Music Box
This poem first appeared on Eksentrika. This version preserves the intended shape and lineation of the poem.
5 Ways to Manage Stress
Simple Ideas for Managing Stress
I have a love-hate relationship with stress.
Because let’s face it: managing stress is hard.
I mean, it’s such a tricky thing to grapple with.
No stress? No work gets done. Too much stress? I get paralyzed – and again, no work gets done.
I used to think that dealing with stress was like walking on a tightrope.
And this mindset sent me on a constant quest to achieve perfect balance in my life and maintain that point of equilibrium. Because of that, I suffered from chronic stress, anxiety, and fatigue.
The truth is, the more I tried to wrestle with stress, the more it got me pinned down.
However, once I started accepting stress as a normal part of our lives and, in fact, a vital one, stress management became much more doable.
Stress was no longer an enemy, but a training ground for patience and grit.
Of course, managing stress still has its challenges, but I gradually learned to restore peace to my life and improve my productivity at work.
If you’re finding life rather stressful and struggling to get through the day (or just the next hour), here are 5 simple tips you can try today to manage your stress levels.
Tip #1 – Take a breather
At the risk of sounding redundant, the simplest way to avoid feeling overwhelmed by stress is to take occasional short breaks from work.
A short break can be anything from 15 to 20 minutes. During your break, disconnect from work completely.
And this means to leave your phone alone.
No, mindless scrolling isn’t really a “mindless” activity.
In fact, it can leave you more mentally exhausted than before.
Go for a walk. Run a simple errand. Make yourself a cup of coffee or tea. Or just stare off into space.
The goal is to let your brain turn off and restore its energy.
Take a break once every 90 to 120 minutes. Why? Because of your ultradian rhythms, which are natural cycles of energy in which our bodies operate.
If you find yourself always busy and in a rush, this habit will benefit you even more – because chances are you’re going to be less productive without these short breaks throughout the day.
You’d be surprise. Just a few minutes of rest and relaxation can make all the difference!
Tip #2 – Make haste slowly
This expression comes from the Greek saying “σπεῦδε βραδέως”, which has been translated into the classic Latin phrase “festina lente”. In English, it means “slow down to go fast”.
The point here is to gently shift your focus from the fear of time passing too quickly to the task at hand.
In doing so, it becomes easier for you to enter a state of flow – that is, to be “in the zone” and fully immersed in whatever task or project you’re working on.
When making haste slowly, you seek not to rush through your tasks too quickly, but to do them properly by giving them the time and effort they deserve.
This means taking the time to pause and reflect on, discuss, or assess your work as you go along.
Rushing through your day in a panic blinds you to your flaws and limits your capacity for growth.
And this prevents you from performing to the best of your ability.
So slow down, and don’t be afraid to shift your deadlines around as needed.
Tip #3 – Let go of expectations
More often than not, much of our stress comes from unrealistic and skewed expectations – of ourselves, our relationships, our work, and life in general.
When our expectations don’t match up to reality, we tend to feel annoyed, frustrated, and disappointed.
As these feelings pile up inside us, we eventually become stressed out.
Now, some of these expectations are easily identifiable, but there are also others that run deep within our minds and hearts.
And it is usually such expectations that hold us captive without us realizing that they do so.
These expectations may be rooted in some beliefs, ideas, or emotional wounds we’ve been carrying around all our lives, which means it can be much harder to uproot them.
So when you’re trying to let go of your expectations and live more freely, don’t expect a dramatic overnight change in your state of mind.
Instead of forcing yourself to not expect anything at all, simply start by learning to be aware of your expectations – and how they’re affecting your emotions.
Then, regulate and manage your expectations according to reality.
That way, you’ll be able to tell which of your expectations are unrealistic and learn to let go of those first.
If you encounter expectations from others (and yourself) that you can’t seem to get rid of, imagine how you’re going to respond if things don’t go as planned. Will you indulge in disappointment, or learn from your experiences and move on?
Ultimately, rather than constantly asking yourself what you should do, make it a habit to ask yourself what you really want to do or achieve.
Instead of living as a slave to your expectations, have faith and set yourself free to explore other options out there.
