25 Tips for controlling stress, brought to you by ARISE Life Skills & Training

It’s a stressful world out there. Work, family relationships, traffic, economic worries, environmental concerns… it all adds up to life in a pressure cooker. What can you do when your heart is racing and you feel close to losing control?

Relax. ARISE to the rescue! Here are 25 helpful tips to bring a little peace to your life and help you handle the strains of everyday life.

If you like what you see, please visit the online store at http://www.ariselife-skills.org for more of our fantastic life skills materials.

25 TIPS TO CONTROL STRESS:

1. Confront problems, don’t ignore them.
2. Don’t be stressed when others tease or criticize you; they may just be envious of you.
3. Identify stressful situations in advance and keep a positive outlook.
4. Reach out to a new person in the neighborhood. Be aware of his feelings and invite him to join in the activities.
5. Ask others for support and guidance when faced with stressful situations.
6. Choose your own behavior. You CAN make a difference.
7. “There are thousands of causes for stress. One antidote to stress is self expression. That’s what happens to me every day. My thoughts get off my chest, down my sleeves and onto my pad.” – Elia Kazan
8. Don’t get stressed out over things that are out of your control. Life is too short to worry about things you can’t change.
9. Take deep breaths.
10. Work to eliminate the problems that you CAN change.

10 Enlightening Quotes About Money and the Economy, Brought to you by ARISE Life Skills & Training

Bailouts, foreclosures and job losses, oh my! Each day seems to bring more bad news about the economy. Reading the newspaper or watching the news is enough to make anyone anxious about the future and the state of their finances. As we go through this trying time, remember that the country has been through this before and emerged stronger.  Here are some quotes about money and the economy from some of history’s greatest minds. Read them over, think about them and try to breath. Everything will work itself out. It always does.

1. You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you. – Ruth Smeltzer
2. Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. – Benjamin Franklin
3. So often we rob tomorrow’s memories by today’s economies. – John Mason Brown
4. Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks. – Warren Buffett
5. Anyone who thinks there is safety in numbers hasn’t looked at the stock market pages.  – Irene Peter
6. Men make counterfeit money. In many cases, money makes counterfeit men.  – Sydney J. Harris
7. It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours. – Harry Truman
8. We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official; a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges. – Winston Churchill
9. Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy only when others are fearful. – Warren Buffett
10. I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.  – Warren Buffett

Looking for more advice on how to manage your money, manage anger and handle stress? Visit the ARISE website and click on online store.

How to Attract Your Soul Mate in 14 Easy Steps, brought to you by ARISE Life Skills & Training

The holidays can be a bit lonely without that special someone to share them with. But how do you find the person you were meant to be with? There are millions of people on the planet. How do you zero in on your soul mate?

To find your other half, you need to clear a path between the two of you.  Convince the universe that you have already found him or her, and before you know it, that person will show up in your life.

It’s called the “Law of Attraction.”

Here are 14 steps to attracting your soul mate:

1. Write down exactly what it is you want in a mate…every positive detail. Keep adding to the list as you think of new traits and qualities.
2. Avoid the negatives and focus on the positives. List what you want and don’t define what you don’t want.
3. Look in a mirror and tell yourself that you truly deserve him or her. Genuinely affirm this. Deep down in your subconscious, you must absolutely believe it to receive it.
4. Feel that this person is already a part of your life. He/she is with you at meal time, exercising, shopping. In the shower, affirm it. Driving to work, feel it.
5. Make vacation and party plans. Carry on as if this person was right there beside you. Plan  your next apartment, the kind of car you will drive together. See every detail.

Advice from Mom: 10 Pearls of Wisdom Brought to you by ARISE Life Skills & Training

Being a mother is hard work. You dispense hard-learned advice just to have it ignored most of the time. Only once your children have grown, made their own mistakes and had their own triumphs, do they realize exactly how valuable your advice was.

These are 10 “pearls of wisdom” collected by the ARISE Foundation over their 20 years of life skills training. The contributors are of all different ages, races and socioeconomic levels. Everyone has one thing in common: they all learned something from their mothers. For more, please visit http://www.ariselife-skills.org

10 Tips for Teenage Parents, brought to you by ARISE Life Skills & Training, North Palm Beach, FL

Teenage parents have one foot in childhood and the other in adulthood. Being a parent at such a young age often leads to anger, stress and resentment. Educating yourself about parenting and learning all you can about how to be an effective mom or dad are the best things you can do to ensure that your child grows up happy, healthy and well-adjusted. Here are 10 simple things you can do to be a better teenage parent.

1. Realize that carefree days spent at the beach or the mall are over. Your child is your first priority, and child care is a full-time job.
2. Note that the period between conception and birth brings tough decisions, mixed emotions and a self-evaluation for the future.
3. Realize that your parents may be mourning the dreams they had for your future. Know that anger will pass, especially if you and your partner can prove that you can deal responsibly with the situation.
4. Sit down with a piece of paper and list your goals in life as well as your current resources. Identify the needs of a child and how your goals and resources will have to be adapted to meet them.
5. Be assured that no matter what others tell you, your life is not over; it is just taking a different direction.
6. Know that family stability is necessary for the growth and development of a child.
7. Budget your income before your child is born. Babies tend to be expensive, and the more savings you have in reserve, the better.
8. Realize that babies cry because it’s the only way they can communicate their feelings to you.
9. Be aware that statistics suggest that teenage parents are more likely than older parents to strike their children. They tend to have less experience with children, are less patient with their child’s development and have a strong belief in physical punishment.
10. Respond to the needs of your child. He wants, and often needs, his needs to be met NOW, no matter how exhausted you feel.

10 Quotes for Success, Part 4, brought to you by ARISE Life Skills & Training

Sometimes we all need a little inspiration when life gets rough. Throughout history, great thinkers have come up with fantastic nuggets of wisdom. The ARISE Get Smart! Series is a virtual Fort Knox of these golden pieces of advice. Enjoy!

ARISE Life Quotes for Success, Part 4

1. “One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” – Elbert Hubbard
2. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle
3. “Nothing on Earth can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goals; nothing on Earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” – Thomas Jefferson
4. “What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.” – Joseph Addison
5. “If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin