Stress and You

May 2, 2011 by Scott Hammond
Filed under Health

Stress and How You Can Deal With it

Living in Humboldt is no guarantee of a stress-free life. We can suffer as much or more than someone living in the “Big City”. Did I mention long Humboldt winters full of rain?

Many of us get stuck in dysfunctional and stressful patterns of acting and being. Much of it is dictated by the fact that we simply give up and let go. We give into our moods, tiredness, burnout, and stress. We get snarky and we stop caring about how we are impacting on those around us. We sometimes just quit.

Our being stuck in poor ways of response can take many forms such as poor time management, burnout, light or severe depression, poor sleep, poor health habits, ‘stinking thinking’, and general malaise.

There is too much at stake to allow ourselves to get sidetracked from healthy living, thinking, and well-being to get stuck in a depressive rut, or become disqualified from life. Healthy living has to do with healthy goal setting, actions, and strategic planning.

Got (healthy) Goals?

We need to know where we want to go, who we want to be, and what we want to do before we know if we’re on the right track or not. We need to be fit. To exercise, receive proper nutrition and allow for quality rest so we can adequately deal with the stuff of life. If our minds and bodies are not in reasonably good shape, how can we possibly enjoy healthy thinking or even healthy relationships?

We are trained to do too much for too little and for way too long. The result is illness; physical, spiritual, and relational. To get past this we need to learn how to let small stuff go and surrender things that we cannot control so we can begin to focus on getting unstuck in our personal lives. We need to control what we can.

Living and Thinking Healthy

Everybody wants health and well-being, but few of us are willing to pay the price for it. Managing stress, anger, depression, anxiety and everyday life is a pretty steep task. Healthy living has to do with the whole self: Spirit, Body, Mind, and Soul. If any of these are out of whack, so are we.

Other people are likely riding on your success and well-being. Why is it that it’s considered selfish to take care of yourself first in order to take care of those around you? What good are you to those you love if you have a stroke, heart disease, cancer, or mental illness? You cannot fail to plan in the long term and see the whole picture. You must take care of yourself.

Plan Your Work And Work Your Plan.

Regular physical activity substantially reduces the risk of dying of coronary heart disease, the nation’s leading cause of death. Physical activity also decreases the risk of colon cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure. It helps control weight, contributes to healthy bones, muscles, and joints, and reduces falls among the elderly. Hey, even sex is better!

Fitness: Focus On the Big Three

Cardio—Conditions your heart, lungs, and muscles to work stronger and longer. Cardio work outs build endurance and burn off calories.

Strength training—Builds muscles and increases endurance. With leaner muscles, your body turns up the heat and burns fat much faster. Not only that, but when you’re stronger, you simply last longer and you get more out of your exercise sessions, thus burning even more calories.

Stretching—It helps you to do your cardio and strength training safely and without pain. Loose muscles perform at a higher level and reduce the potential for injury.

Physical Exercise In Mental Health Stress Relief

A variety of studies over the last decade are focused on the effects of exercise on the mind. These result show that exercise helps to reduce depression and anxiety. It also can increase short-term memory and improve intellectual function. This means that including breaks during your day could lead to enhanced productivity, greater time efficiency, and increased ability to handle stress; “Sharpen your saw.” These feel-good hormones help stimulate our bodies and give us a natural high; runners have reported this for years.

The following are some tips about starting and maintaining your own exercise program:

Start with walking. Walking is free and easy. In addition to the mental health benefits, walking is a weight bearing exercise and it strengthens bone and burns fat. Running does the same. You must walk before you run… really.

Look for a nearby fitness center or community pool and join it. Make a three time a week workout part of your personal schedule. Replace your Monday, Wednesday and Friday lunch with a one-hour workout. The point is scheduling it and then do it..

Just do something – Even if it’s for 10 minutes. Use the “10 Minute Rule” to get started: do 10 minutes of exercise, take a 10 minute break, and then do 10 more minutes of exercise.

You can do this. You gotta wanna and then just begin the habit of exercise. Build it into your life. You will be glad you did—so will your world.

