Spain, then there are places where you can live in a five bedroom home with swimming pool and roof pool and it will only cost you $200,000. You could almost buy that in cash and think about how much money you would start making then once there was no mortgage!

Conversely, if all you want is to travel the world, then you can change your accommodation to something less glamorous. How about moving to quiet neighborhood and living in a spare bedroom for a while?  Your outgoings will be low, so you can enjoy going on more holidays and still save up that wealth. Know what you want to achieve with that money. Know what wealth means to you and then you can focus on being more efficient with your money.

Financial Modelling

This will also help you to set up a budget and/or a plan. If you know how much you have coming in and how much you’d like to be making per month, saving per month and spending on things that make you feel wealthy per month, then you can create a budget that will help you to reach that point within a specific timeframe. This then is where you can look at those small things you can cut out to save money.

If you have a spreadsheet that contains all your income and all your outgoings per month, then you can look at what kind of impact cutting coffee from your routine would actually make. You’ll be left with a total profit at the end of each month and you can decide how much of that you want to put into savings and how much you intend to spend on other things.

You can even set up standing orders in your accounts so that money saved automatically gets transferred to a savings account. With such a spreadsheet, you can then multiply the savings you are making by any given number of months and see projections of what your finances are likely to be at certain points in the future. Need more money for an upcoming expense?

Then look at something else you can do to cut your expenditure. This is called ‘financial modelling’ and it’s a powerful tool for building your wealth rather than just letting it ‘happen’ without your direction or input.

A Couple More Ways to Save Money

And what if you have run out of things you can cut in order to save money? What if you are living on as little as possible? A few other options include changing your providers for bills, selling off old items, or even moving money between accounts in order to receive bonuses. A friend of mine does this religiously and will even take out credit cards with 0%APR, just so that he can put all of that money into an ISA and then make profit on it.

If he gets a cash incentive to signing up for anything then he will sign up! And he never buys a new piece of tech or even clothing without taking one of the older items to sell and thereby offset the cost. Something else to note is that if you have a dream of a wealthy future, then you might need to ‘be okay’ with living a little more simply for a while in order to get there.

You need to put the work in now, to reap the rewards in the future. And this is hard because it often once again means forgetting the conventional signals of wealth and success. Once again, you have to do this for you and not be worried about what others might think. So for example, if you want to someday have a beautiful home, one of the very best things you can do is to live with your parents if they will let you.

Sure, it’s not glamorous and it’s not fun, but if they charge a small amount of rent you’ll be able to save so much per month that it will help you to get on the property ladder MUCH faster. You could then buy a smaller home in a less attractive area but flip the property to make a big profit. You need to put in the graft and have an eye on the future.

Likewise, you might need to learn to stop trying to demonstrate your wealth and stability to friends. Have you ever met up with a friend and eaten in a restaurant that you can’t really afford because you want to see them and because it is embarrassing to suggest eating somewhere cheaper? As you can imagine, this isn’t exactly conducive to getting wealthy quickly! Again, you need to be willing to tell them that you can’t afford it and to go elsewhere.

How about you suggest they meet you at your house?

Setting Up Revenue Streams

Next come the revenue streams. We’ve seen how you can actually become richer without changing your job, simply by spending less. The other strategy is to become wealthier by having more than one income stream. Once again, your salary isn’t determining your wealth! So, what might this mean? One simple option is to take on another job, such as a weekend job.

If you are happy to work on a Saturday, then you will have potentially $150 extra to spend each week! That’s $600 per month or $7,200 per year! Save that and in a couple of years, you can be living in a nice house – or you can use it right now to feel that bit wealthier and wear those fancy clothes. This is a big sacrifice though granted. So, what would be better for most people would be to earn money online for instance.

Tim Ferriss describes creating a ‘muse’ in his book The Four Hour Workweek, which is a small online business that generates a passive income. This can be as simple as finding an affiliate product (a product that you sell for commission) and making a simple website recommending it, then sending people there with ads. This is very low maintenance but can potentially make a fair amount of money.

You could try matched betting alternatively (a form of betting that ensures you can’t lose – it uses only the free bonus amounts that you get given for signing up) or you could look for a simple online job. How about selling photography online? Working as a writer or a web designer? Or, like a friend of mine, try commentating on sports for websites?

You can also make money from arts and crafts of course and sell some things you make on the side, or you can buy and sell items in bulk on eBay! Then there are the other options that work offline: these include such things as renting out rooms to students, such as mowing the neighbor’s lawn, cutting hair, teaching an instrument etc.
All these options will help you to make an income that will be additional to your current income.

Not only does this of course give you a better total, but it will also help to make you more ‘resilient’ so that if anything ever happens with your main job, you’ll of course still have some money coming in. Another tip? The more you make, the more you’ll make. Try to look for investment opportunities, whether that means buying a second house and letting it out to someone else, or whether it means moving to an area that you know is up and coming.

A strange thing to think of here is board games. If you’ve ever played Monopoly, or any other game where you have to amass a kind of resource, then you might have found that it pays to invest wisely early on. To get the card that will pay out just a little bit every round, or that will prevent you from losing a little bit every round.

These seem like small changes in the short term but over the course of the game, they ultimately put you in a position of great power and help you to win decisively! It's the same in real life. Make a few right choices that will build up over time. Know what you want. Be patient. And avoid the temptation to splurge on the short-term gratification. That is how you get into a wealthy mindset!

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder of Women Flix and Founder of Beautifly Digital https://msha.ke/yolabastos/ Women Flix, Supporting Women all the way to Success! Women Flix Limited, is a company limited by guarantee, was incorporated in England and Wales (company no. 13047578 ).