It is a time of rejoicing, family and celebration.

People give gifts to commemorate the gift-giving by the Magi

We hang tinsel in honour of the story of the spider that protected Jesus, Mary & Joseph on their flight to Egypt.

But what if Jesus was born now, in our Social Media world? Well here’s 2 videos showing what that might look like. Thanks to my sister-in-law Jacenta Haydon for sharing them with me!

Ok, so it’s commonly accepted that our dates are wrong and Jesus was actually born sometime between 6 and 4 BC. Whatever year it was… Blessed Christmas!

Stressed and tired? Need a break from your routine but don�t want to spend anything? The tricks to relaxing are right at your fingertips, and you don�t have to spend a single cent.

In our busy world, it�s hard not to feel tired all the time. Feeling sleepy when you�re supposed to be wide awake, or having a migraine are just ways our body is saying it�s having a hard time coping with the challenges of every day. A vacation or a trip to the spa sounds like a wonderful thing to get some rest and relaxation, but sometimes it can cost quite a bundle. Getting the bill for your trip makes you all the more stressed and in need of something to wash the worries away.

Getting rid of stress without spending any money is quite possible. Here are 7 ways to destress without spending money:

1. Meditate

People have been practicing meditation for centuries, and its benefits have been proven time and time again. It relaxes you and allows you to focus on the things that matter.

Basic meditation is enough to help lighten your stress load. Find a comfortable position and clear your head. Focus on something that gives you peace and relaxation. Keep that thought constant as you let go of things and ideas that trouble you. It may take a while to keep your mind focused, but the more you practice the better you�ll be at meditating.

2. Do Something Creative

There is a belief that artists are free-spirited and in tune with themselves because they�ve managed to reach a zen-like zone when they are practising their craft. When you create things, you bring out something from inside of you and project it to a canvas, an instrument or anything that expresses these feelings or ideas. Being creative can be as simple as doodling on a piece of paper, or writing in your journal or blog. Even those who believe that they have no drop of artistic talent can get creative. By letting go of the boundaries that rule your creation, you are allowing yourself to feel free and more attuned to a more peaceful mind.

3. Read A Book

Who has time to read nowadays? �I�ll wait for the movie,� they say. Or they�ll resort to listening to the audiobook version to be able to multitask. Reading actual books take time, and you can�t really do anything else while reading (except maybe eat). But when you read, you escape from reality. It allows you to travel to places you normally won�t go to. It lets you experience things that you usually won�t come across because of your busy schedule. You can meet people who are long gone. Reading books also allows you to put things into perspective, giving you a chance to regroup and relax.

4. Sleep

Most of the time, our stress comes from trying to deal with so many things at once. Have you ever thought that 24 hours is never enough for you to finish all your tasks? Do you skip sleep in order to cram more activity into your life? After several days of only a few hours of sleep, your body will break down. Take power naps (ten to fifteen minutes) during the day to recharge, and at night, make sure you get at least eight hours of sleep.

5. Play

I�m sure you�ve heard of the saying, �All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy�. Work creates a monotony that our minds want to break out from. At the office, take advantage of your lunch break or take time in between to do something you enjoy. During weekends, find something that not only engages your mind (like board games) but also your body (a basketball game, or any sport). The change from your routine allows you to recharge.

6. Exercise

Being stuck behind the desk for forty hours a week will stress anyone out. Coupled with unhealthy eating habits, your body will also start to suffer. Exercising releases the tension trapped in your body. It doesn�t have to be a big activity like taking up sports, particularly if your lifestyle is sedentary. Going out for a walk during your breaks is a great way to get exercise, and you don�t need special equipment besides a pair of comfortable shoes.

7. Breathe

Breathing is a natural action our bodies do 24/7. If we stop breathing, we die. However, did you know that sometimes we don�t breathe properly? Our bodies need oxygen in order to function properly. When we don�t take in enough oxygen, our bodies rebel. Learn to breathe slowly and completely. Inhale through your nose while counting up to five. Slowly expel your breath through your mouth and count again to five while you�re doing it. Allow your abdomen to expand as you breathe in order to help air circulate properly in your body. Do these exercises when you�re feeling tired or stressed. Just a few minutes can greatly help.

You don�t have to go to a fancy spa or resort in order to relax and let go of stress. Sometimes the simplest things can be the most effective in helping you get your life in order. All you need is time and a bit of determination to make it all happen.

I admit, I struggled at the beginning with direct-to-camera in a professional studio. It wasn’t that I was nervous (I wasn’t) or that I didn’t know what to say (we had discussed it). We didn’t have a script, which in hindsight was a mistake on my part.