Tip #4 – Count your blessings
Gratitude has come to be overly romanticized these days, causing many to shy away from practicing it in their lives.
I’ll admit it: the idea of counting my blessings has always seemed like an overrated and cheesy thing to do.
That is, until I actually tried to practice it.
And by practicing it, I mean committing myself to it as a daily habit.
The truth is, cultivating gratitude is no easier than building any other habit. You don’t just go to it when you feel like it and cast it aside when life gets tiring.
You practice it. Every. Single. Day.
In other words, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, you will strive to acknowledge the goodness and beauty around you, and appreciate these aspects of your life.
If you’re looking for a way to move past stress and lead a happier life, then you need to make room for happiness through gratitude.
No matter how busy you are, at the start and end of each day, set aside some time to reflect and count your blessings.
During this period, let go of any negative thoughts and emotions that have latched onto you. Turn your attention to the people, things, or events you’re grateful for in life.
By starting and ending your day in gratitude, you learn to maintain a more hopeful outlook even during difficult times.
Tip #5 – Recollect your mind
When you’re under stress, you feel distracted, scattered, and self-critical.
And being in this state of mind leaves you vulnerable to all kinds of intensely painful emotions, such as shame, guilt, anger, and anxiety.
Emotions like these make it harder for your to cope effectively, because they can affect your memory and perception of reality.
This, in turn, sends us spiraling further into distorted patterns of thinking and behavior.
And because of the complex relationship between our thoughts and emotions, we may feel at a loss as to what we can do to break out of our misery.
During such moments, the best way to cope is to recollect your mind.
When practicing recollection, you don’t have to leave what you’re doing.
Just pause for a moment, put aside your worries and concerns, and anchor your mind in the present moment.
This usually takes no longer than a few seconds.
Depending on the individual, recollection may come more naturally in the form of prayer, meditation, or breathing exercises.
In any case, the goal of recollecting your thoughts is to pull yourself out of the vicious cycle of stress and negativity.
It helps you withdraw your mind from illusions of fear and worry, and emerge calmer and more in control.
Remember, stress doesn’t have to be your enemy.
We can’t really ignore or get rid of stress once and for all.
But we can learn to reduce it and use it to our advantage.
Like it or not, stress always has a way of creeping into your life. So don’t get discouraged when you stumble or fall in the face of stress.
Growth takes time, and mistakes are part of the learning curve.
If you feel you need additional help with managing stress, reach out and talk to a trusted friend, family member, or a counselor.
You don’t have to be alone in your struggles. 🙂
Tips for a Productive Life
3 Ways to Improve Productivity [Infographic]
Want to live a more productive life but have no idea where to start?
Then you’ve come to the right place.
As a freelance writer working from home, I struggle to be productive on a daily basis.
Whether it’s because of stress, a lack of motivation, or simply laziness, I’m easily distracted and highly prone to procrastination – especially since my mind is almost always preoccupied with unexplored ideas and buzzing with random thoughts.
Overcoming procrastination can be a real challenge.
It’s worse if you’re a perfectionist or if you’re afraid of failure. In my case, I was both.
It took me years to learn how to deal with my poor concentration and tendency to procrastinate.
I mean, it’s still a constant battle between the temptation to do nothing and the desire to stick to my resolutions. But it’s much easier for me to find a way out of this inner conflict these days.
If you relate to what I’m saying, know that you’re not alone in this, and that it’s possible to improve your situation.
What I’m about to mention here are things you probably already know.
These steps are so basic that it can be easy to overlook and forget about them, so sometimes it just helps to have someone remind you of these essential points.
I’ll be outlining 3 simple points and some specific, actionable steps you can take to start making changes and improving your situation right away.
So here you go – 3 things to keep in mind to be more productive at work and in life.
(Feel free to take a screenshot of it as a quick reminder for yourself, or share it with a friend – or anyone else – who might need it right now.)
Over to you
What are some habits you turn to when you feel like you need a boost in productivity?
Share them with me in the comments below!
SEO for Small Businesses: A Simple Guide for Beginners
The Beginner’s Guide to SEO for Small Businesses
Many businesses are shifting to digital platforms. If yours is a small local business, going digital is one of the best things you can do.
