Recently, a friend of mine treated me to a day at a local spa for my birthday. It was utterly blissful – we were pampered from head to toe, and I haven’t felt that relaxed in a really long time.

However, as I took in my surroundings during one of my treatments, I slowly became aware that I stood out.

I had been sitting, reclined in my spa chair with my eyes closed, attempting to be mindfully aware of my entire body. The sensations I noticed were incredible, and I am certain I would have missed out on half of them had I not been paying extremely close attention to my experience.

As I looked around the pedicure room, I noticed that every other woman was bent over and white-knuckling a digital device of some kind. I picked up my phone to check for messages. Admittedly, I even “checked in” to the salon on Facebook. But then I had an alarming thought: am I holding onto my cellphone or does it have a hold on me?

I plunked my phone back into my purse and didn’t look at it again until hours later when I came home.

I’m the first person to admit that having an iPhone has improved a lot of things about my life. My job is easier, I can get directions instantly, and I’m never at a loss for a good place to eat. I’m definitely pro-smart-phone. What concerns me, though, is the loss of social cues that seems to come along with owning one.

Many people today seem to have lost their grip on good manners. Ever been in mid-conversation with someone who interrupts you to answer a work call?  How about a personal text, or to check their Facebook notifications? Perhaps you’re even guilty of some of these things yourself.

If so, there are things that you can do to prevent your cellphone from running your life and potentially ruining some of your relationships. The key is setting some boundaries when it comes to when and where you choose to let yourself be interrupted by your phone.

In order to protect and nurture your most important relationships, it’s a good idea to earmark certain times, situations or events during which you will not be reachable on your cellphone. This will allow you to focus all of your attention of those people who are physically present with you during those times, giving them reassurance that they are more important than your need to “stay connected.”

Perhaps these times will include things like date night, dinnertime, and family gatherings. Alternatively, you could set aside a certain amount of non-negotiable screen-free time each day or week. Regardless of when and where it happens, by designating regular times to silence your cellphone and put it out of sight – you’re giving your loved ones a guarantee of your undivided attention. It’s only when we give our full attention to our families, relationships, and self-awareness that each of them will be able to grow and thrive.

We’ve talked about the top twelve things that could be making your life hell and why you should stop doing them immediately. So, now that we’re potentially doing twelve LESS things every day - it seems that our schedules should be opening up a bit.

In an effort to stay away from those nasty habits that do nothing but drag us down, let’s try replacing them with twelve things that will only have positive effects on our lives:

1. Laugh – I’m naturally a pokerface kind of gal – most of my friends will tell you it takes a lot to really make me laugh, but, based on the fact that the Mayo Clinic says laughing a lot relieves pain among many other things, consider me a crack up from this day forward.
2. Say nice things about others – Remember when your mother used to tell you, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything?” Unless it’s constructive criticism, focus on the good things about other people, or better yet, don’t worry so much about everyone else!
3. See the glass as half full – Even if you’re missing both legs and an arm, you’ve still got a beating heart, a working brain, and a WHOLE OTHER ARM! ‘When you focus on what you do have, you will always have plenty.’ - Gillian MacBeth
4. Meditate – By taking the time to regularly limit the stimulation on your nervous system, you can increase your powers of awareness, which will allow you to fully engage in and enjoy your life experiences.
5. Appreciate the joy that comes from small pleasures – After all, life’s big pleasures (vacations, birthdays, holidays) only come around once in awhile. A happy life is made up of small pleasures. Listen for and see all of the small beauties and pleasures that are all around us.
6. Take credit for being awesome – Accept compliments and own your accomplishments. If you deserve credit, TAKE IT. You’ll become more self-assured, which will actually impress people even more.
7. Choose friends who are positive thinkers – Because we eventually pick up the habits and attitudes of those we spend the most time with, spend the majority of your time with the people who make you feel like the best version of yourself.
8. Show gratitude – Being thankful for all of the good in our lives only perpetuates good feelings all around.  And be sure to tell those around you how much you appreciate all that they bring to your life.
9. Help someone else  – The happier you become, the more you feel like helping other people. Why not see if it works in reverse? Lending someone a hand gives you a feeling of satisfaction and can even make you start to see your own faults in a more positive light.
10. Do what you enjoy - You never have to do something – you choose to.  If you’re spending a lot of time doing something you don’t enjoy, ask yourself why and start choosing differently.
11. Project confidence – In order to get what you want, approach situations in a relaxed manner. Speak clearly, make eye contact, and smile.
12. Say “yes” – When you’re invited to take part in something, whether it’s listening to your nephew’s fourth grade play or going to an independent film festival, get into the habit of saying YES!