Tags: action steps, Goal-setting, Goals, parenting, Scott Hammond, stress, stress reduction, success

Bob Hammond–Legacy Leaver–2/14/11 (7 year anniversary of my dad’s passing)

February 12, 2011 by Scott Hammond
Filed under Family, Fathering

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True Story: Bob’s 7 Steps to a Legacy

You could put all of my father’s worldly possessions in his Chevy celebrity, yet he left us incredible riches. He taught and modeled a love for life, God, and people that will transmit for generations. He was not a flashy man, yet his life was compelling, and his heritage rich with meaning.

Here are some tools that my father Bob used to leave his legacy and heritage–

Time… Togetherness, investment in quality relationships with intentional, time spent together.
Communication…Talking, telling stories, laughing, and sharing life together, while communicating.
Love for and Appreciation of Beauty… Noticing life intentionally: the flowers, people, gardens, plants, trees, birds, animals, and the natural world.
Love for People… Appreciation and thankfulness for those in our lives. Expressions of love through, hugs, focused attention, eye contact encouragement, and appropriate touch.
Love for God… Actively having a love affair with our Creator, based in a worshipful heart disposition. Living in intentional expression in: church community, the Fellowship, the study of truth, prayer, using our gifts, and living a life of love for God and people.
Having fun… Being present, in the moment and spontaneous. Making time for what’s really important. Being able to stop and smell the flowers, taste the ice cream, and generally enjoy the simple things. “The best things in life are not things at all.”
Being a Lifelong Learner… Possessing a hunger and thirst for truth, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, and a compelling education. Truly being a student of life, with the intent of discovering your strengths and gifts and making application to make your world a better place.

Tags: Become a better Father, Goals, legacy, love, parenting, relationship, Scott Hammond, success, Unconditional love

Salesman’s Prayer

January 12, 2011 by Scott Hammond
Filed under Relationships, Sales

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Prayer From The Greatest Salesman In The World … by Og Mandino

Oh creator of all things, help me. For this day I go out into the world naked and alone, and without your hand to guide me I will wander far from the path which leads to success and happiness.

I ask not for gold or garments or even opportunities equal to my abilities; instead, guide me so that I may acquire ability equal to my opportunities.

You have taught the lion and the eagle how to hunt and prosper with teeth and claw. Teach me how to hunt with words and prosper with love so that I may be a lion among men and an eagle in the market place.

Help me to remain humble through obstacles and failures; yet hide not from mine eyes the prize that will come with victory.

Assign me tasks to which others have failed, yet guide me to pluck the seeds of success from their failures. Confront me with fears that will temper my spirit; yet endow me with courage to laugh at my misgivings.

Spare me sufficient days to reach my goals; yet help me to live this day as though it be my last.

Guide me in my words that they may bear fruit; yet silence me from gossip that none be maligned.

Discipline me in the habit of trying and trying and trying again; yet show me the way to make use of the law of averages. Favor me with alertness to recognize opportunity; yet endow me with patience which will concentrate my strength.

Bathe me in good habits that the bad ones may drown; yet grant me compassion for the weaknesses in others. Suffer me to know that all things shall pass; yet help me to count my blessings of today.

Expose me to hate so it not be a stranger; yet fill my cup with love to turn strangers into friends.

But all these things only if thy will. I am a small and a lonely grape clutching the vine yet thou hast made me different from all the others. Verily, there must be a special place for me. Guide me. Show me the way.

Let me become all you planned for me when my seed was planted and selected by you to sprout in the vineyard of the world.

Help this humble salesman.

Guide me, God.

Tags: Communication, family more important than money, Goal-setting, Goals, God, legacy, love, Og Mandino, prayer, relationship, Sales, sales prayer, Scott Hammond, success, talking, the greatest salesman, Unconditional love

Goal-setting for the Every Day Person

January 8, 2011 by Scott Hammond
Filed under Goal-setting

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Why Goals?

Why set goals? Why document priorities? Why plan your life? Why live life on purpose?

Setting smart goals offers focus and efficiency of effort. Goal setting offers a father the opportunity to live their life with passion and do what’s most important to them. These key purposes offer a life lived on purpose.