It became very obvious I was struggling with the (lack of) structure, trying to remember the ever-changing order of the questions. When trying to answer three or four at a time, I just couldn’t handle it and froze.

Once we broke down the questions it was a piece of cake and we did it in (almost) one take.

It leads me to ponder structure…

While I’m tend to be very structured in my thinking, many other people (like Steve) are a lot less so. Each has their place and neither is better than the other. Our successful takes were when we were both clear on the objective and Steve, being the professional he is, stepped back from his less structured approach to help me out.

Structure seems to be more in degrees at particular points in time, rather than totally structured or totally unstructured. I find creativity flourishes when there is a lot less structure, whereas technical work shines under a higher degree of structure.

I wonder though, is your degree of structure something you’re born with that you can perhaps move a bit either way? Or does it come from your training? Can someone who used to be highly structured become a lot less so, or only a little less so? And vice, versa?

Does practicing more structured disciplines like classical piano, karate or technical drawing create a more structured personality?

What if you pursue a less structured activity like painting?

What would a totally structured personality look like? Perhaps a private in the Marines? How about unstructured? Maybe the stereotypical “Hippie”.

Now we know why the soldiers and hippies of the 1960s didn’t get on

How structured are you in your approach to different activities? Have you even noticed?

Some of these are a perception problem and some are really facing us. I’m not going to argue which is which here because that’s not the point of this article.

So many things seem to be wrong with the world, society and humanity that it’s tempting to be overwhelmed.

“I’m just one person – what can I do?” you might ask.

You can do your little bit in your own little way.

Sure you should run for public office or work your way to be the head of the appropriate corporation if you have the desire & talent. But for those of us that are “just little old me”, we can still have a massive effect on how this whole mess turns out.

Rather than be overwhelmed, you can make changes in your own life. Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing. You only have control over your own actions, so take back control of them.

Some ways you can “be the change you want to see in the world today”:

• Think about your water use – do you leave the tap running while you brush your teeth? Does your lawn really need that much watering? Do you fill the sink to wash the dishes or do it in running water?
• Food – do you consistently make or buy too much food and throw half of it away? Do you order the large serving when you know you’re only going to eat part of it?
• Money – are you careful with your money or do you have the highest interest rate credit card, terrible terms on your mortgage & a low rate on your savings account? Do you buy crap that you don’t need to impress people you don’t like? Do you have the wrong phone or internet plan where you go over and get hit with fees every month? Do you give regularly to charity or otherwise help people less well off than you?
• Conversations – look at your own biases, jokes and conversations. Are you helping to keep racism alive? Do you build people up in your conversations or tear them down? Do you gossip about which celebrity is sleeping with which?
• Safety – have you taken a first aid course? Are you prepared for emergencies? How are your self defense skills – could you take care of yourself if attacked? Can you protect your loved ones?
• Do you get your vehicle serviced regularly? Is it a gas guzzler or can you sell it and get something that’s more fuel efficient?
• Do you make your significant other feel loved? How about your children, parents, siblings & friends?

There are lots of other things you can do to change your life and the lives of those around you for the better. Just being more aware is a great start.

If everyone makes small changes, the world will be a far better place. However, don’t worry whether or not anyone else is doing their part. You can only control how you respond, so focus on that.

People will see the changes you’re making and the effect you’re having on your own life and respond in their own way. Hopefully by changing their own way of thinking and living, but whether or not they do is none of your concern.

Please share this on Twitter, Facebook, G+, by email and wherever else you hang out. I wrote this to help myself be more conscious of my actions, but it is a message for everyone.

When play time was over and it was time to put the room back together, we’d sometimes work hard for an hour or two cleaning up. We’d call Dad in to check it and he’d ALWAYS point out all the things we’d missed.

We would say: “But Dad! You should have seen it before! Then you’d know how hard we worked to get it like this!” Not that it ever had any effect. If the room wasn’t clean, it wasn’t clean.

That used to really bug me, until I realized that without Dad seeing what it was like before, there was no way he could know we had worked our tails off. For all he knew, we could have been goofing off the whole time.

The same holds true in many areas of life. No one cares about how far your product development has come if you release it too early (Yes, Windows Vista, I’m talking to you). No one cares that you wrote 120 pages of your ebook if they buy it and it’s not finished. No one knows you spent all week working on that video or blog post.

If it’s not finished, keep going until it is.

You don’t have to be a perfectionist about it, but you do have to at least finish it!