A recent survey by The Manifest has found that most small businesses are planning to increase their digital marketing spending in 2019. Their top platform choices include social media (56%) and online (41%) such as Google search, banner ads and re-targeting.
The biggest reason for this trend is the advantage digital speed offers.
Speed matters in marketing. It’s good to have an innovative product, but do you know what else is important? Getting it to market before your competition does.
However, for first-timers or sometimes even the experienced, digital marketing can seem complex and confusing. With all the different strategies available out there, it may be downright daunting to decide where to begin.
If you’re new to digital marketing, SEO would be a great place to start.
What is SEO?
In simple terms, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the activity of trying to improve search engine rankings.
Remember the Google search engine? Ever wondered how some sites manage to appear on the first page of a search result while others don’t?
Well, that’s what SEO does: it makes you stand out.
Let’s face it. The internet has been around for a long time, so you can only imagine how much content there is on the internet right now. If you think that’s a lot, consider this: the amount of existing content continues to increase.
People make new content every day, but most of it never gets discovered.
Here’s where SEO can make a difference: using proper SEO techniques can boost your website’s Google rankings. When that happens, your web pages and articles stand a much higher chance of appearing at the top of search results.
Essentially, effective SEO helps the search engine find you – and more importantly, it helps people find you in the search engine.
Why SEO will benefit your business
While SEO can help increase your online visibility and discoverability, this is not the only advantage it offers. Here are 3 key benefits of SEO for small businesses:
Benefit #1 – SEO is relatively low cost
Every business wants to save cost and increase revenue, and SEO is perfectly fitted for the task.
Implementing SEO is cheaper compared to most other advertising methods. Instead, you’ll need to put in time and effort to get it right, which will then lead to long-lasting results.
In any case, it’s definitely a worthy investment.
Benefit #2 – SEO increases trust and credibility
When it comes to advertising, the goal of any experienced business owner is to create and improve brand awareness and loyalty.
As SEO increases your online visibility, it can also raise your brand credibility.
People trust Google, so when your web pages appear as top search results, your potential customers are more likely to trust your brand as well.
Benefit #3 – SEO can target entire markets instead of just keywords
When you think about search engines, the first idea that comes to mind is usually keywords. That makes sense, because targeting the right keywords can bring more traffic to your website.
But what if I told you that shouldn’t be your main goal?
Instead, local and small businesses should use SEO to target potential clients and customers within a specific area and niche. So, rather than aiming to just get anyone and everyone to view your content, you’re focusing on people who would actually be interested in what you have to offer.
Now, you’re targeting traffic that causes sales.
A simple guide to SEO for small businesses
Learning how to do SEO can be tough for beginners.
With one quick Google search on the term “SEO”, you’ll find more articles on it than you can ever read.
More often than not, you’ll also be bombarded with a lot of technical terms and definitions. There’s just too much information on SEO.
Here, we’ll look at 5 basic components of a good SEO strategy for small businesses and some easy steps you can take to set up your website’s SEO. Once you get the basics down, you’re off to a good start.
Component #1 – Links
SEO involves having high-quality links to your site from high-authority sites like websites of associations, government, universities and social media. At the same time, you need links from your site to such sources as well.
Links are important for a number of reasons:
- Traffic: This is an obvious one. When you have incoming links to your website (or backlinks) from other sites, whoever clicks on a backlink and lands on your site will add to your online traffic.
- Googlebot: When you create any form of content and post it up on the web, Google doesn’t usually find it right away. This means your content is practically invisible to others. This process of discovery is called crawling, which is performed by an algorithm called Googlebot, and backlinks are crucial to speeding things up here.
- Reputability and Credibility: Backlinks help Google measure how popular and reputable your website is. Having backlinks that are relevant to your business niche can also help boost your credibility since it would classify you as an authoritative source.
Link building can be harder for small businesses, but it’s not impossible.
One quick way is by providing sponsorship to a few local nonprofits or charitable organizations, which will typically result in backlinks to the sponsor’s page.
You can also connect with local and niche bloggers. By building relationships with them, they may end up mentioning you in their blog posts or on their social networking sites.
Another common way to do it is by guest posting for relevant sites.
