This issue is made up of the following sections:

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips
2. Questions for Growth
3. Reality Check

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips

Some tips to reduce your stress level in September:

1. Reduce self-induced stressors in your life. Tackle projects early instead of late. Pay bills on time. Plan vacations out well in advance. Hang up on solicitors calling during family time. Tell friends you'll call them tomorrow if they are the ones calling at odd times. Reduce or eliminate contact with people in your life who seem to take from you instead of give to you. Sound harsh? Not really. You'll feel so much better without the negative influence of those types of people in your life.

2. Indulge in your hobbies. Some websites that I've found that are chock full of knowledge or otherwise helpful about various hobby topics: (note to subscribers: if you know of other helpful hobby sites, drop me a line, and I'll include them in a future newsletter)
   • www.jerrybaker.com Gardening tips and advice from a top gardener. Contains numerous articles, home remedies, etc.
   • www.foodnetwork.com For those who love to cook, recipes galore...
   • www.familysearch.org Free genealogy site run by the Latter Day Saints (who have done an excellent job of tracking folks over the years)
   • www.ancestry.com Lots of free stuff on here, but a premium subscription is a bargain. I traced my family roots back seven generations from this site alone.
   • www.sharebuilder.comInvesting site that offers trades for $4, and allows you flexibility in how you want to invest your money. And no, I do not get paid to pass that on...
   • www.writersmarket.com target=_blank>www.writersmarket.com For aspiring authors. Lists agents, markets for your work, and publishing info.

3. Realize the importance of focus in maintaining peace of mind. In other words, it really is not about what happens to you that matters, but what you tell yourself about what happens. The key is in how you explain things to yourself. Knowing this, be proactive in choosing positive, helpful interpretations of life events. This helps to explain why two people can grow up in the exact same dire circumstances-and later one becomes a senator and one becomes a drug addict. Choose your interpretations wisely, and go easy on yourself.

4. Practice making decisions quickly. I have seen scores of people that put more time into choosing their Happy Meals than their careers, partners, lovers, etc. That seems backward to me! Most decisions in our daily lives can be made prudently AND quickly. Do not waste time trying to come up with the perfect choice in each situation. Make a decision, and make the best of it. Move forward. Otherwise you can become bogged down in the red-tape of indecision and anxiety. Be bold, take action.

5. Learn what Olympic athletes have learned-the art of setting a specific goal, making it a priority, and planning alternative routes of action for the upcoming obstacles to that goal. These athletes operate on a four year perspective! Most people operate on a daily perspective. What goals in your life could become a reality if you had such determination and focus?

6. Apply moderation in your eating habits. Studies have shown that the number one similarity among humans that live to the ripe old age of one hundred years and beyond is simple moderation in their eating habits. Fad diets come and go, but there will never be a backlash against a diet championing portion control and balance. Residents in Okinawa (where there are almost 600 people over the age of one hundred) practice eating so that they are eighty percent full at each meal (or, just past the point of not being hungry, but not quite to the point of being full) What could you gain by doing as such in your life?

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2. Questions for Growth
1. When was the last time you intentionally worked on gaining more balance in your life?

2. How many hours do you waste each day with urgent but non-important life activities? (Chores, phone calls, unimportant emails, etc.)

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3. Reality Check

The September reality check has to deal with the human tendency to create drama and stress in our lives. This tendency is absent in animals, to my knowledge. Most of their reactions are simple stimulus-response types. We humans have mastered the art of making something out of nothing, of finding stress where there is none, and of digging holes in the ground and proceeding to fall into them while simultaneously bemoaning our luck. One common example of this tendency is road rage. I see probably five examples per day of drivers gesticulating and screaming obscenities at other drivers, for whatever reason. I wonder what these people would do if the other driver actually took them up on their suggestions and overtures of anger. Another example is customer service craziness-I actually somewhat enjoy watching people do this. A sandwich is ordered with no mayo. The customer gets a sandwich with mayo, and proceeds to stomp back to the front of the line, cut in front of a sweet elderly woman, and begin cursing at the poor teenager who took the order.

These are merely two examples. There are plenty more that fall under the radar of outright stressed out behaviors. I have heard people stress about getting higher paid jobs, about packing for upcoming tropical vacations, and about when their children will learn to use the toilet (has anyone ever asked you about when you learned this art? Me neither). Stressing out over life's small details is counterproductive and a waste of valuable time in your life. It sets up a cycle of anxiety, and we end up never quite feeling content or happy with our current circumstances. Of course, we all set our own stress levels, and some of us set our baselines much higher or lower than others to begin with. My point of contention here is that we need to deliberately set our stress level and stress triggers at low levels in order to get more out of life. In doing so, we are much better equipped to go about our days. And when those inconveniences and unplanned stressors do occur, we are able to work through them much more quickly.

How important is this in your life? If you consider that almost eighty percent of diseases treated today by doctors are stress-related (heart attacks, obesity, high blood pressure, etc), you realize that we as a society are making ourselves sick. Literally! There is an alternative. However, if you do not take conscious control over this habit of adding undue stress to your life, you will become a statistic by default. Though some stress is needed in our lives, much of it is not. The consequences of not changing our behaviors in this aspect are both chronic and devastating. Work to reduce your self-induced stress levels, starting today. You might just add years to your life, and in an age where we are living well into our late seventies (thirty years longer than a century ago), those are valuable and productive years.

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