Whenever you “finish” anything worth doing, set it aside for a few hours or overnight. The bigger the project, the longer you should set it aside. When you’re ready, put yourself in the mindset of someone seeing it for the first time and look it over with fresh eyes. It’s amazing the things you’ll pick up.

Doing so will go a long way to change your work from amateur to professional almost instantaneously.

After I “finish” writing every post on this or other sites, I leave it for at least an hour and come back fresh. While my writing will never be perfect, I see things I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Often times, what’s in my head doesn’t come out right the first time. After I leave it for a bit, the right phrasing usually comes naturally.

We’re all taught to do it at school, but how often have you done it lately?

Try it and see what a difference it makes.

Is what you are doing right now the best use of your time (starting after you read and share this post )? If not, do something that is. If it is, stop whatever else you are doing and live in the moment. Be wholly present.

Are you checking your phone? Stop that.

Is Outlook automatically checking for new emails & popping up an alert? Turn it off.

Is Skype notifying you of new chats? Close it down.

Get rid of all those distractions.

Don’t go and check Facebook or Twitter or Google+, live in the moment and be present to your “right now” task.

If you’re spending time with someone, don’t be checking your phone. It’s super-rude to do it, but so many people do. Do you realize you’re telling the other person that they don’t really matter to you?

As some of my friends have found out, if you check your phone while hanging out with me (unless it’s an important call or message), I’ll probably send you a message then and there saying “Hey, we should catch up some time. Let me know when you’re free”. The look on their face when they get the sms is priceless, because it’s pretty obvious what’s going on. If you’ve only got a few minutes or an hour to spend time with someone, then spend the time with them. They’re here right now. The person on the other side of the phone isn’t.

Try it for yourself next time someone checks their phone while hanging out with you. They’ll probably only do it once You’re doing them a favour by helping them live in the moment with you.

It goes without saying that you better not be checking your phone while you’re hanging out with them! That’d come back to bite you on the ass big time.

Right now is the only thing you have any semblance of control over. Living in the moment is all that matters right now. Shut off all distractions and live fully for the present. Right now is when you will get the most joy and pleasure out of life.

There’s a time for distractions, but that should be the exception, not the norm. If you catch yourself being distracted, don’t beat yourself up over it – it’s still right now. You can simply be less distracted right now.

Stop pretending you can multitask if what you are doing is important. No women are no better than men at multitasking – they’re just better at disguising the stress it’s putting on them to keep up the pretense

Whatever you do, do it with full focus.

As Alice Morse Earle wrote, over 100 years ago:

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it is called the present”

Right now is all that matters. Be present. Live in the moment. Be fully focused. Live right now.

Back then, I had a habit of pulling out the larger weeds and leaving the smaller ones behind. Dad always made sure I focused on the details and we got rid of them all. I remember all the details and can take you to the exact spot in my parents’ house where it happened, even though it happened 20 years ago. It’s a memory I’ll always have and cherish.

What has this got to do with increasing your memory retention?

We as humans are programed to remember stories and episodes more than any other form of memory. Before writing existed or was common, stories were the only form of history. Just imagine our ancestors, after a hard day hunting deer and gathering berries, gathering around the fire to tell stories.

Think of all the heroes (Hercules, Cincinatus, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Odysseus…) who have shaped our culture. Most of these we know about because generation upon generation told their story. Each culture has it’s own unique stories that shapes its identity, but the mode is common to everyone. Stories, rather than dry facts, are far better for remembering.

I’m probably not telling you anything new, but perhaps reminding you of something you may have forgotten (see what I did there? )

If you want to strengthen your memory, find a way of incorporating a story into whatever it is you’re trying to remember.

How good are you at remembering stories? Can you tell complex jokes without ruining the punch line? How about an important story from when you were a child? When someone asks you what you did on the weekend, do you recount facts or tell the story?

I’ve seen it time and time again – people who complain of having a bad memory are usually pretty bad at telling stories. And vice versa.

Ask someone else for their honest feedback. Or watch a group of people when you tell a story. Have you ever held a room spellbound? I mean people who have the option of not listening to you. Or are people just polite because they like you?

It’s really important to use stories everywhere possible. Practice at every opportunity. If you have children (or know someone who does), go and tell them a story. Kids love good stories and tend to be very forgiving if it’s kind of lame.

Read a few interesting stories and tell them to a few people at appropriate times. Once you start getting good at telling stories, you’ll become pretty popular at dinner parties. Having a few stories up your sleeve are great for potentially awkward moments on a date or at a dinner party.

Why should you do all this?