If you’re working toward creating a better version of your life, remember that reactions only happen with actions. Don’t just wait for a better life – make one.

I’m now considered an entrepreneur, in that I’ve started up my own business and I’m my own boss. Studies show that entrepreneurs are also more likely than most “typical” professionals to experience burnout. This is due to the fact that there is no limit to how much success we can attain, and because of that, we have a hard time turning down opportunities.  Before we know it, we’re exhausting ourselves by taking on more projects than we can reasonably handle.

If you’re making your living in a job that has the potential to evoke excessive amounts of stress, involves a high level of responsibility, or demands long hours, be proactive about avoiding burnout. If you’ve started to feel the first twinges of distress surrounding work, use the following list as a guide to avoid causing a major professional setback.

• Pin point the source of any discontent and fix it. It’s not the job itself that will bring you down, but its interference with the things you love to do most – like spending time with family, working out, or getting a good night’s sleep every night. What do you wish you had time for?

• Set boundaries for those above events to ensure that they will always come before work in order to refresh your energy and motivation.

• Make sure you’re keeping it interesting! Even as an entrepreneur, if your projects all start to look the same, you’ll get bored fast. Pick and choose a variety of assignments, or simply make a change to your daily routine.

• Pace yourself for the long haul and don’t expect miracles.

• Take vacations! If you have a corporate job, USE your paid days off – don’t just bank them. If you’re self-employed, start setting things up so that your business can remain successful even when you take a few days off.

It’s extremely important to be able to recognize the early symptoms of burnout so that you can attain the level of success that you’re reaching for while remaining in good physical and mental health. Once burnout occurs, it can spell disaster and is quite difficult to reverse. Always keep that fire extinguisher nearby and at the ready, because if you don’t beat burnout first, it can most certainly beat you.

I had planned to live happily ever after with my first husband, but, after ten years of marriage, we found ourselves separated and filing for divorce. This was definitely not in my plans, and all of the life changes that occurred afterward were enough to really throw me off balance. However, despite it not being part of the blueprint I had created for my life, I slowly adapted to the idea and life after a divorce.  Now, 2 years later, I am happily remarried to an amazing man and good friends with my first husband. It seems The Universe knew what it was doing.

What I learned from this situation is that, while it’s good to be organized and have life goals, you can’t expect the unexpected. That’s kind of the whole definition of the word, right? Whether something takes you by surprise personally, professionally, or medically, it’s how you react that counts. You can spend your whole life making and executing plans, and bravo if you accomplish everything you set out to do. However, the real life lessons come from navigating the bumps in the road along the way.

Avoiding the bumpy roads keeps us in our comfort zone but doesn’t allow for the personal growth and self-awareness gained by facing a challenging situation. What we learn about ourselves as we face seemingly insurmountable obstacles can be quite an eye-opening experience and can lead us to re-think our original plans.  The next time your life goes off the grid, don’t panic.  Sometimes, the road less traveled can take you where you should have been going all along.

I have been on both sides of the job fence. I went from teaching to motherhood and then changed courses after a divorce to pursue a job as a legal assistant. During the motherhood phase of my journey, I discovered my innate ability to be my own boss quite by accident by freelance writing while my children napped. However, like most people, I became concerned about my lack of health insurance coverage after I went through a divorce, and headed back into the corporate world, working eight hours a day and commuting an additional 80 minutes, making the total time I dedicated to my job approximately 9 1/2 hours a day.

Personally, I loved that job, and it is probable that I would have continued working there were it not for health reasons that forced me to re-think my entire life strategy.  I decided that my original intuition about being my own boss would be my new direction, as I was given no other options and had to make it work. I began by making as many contacts as possible in my field, building up experience and clients. It slowly dawned on me that I was branding myself, creating my own job, making my own rules, setting my own income, and working the hours that I wanted to work. I don’t know if I would have been so successful at creating my own business if I hadn’t been forced into the situation, but what I have learned is that anyone can do it.

I would never have described myself as a business woman , and yet I was able to create a job for myself based on my innate talents and skills . I found a niche where I could be successful using what I know how to do well. I  decide what things I want and need and then I set out to make enough money to pay for them.  Rather than letting my boss tell me how much my efforts are worth, I decided to tell my clients how much my efforts are worth, and it turns out that they agreed.