Putting your passion on paper and discovering what your true desires are, committing to these things in the form of goals, is a vehicle to achievement and accomplishment. When you truly discover your passions and desires and are willing to write out cogent outcomes in the form of smart goals you are on your way to living a life with purpose and fulfillment.

What Is The Purpose Of Goals?

For one thing, goals concentrate and give focus to our personal energy. When we get the goal setting process right, they do this very well. By defining what we want to do and then set reasonable time limits in which to get things done, goals bring out the best in us. With focused, concentrated goals and reasonable plans to achieve them, we will behave very much like a laser beam. Focused goals, like the light of a laser, can excite and motivate a wide variety of spectacular tasks and follow-through behaviors of all kinds for us.

Goals need to be smart, specific, time driven, challenging, written, and achievable. Vague and hazy goals are not goals at all. Goals must be specific, periodically reviewed, shared with others, and flexible. It’s okay to change your goals and rearrange priorities on the fly. Flexibility is a hallmark of good goal setting. Priorities change-people change-situations change-circumstances change… and so should your goals. Our focus changes as our lives change. It’s okay to change your goals.

The power of the mind, coupled with sustained effort, brainpower, focus, and hard work and diligence create an unstoppable force in achievement and overcoming obstacles. Bringing visions to reality requires the ability to dream dreams, see the big picture vision, and then determine to realize the dreams. Goal setting as a life practice and purpose driven priority planning is a great means to fulfill and leverage your gifts and talents and to live your life and purpose.

You must do the work. You must do the planning and preplanning, execution and review. In order for goal achievement and accomplishment to take place, you must do the work. There is no free lunch in goal achievement. There are no shortcuts. There are no ways to cheat the system. You must do the work.

You must be incremental, methodical, and sequential. This will require faithfulness day to day perhaps for years-but it will be worth it when you achieve what you truly set out to do. Doing something incrementally for 30 minutes a day is far more compelling than the periodic spasms we often have which lead to inconsistent effort and therefore inconsistent results.

Faithfulness in goal setting fuels passion and accomplishment. You must set out to be faithful, diligent, and methodical even when—or especially when—you don’t feel like it. To work on your goals daily, despite feelings of the contrary, is necessary to achievement of goals and therefore a life with purpose. To fulfill your goals, you must be faithful, to be incremental. It takes a diligent faithfulness and loyalty to the mission to go forward on a daily basis in the face of obstacles and challenges, to press onward towards your life goals and accomplishments.

Goal Tools you can use include:

Write down your goals on paper. –They need to be specific, measurable, aligned, realistic, and timely. Accountability–you must be accountable in order to be successful. Inspiration–you need something larger than yourself to motivate you toward your goals.

One way to get started in your passion plan is to take a retreat, a passion retreat. Take some time away to relax, reflect, and experience renewal. Write and keep a log and record your discoveries.

What Is The Purpose Of Goals? For one thing, goals concentrate and give focus to our personal energy. When we get the goal setting process right, they do this very well. By defining what we want to do and then set reasonable time limits in which to get things done, goals bring out the best in us. With focused, concentrated goals and reasonable plans to achieve them, we will behave very much like a laser beam. Focused goals, like the light of a laser, can excite and motivate a wide variety of spectacular tasks and follow-through behaviors of all kinds for us.
Goals need to be smart, specific, time driven, challenging, written, and achievable. Vague and hazy goals are not goals at all. Goals must be specific, periodically reviewed, shared with others, and flexible. It’s okay to change your goals and rearrange priorities on the fly. Flexibility is a hallmark of good goal setting. Priorities change-people change-situations change-circumstances change… and so should your goals. Our focus changes as our lives change. It’s okay to change your goals.
The power of the mind, coupled with sustained effort, brainpower, focus, and hard work and diligence create an unstoppable force in achievement and overcoming obstacles. Bringing visions to reality requires the ability to dream dreams, see the big picture vision, and then determine to realize the dreams. Goal setting as a life practice and purpose driven priority planning is a great means to fulfill and leverage your gifts and talents and to live your life and purpose.
You must do the work. You must do the planning and preplanning, execution and review. In order for goal achievement and accomplishment to take place, you must do the work. There is no free lunch in goal achievement. There are no shortcuts. There are no ways to cheat the system. You must do the work.
You must be incremental, methodical, and sequential. This will require faithfulness day to day perhaps for years-but it will be worth it when you achieve what you truly set out to do. Doing something incrementally for 30 minutes a day is far more compelling than the periodic spasms we often have which lead to inconsistent effort and therefore inconsistent results.
Faithfulness in goal setting fuels passion and accomplishment. You must set out to be faithful, diligent, and methodical even when—or especially when—you don’t feel like it. To work on your goals daily, despite feelings of the contrary, is necessary to achievement of goals and therefore a life with purpose. To fulfill your goals, you must be faithful, to be incremental. It takes a diligent faithfulness and loyalty to the mission to go forward on a daily basis in the face of obstacles and challenges, to press onward towards your life goals and accomplishments.
Goal Tools you can use include: Write down your goals on paper. –They need to be specific, measurable, aligned, realistic, and timely. Accountability–you must be accountable in order to be successful. Inspiration–you need something larger than yourself to motivate you toward your goals.
One way to get started in your passion plan is to take a retreat, a passion retreat. Take some time away to relax, reflect, and experience renewal. Write and keep a log and record your discoveries.