It will massively help your memory in lots of other areas. By practicing, you strengthen your episodic memory. After a while, you get used to thinking in a certain way; looking for the story in everything. You’ll remember movies and books and be able to talk about them intelligently. It’ll be a lot easier to keep up with the news because you won’t be relearning the back story each time. All of a sudden, you won’t be some boring person that never has any fun, you’ll be the life of the party!

Oh and kids young and old will love listening to you

Be sure to read Julien’s article, but for the purpose of continuing a branch of the conversation here, I’ll briefly summarize:

• Information isn’t the problem
• We have more than enough info to follow our dreams
• Yet we often don’t follow through

Julien says the reasons are either:

1. Everything’s there, you just need to do it; OR
2. “Part of the equation is missing. It�s about more than the information. Some of the steps are missing… There is a big X in the equation, an unknown� maybe several of them� and they are stopping you, me, and everyone.“

That’s where I’d like to continue.

My vote is with the Second Option, with the X being an unrecognised factor, rather than an unknown. I believe we don’t account enough for the Second Law of Thermodynamics – any object at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force acts upon it.

In this analogy, before we go for our dreams we’re in a state of inertia. Actually getting up off our butt and going for our dream requires energy, probably a lot more than we figured.

Think about how much energy a rocket uses up in the initial stage to get up off the ground. Apparently it took 34 million Meganewtons to get the Saturn V rocket from the surface of the Earth to 61 km and a combined 5.4 million Meganewtons to get the Moon Lander the rest of the way to the moon (about 384,342 km).^source

Just imagine that for a second. Almost SEVEN times the amount of force was used to get started as was used to complete the rest of the task. To put it in other terms (and I’m not sure whether this is technically correct, but go with me), 86% of the energy was used for the first 0.015% of the task.

Remember that next time you start to beat yourself up for not following your dreams. 86% of the job is just getting started.

Knowing how much energy you need to get started, why would you start something big when you’re tired or feeling down? Gather yourself, take a deep breath, and start. Let the rest of the journey take care of itself.

Hopefully that made some sort of sense. Again, make sure you read Information Is Not The Problem and let me know if you think I’m on the right track or totally barking up the wrong tree.

She had a great day a few days ago because she really enjoyed her shower lol. She also spoke at length over breakfast this morning about how much better her day is if she has a pretty ribbon in her hair.

I’ve never tried ribbons in my hair, but the concept is sound.

I believe we are hardwired to get enjoyment out of simple things. Our ancestors for thousands of years would have gained pleasure from these things, so it would make sense that these things would be coded into our brains to enjoy, if we could only get out of our own way.

Things like:

• The smell of roses or oriental lillies
• The taste of fresh, in season fruit
• Walking barefoot through grass
• Digging our toes into the sand at the beach
• Having a relaxing shower
• Enjoying a quiet cup of tea
• Spending time with family at a family lunch or barbeque
• Going for a long walk, hand in hand with our loved one
• Holding a sleeping baby
• Sharing the enthusiasm of a small child building their first sand castle
• Having a healthy debate with another open minded adult where both are mature enough to hear out and consider the other’s point of view
• Sitting upon a mountain watching the sunrise or sunset
• Going for a walk at dawn when the world is fresh and full of possibilities
• Changing plans on a whim, simply because the idea that popped into your mind is more exciting than what you’d planned

I love technology as much (ok, probably more) than most people, but sometimes we need to be reminded to take a step back, unplug and open our mind to those around us and the beauty of nature.

What are the simple things that revitalize you?

Even the most self-confident person you know needs validation.

By validation, I mean telling them they’re on the right track and that their ideas are good. That can be implied or explicit.

The opposite is also true – cutting down people, implying that their ideas don’t have merit, or that they are just flat out wrong, is a great way to destroy a relationship.

If the person’s ideas are (in your opinion) wrong, or you think they are not moving in the right direction, the best way is to lead them to see it. Now that can be extremely frustrating, particularly if you’re good friends with the person. But it is usually the only way you can fulfil your need to save the person from a bad situation while preserving the friendship.

The thing is, how often do you make it clear to those closest to you that you think they’re on the right track? Maybe you’re implying it a little too subtly.

My wife does validation very well. She leaves no doubt in your mind that she thinks you’re doing great. It makes you feel like you can accomplish anything, which is a very powerful thing. She’s like that, not just with me. I’ve seen her affect on many other people. It’s one of the reasons everyone loves her.

Validation is different from praise. Praise tells the person how good they are (which has its place). Validation tells them what they think is worthwhile and that they matter. I believe validation is a lot more powerful than praise.

Learn from my wife. Look for little ways you can validate someone today.