If you’re completely fed up with letting your paycheck dictate what you can and cannot afford, take the time to re-evaluate your view on who you really want controlling your income. If you have a talent or skill that is in demand and want or need to work in a non-traditional setting, take it from someone who made it work: anything is possible.

I recently jumped on the Game of Thrones bandwagon; it was inevitable, really. As a fan of other epic fantasy works, like Tolkien’s Middle-earth, I was surprised to find there was a whole unexplored mythology from the mind of writer George R. R. Martin that covered a disturbingly gritty place unlike other fantasy worlds. After watching the first season of the excellent HBO TV series, I delved right into Martin’s books. For those who aren’t familiar with the Song of Ice and Fire series, these books (or which A Game of Thrones is the first) are huge, sometimes spanning over a thousand pages, so I was aware that they were going to cut into my already busy schedule quite a bit.

After reading through a hundred or so pages of the first book, I realized I was hooked. I’d become so drawn into Martin’s writing – the despicable characters and harsh, bloody settings – that I was trying to find little pockets of time here and there between working hours to fit in extra reading sessions. I also couldn’t stop telling people about it. It was probably quite annoying, but I wanted to share how thrilling the journey had been for me so far. I told my friends and siblings—basically, anybody I knew to have a preexisting interest in large fantasy works.

When I told one of my closest friends about the TV show and books, he was clearly excited by the concept and said that it reminded him of when he was a child and read the entire Lord of the Rings series. Because of this interest, I offered to loan him one of the Game of Thrones books, and his expression suddenly changed. “I could never get into this – how would I get anything else done?” he told me. After thinking about this for a moment, I asked him if he was reading anything else at the moment, or tuning in to watch a TV show on a regular basis. He admitted that he used to do these things, but that his work was now taking up too much of his time, and when he returns home from work each evening, he’s too tired to focus on anything.

For me, this was a bit of an eye-opener. My friend was basically denying himself things he agreed he would enjoy simply because of his work schedule. In addition, he thought that if he found something he truly enjoyed, he wouldn’t have the restraint to plan his work hours around it. I think a lot of people have this view of things that are deemed “less important” than making a living. They neglect small pleasures because they are too focused on working, and can’t find the time to enjoy themselves. I’m not saying that people should cut back on work in order to have fun, but with a little forethought there is room for both.

People spend plenty of time scheduling their work lives so that any time that is left over for personal things like reading a book or going for a mountain hike gets almost no thought at all. Planning out your personal time with as much detail as you use to plan out your work hours could offer you far more fulfilling opportunities in the future. Life is not all about working to make a living, so make use of the little spaces in-between.

If you gave yourself more time to indulge in a personal hobby, what activity would you choose?

Photo courtesy of Bohari Adventures

Last summer, I had steady stream of friends staying with me as house guests. One evening, one of my guests was gazing over my shoulder as I went through my nightly ritual of typing up my to-do list for the following day. After watching me for a minute or two, eventually he shook his head and said, “I couldn’t live like that.”

Er, live like what, exactly?

“With every aspect of my life planned out to the last detail, no room for fun or spontaneity. I would find that extremely boring.”

At that moment I realized just how misunderstood to-do lists are, as I’m one of the most spontaneous people you’ll ever meet. I’ve been known to move to another continent on a whim (twice, in fact), and I frequently drop everything to accept last-minute invitations to hang out with friends, or pop over to Munich for Oktoberfest just because I feel like it, or jump on any other crazy opportunities that come my way.

The only reason I’m able to do these things is because I’ve intentionally built a life structure that allows for that level of freedom, by making sure that all the essential tasks get done and shifted out of the way in the most efficient manner possible. If you’re always staying several steps ahead, which is what a high level of organization allows, then you can easily jet off for a few hours (or a day, or a week) whenever the mood strikes you, without stress or guilt.

I see people who repeatedly take all day to do things that could easily be done in a couple of hours, providing that they would set aside a few minutes the night before to create a plan and a list. When you don’t have a detailed plan, you can spend your whole day not knowing exactly what to do next, backtracking when you realize you forgot to do something, and generally wasting time that otherwise could have been spent on the things you really want to do.

Left to my own devices, I’m pretty much your standard, disorganized, right-brained creative. This is where to-do lists come in handy – allowing me to sculpt that life of freestyle creativity, by ensuring that I get the essential foundation work out of the way first. It’s reasonable to want a life defined by personal freedom, and it only takes a few minutes to put the structural supports in place to allow that freedom.

Do you have a personal organizational system that helps you get things out of the way so you can enjoy your life?