After lunching the other day with a lawyer friend on a really tight schedule,  I remembered a crazy-busy time in my own life when the best lunch break involved throwing a camera in my bag and sneaking out of the office to shoot pictures.  Trees were a favorite, and flowers.  Anything natural and interesting and right-brain happy.  Anything but writing another legal analysis.

I’m sure I’m not alone here.  Anyone else have a favorite stress-relief break from the office?  Or a mini-break you wouldn’t try again?  Do tell.

Balancing Our Lives

Sue Bender’s Plain and Simple trilogy is remarkable for its depth in exploring ways to balance and simplify our lives.  In the first, Plain and Simple, she shares what she learned while living with the Amish.  The second, Everyday Sacred, explores the sacred in everyday life, and the final book, Stretching Lessons, helps us stretch beyond our comfort zones. 

Beyond Burnout by Gary Cherniss focuses on moving beyond the stress and disillusionment often felt by those in helping professions, including public service employees.

Not much time for stress relief?  Dr. Rachel Harris’ 20-Minute Retreats offers simple self-led exercises to squeeze into the busiest day.  And they’re not all 20 minutes.  For example,  a one-minute exercise suggests looking at an annoying person as if he was a work of art.

On a similar note is Jennifer Louden’s The Woman’s Comfort Book, which offers themed comforting activities, e.g., creating a comfort network and conducting courage rituals.

Practical and focused toward balancing work and personal lives is Dr. Barbara Mackoff’s The Art of Self-Renewal: Balancing Pressure and Productivity On and Off the Job, which offers specific techniques for issues like leaving the office behind at the end of the day.

Using Humor to Cope

Compassionate Laughter: Jest for Your Health by Patty Wooten, R.N., explains the health benefits of laughter and how it can help us cope with caregiving.

Laughter: A Scientific Investigation by Robert R. Provine is the fascinating result of a 10-year project of studying and writing about laughter.

Good-Hearted Living by Steve Wilson is a day-by-day guide that helps put World Laughter Tour laughter club practices in action for a happier, more peaceful life.

For those who enjoy humor writing as a form of stress relief, How to Write Funny, a collection of humorists’ essays about their craft, provides important insights into seeing – and relating – the funny side of life. The anthology includes pieces by notables like Tom Bodett, Bill Bryson and Jennifer Crusie.

Caregiving Relief

Stuck in the Middle: Shared Stories and Tips for Caregiving Your Elderly Parents includes first-person accounts of caregiving experiences and practical information on geriatric health issues, legal issues and housing options.  Authors are Barbara McVicker and Darby McVicker Puglielli.

Sometimes the best way to get life back in balance is to sit back in a quiet space and take inventory of how life has gotten off the track.  But where to start?

The good news is that there are plenty of resources for taking an objective inventory of your values and priorities and how they stack up against the way you’re spending your time and resources.  And there are many tools, including humor and laughter, for relieving stress.

You’ll find some favorite resources for time management, organizational management and stress relief on the dropdown menus below.  And don’t be shy.  Share your own favorite tools with others in The Dog Journal.

Brutus

Today’s opener comes courtesy of my granddog Brutus (an Ohio State fan, yes!), who always stops to smell the flowers and, well, pretty much everything else.

I got a call from my son yesterday with the typical December opener:  “Mom, if you know who drew my name for Christmas, tell them I need a new calculator.”  He paused.  “Brutus ate it.” This comes as no great surprise.  Brutus, a St. Bernard he and his wife are temporarily, TEMPORARILY raising, has munched his way through more than dog food.  (He is BEAUTIFUL, though. Does anybody want him??).  The surprise is that it was one of those foot-tall calculators made for seniors (and apparently dogs). 

I reminded him I had the very same calculator and would be happy to pass it along.  I prefer one with a tape – don’t trust myself to have entered the right numbers.  But I wonder if either of us should really be using a calculator right now.  With the current financial crisis, it’s better, I think, to turn off the TV, leave financial statements unopened,  and not stop to calculate our current percentage losses.  Fixating on negatives leads to more negatives, I think.  Do you agree?  Anyone else leaving their calculator in the drawer?? Is this a good path to stress relief?