This is usually the method that requires the most time and effort, because you’ll have to find a site that accepts guest writers and then pitch a compelling topic to them.
Nonetheless, this method can be the most rewarding one too – since it also has the potential of increasing traffic and brand credibility.
Component #2 – Content
Content is great for increasing your website visitors and getting better search engine rankings for your web pages.
Having more content can earn you returning visitors and increase the chances of Googlebot finding your site – although you’ll need to pay attention to the quality of your content too.
If you start pumping out new posts every day that don’t really offer anything new or substantial, the traffic isn’t going to last.
But don’t get so carried away by the idea of producing quality content that you hesitate to put out any new content at all. That won’t get you anywhere either.
The key here is to strike a balance between quantity and quality.
And the best way to do this is by conducting proper keyword research to find out what your audience is looking for.
Always strive to deliver value to people who are searching for particular keyword phrases.
When it comes to good SEO writing, keyword stuffing is a big no-no.
So focus more on search intent to understand what people are looking for through their search queries – in order to create useful content for readers.
Component #3 – Page Titles and Meta Descriptions
In SEO terms, your page title is the headline of your content while your meta description is like your tagline. And these are two important elements you should keep in mind when doing SEO.
An effective page title should always be unique yet brief and informative. Make sure your title accurately describes your page content, and keep your title under 70 characters.
Meta descriptions are meant to provide a quick summary of the page content. While it is important to include your primary keyword here, you should do it in a natural way and keep the description between 50 to 160 characters.
Above all, focus on crafting your meta description for a human audience instead of just optimizing it for search engines. Treat it like an elevator pitch to convince the searcher to visit your web page.
That way, the search engine would be able to display relevant information that matches the intent of the user’s query.
One crucial concept to keep in mind when formulating your page title and meta description is the user experience (UX).
Since these two elements are usually the first point of contact between your website and your audience, you should craft the title and description in a way that’ll make people want to visit your web page.
Component #4 – SEO Analysis
If you’re implementing SEO for your business, you would want to monitor and analyze your results so that you can continuously improve your SEO strategies.
To find out how well your content is performing, pay attention to various traffic and engagement metrics, such as:
- time on page – how long visitors stay on your web page;
- scroll depth – how far visitors scroll down a particular page;
- return visits – how many users return to your site after their initial visit;
- page views – how many visits a page has received; and
- click-through rate (CTR) – how often users find your site from a search engine results page (SERP).
Google Analytics is one of the best tools for tracking your SEO progress. Offered by Google itself, this service allows you to collect and analyze extensive website data for your business.
However, learning to set up and use Google Analytics can be quite a time-consuming and challenging process, especially for beginners.
If you have a WordPress website, consider using MonsterInsights, which is a Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It allows you to get real-time data on your website’s performance without having to log into your Google Analytics profile.
By keeping track of your website’s overall performance, you’ll be able to evaluate the effectiveness of your SEO campaigns and make adjustments accordingly.
Component #5 – Mobile SEO
The use of mobile devices has grown significantly since the 1990s. That’s why mobile SEO should definitely be one of the priorities for your business website.
When you implement a mobile SEO strategy for your site, you’ll be optimizing your content for better viewing on smartphones and tablets.
The first thing that usually comes to mind at the mention of mobile SEO is user-friendliness.
This may include the practice of incorporating responsive or adaptive web design into the process of making your website mobile-optimized to ensure better user experience.
You could also try speeding up your site’s performance by compressing image sizes and using caching to improve the loading speed of your web pages.
Keep in mind, though, that mobile SEO is more than just about UX. Ultimately, it’s still about satisfying a user’s search intent.
Aside from providing useful and easy-to-read content, you may have to produce content of varying lengths to cater to a wider range of user intents. For instance, long-form content may perform better on desktop browsers while shorter and more direct content would work better in answering mobile queries.
Try out these SEO tips today
Yes, SEO can be quite mind-boggling for beginners. (That’s how I felt when I first started out in digital marketing – dazed and confused!)
But remember: SEO takes time. You have to think long-term to achieve truly lasting results.
If you only take one thing away from this article, let it be this: put your audience first.
Understand the evolving needs of users and strive to adapt to such changes.
That’s how you’ll succeed in the SEO game. Good luck!