Tags: Become a better Father, Goal-setting, Goals, leaving a spiritual family legacy, legacy, Scott Hammond, success

2010 Best of Zen Habits Post written by Leo Babauta.

January 1, 2011 by Scott Hammond
Filed under Goal-setting, Health

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I don’t keep track of stats anymore so

I don’t know which posts you guys liked best.

It was interesting to see the results.

Here are the Top 20 posts as chosen by all of you:

A few other posts I’d recommend:

And more

For more best of Zen Habits:

—
Read more about focus and getting great things done
in Leo’s book, focus.

Tags: action steps, Become a better Father, father, Goal-setting, Goals, Scott Hammond, success

CAN YOU EVER GET IT “ALL” DONE? (http://www.times-standard.com/business/ci_16728000)

December 1, 2010 by Scott Hammond
Filed under Goal-setting

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Do we ever truly get it all done?

To think that we could have it completely whipped is a fallacy and a dangerous life paradigm. Could you get at least some of it done? It is possible. Here are a few ways and strategies that can increase your productivity:

1. Schedule your time for work — be consistent. Don’t do personal things in your schedule to work. Make it to do list and prioritize your tasks. A list is often more effective for those of us need to consult a reference or see it in writing. When you’ve completed a task, cross off your list. You get a real sense of completion in satisfaction as you see your list getting shorter and shorter.

2. Do the most difficult, time-consuming, least favorite jobs first — do the first things first. Do the hardest task at hand when you have the most energy and motivation to tackle the project. If you tackle the toughest job first, the rest of your tasks will seem that much easier.

3. Do not allow yourself to get interrupted by other people’s emergencies or drama-be able to say “No.” Learn to have boundaries. Learn to say no and a polite but firm way. Be professional, kind and understanding, but also be ready to use the most famous boundary word of them all: No.

4. Organize your files-set up the system right from the beginning. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Use a Day-Timer for scheduling. Have a 31-day and 12-month filing system. You can have technology, but don’t let technology have you. Do not reinvent the wheel. An ordered space will allow you to be less stressed.

5. Organize your workspace-the better organized and efficient your workspace, the more efficient you will be in time management. The time it takes you to search through out all your piles of paper or to remember where you put that file could be spent in working on new projects. Put the things you use most on your desktop and always put them back in the same place when you’re done. Keep a file organizer on your desk for current projects, so they are always at your finger tips. Have clearly delineated places for everything.

In conclusion, plan your work and work your plan. Translate intention into action daily by budgeting time for what is most important. Leverage your gifts ,skill-sets, and time and you will make the difference in your world.

Tags: action steps, Become a better Father, Goal-setting, Goals, legacy, Scott Hammond, time, time management

My Rock and Roll Resume

November 28, 2010 by Scott Hammond
Filed under Health, Religion

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If I had a nickel for every concert I have been to….I’d be a rich man”…..so goes the adage…

In my case I would have a few bucks!!…maybe a lot of money actually.

I am not sure if my Rock Concert List below is a badge of fame or shame in that it cost me in money, brain cells and hearing!
I am sure at 50 years, my hearing has suffered at the hands of Foghat and Black Sabbath and more.

This I am confident: these guys were the best of all time in an era of Rock and Roll Renaissance.
My experience with music is that simple worship songs on an acoustic guitar are more profoundly moving to me than a
multi-million dollar music extravaganza.
Time with music in worship of the Living God is definitively more heart-changing than a lead guitar solo by Jimmy Page or Jimmy Hendrix.

Well, here is the list and you may have one as well. Here is to guys who are just humans who still need God, love ,and people and are not the heroes to whom we wrongly attribute stardom and idol status…..Just another human on the Bus of Life. Many have perished in a life of questionable meaning and legacy. What will your legacy look like? Just asking…

Some of the Shows and Bands I have enjoyed as a young man mostly in San
Diego in the 1970′s—-

Chicago
Rod Stewart
Leon Russell
Black Sabbath
Traffic
Keith Green
Lynard Skynard (Pretty sure)
Yes
Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Led Zepplin
Jethro Tull
Bachman Turner Overdrive
Ted Nugent
Peter Frampton
Moody Blues
Neil Young
Alice Cooper
Aerosmith
Steve Miller Band
Steely Dan
Elton John
Foghat
Bruce Cockburn
Santana
Eddie Money
Foreigner
Edgar Winter
Earth Wind and Fire
The Grateful Dead
Merky and the Martians
T Rex
Supertramp
Many more…..the best were forgotten in the Fog of….the moment.

Some of the bands I missed…..would have loved to seen:

The Who
The Stones
The Beatles
Pink Floyd (gave my tix away!)
Many others….

All my heroes have changed and some are still alive.

Funny how we define meaningful lives and legacy.

Weird how we value what is art by artists of nebulous character.

Who are your heroes and what do they stand for? Better–what are you standing for?

Do we compromise ourselves in some way by enjoying art of those who may be real life monsters?

Tags: 1970's, Goal-setting, Goals, God, legacy, music of the 70's, rock and roll, rock music, Scott Hammond

The Big Parenting Question–Results.

August 18, 2010 by Scott Hammond
Filed under Family, Fathering

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Effective Legacy

The big parenting question remains: “What is the essence, core purpose, or bottom line of our parenting? What do we want to leave behind and instill our children, and why? At the end of our lives, what would we like to leave behind and pass on to our children? What heritage, legacy, or inheritance will you leave?
Answer these questions, and you’ll be pretty close to discovering your purpose here on earth. Really get in touch with the answers and begin to do them incrementally and you’ll find that you’re a change agent, a life giver, someone who really blesses those around them. Answer these questions and begin to live them, today.

Our goal should be to nurture our children and help them flourish: to be the best they can be. We will explore listening, good communication, genuine encouragement, choosing to give grace, and laying a foundation of faith in God that governs all of whom we are and where we are going as a family. It all begins with relationship building on a quality life foundation that results in emotional health and well-being of our families. The end goal is that we may be able to leave a legacy and heritage for our children and their children as well.

What will they say about you when you are gone…and we will be gone one day! More importantly, how will they live when you are gone? Our job as fathers becomes paramount and hugely important for our kids!!
Legacy incorporates the following…
• A foundation of faith in God
• Their hopes and dreams and visions
• Learning contentment and satisfaction
• Children learning to know who they are—developing an identity
• Our kids understanding their strengths and weaknesses
• To know they are loved
• To understand fundamental knowledge and wisdom
• To own and live out real values and ethics
• To live a life of thankfulness and appreciation
• To possess as their own a love for God, people, the earth, and all living things
• To be able to apply wisdom, knowledge, and understanding… and so much more.
Why are we leaving a legacy is as important as what we leave as a legacy. You must ask yourself why you’d like to be a parent of the highest quality. What is in it for you, your child, the world at large, and your children’s children? What is your answer?

Do you live your life to impress others, or influence them by the quiet sanity that marks how you model your life? What is the mission, vision, and purpose of your life? Are you living in now? When will you start if you’re not?