SMILE!

A smile cost nothing but creates much. It enriches those who receive without impoverish in those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes last forever.

None are so rich they can get along without it and none so poor but both are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, foster good will in a business and is the countersign of friends.

It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad and nature's best antidote for trouble. Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody until it is given away.

Nobody needs a smile so much as those who have none left to give.

Relationship breakdown

These issues concern us because we invest so much time, effort and personal security in a relationship. If a woman has low self-esteem, she may believe her partner will leave her for someone better. Sometimes this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as she drives her partner away by becoming too 'clingy'.

Ask yourself if there's evidence the relationship is going wrong and tell your partner how you feel. According to relationship counsellor Denise Knowles, "Talk to your partner frequently and honestly about your relationship - airing the good and bad points." If you can't find any reason for your concern, you may just need to boost your self-esteem, perhaps by taking an assertiveness course. It may also help to look back at your own life to pinpoint the root of the problem, for instance did you have a stable home life? Did your parents fight a lot? Knowing will help you deal with them. If you can't do this alone, a counsellor will be able to help.

Exercise Your Eyes!

Want to improve the look of your eyes (and eyesight)? Try giving them a workout. If you're into yoga, then you're probably already practicing some eye exercises which can help reduce the appearance of bags and delay wrinkles. You may want to consider yoga for other health benefits as well but consider the following basic exercises that will strengthen the eye muscles an increase their flexibility.

• Gently tone the muscles of the eyes by pressing two fingers on each side of your head at the temples. With you fingers still on the sides of your head, try opening and closing your eyes rapidly. Repeat five times.
• Sit upright with your eyes closed and relaxed. Keep your eyes closed while lifting your eyebrows and stretching your eyelids down as far as possible. Keep in this position for five counts, relax and repeat five times.
• Sit up right, looking straight ahead, with you eyes open. Look up, then down while keeping your head still. Repeat 10 times. Then look left and right, repeat 10 times.
• Rotate the eyes in a circle from right to left and bottom to top. Reverse the rotation. If you find that your eye muscles are stiff, perform the rotation only a few times at first. Then gradually increase the number of rotations.
• Looking at the tip of the nose, slowly look up along the right side of the nose and then the left side. Glance back and forth between viewing the right side and the left side of the nose. Starting at the tip of the nose, look up at your eyebrows and then back to the tip. Use your imagination to invent other eye exercises.
  

Your money for your life?

You dress your age and act your age but are you as 'with it' when it comes to handling your cash? Money is money is money. The more you earn and the more you save, the better, right? Not really, money is more like a toolbox and if you don't use the right tool at the right time, you can be sure all kinds of expensive breakdowns, accidents and leaks will happen along your journey through life and when you least expect it. Well recession is here.

The only thing that's constant in life is change. So with the different situations that arise at every stage in our life, how then can we prepare for these. How do we handle our money smartly so that we might be able to fulfill that dream of retiring at the grand young age of 45 and able to spend lazy days at cafes, working on the first novel and sipping lattes.

No matter what your age, you should be prepared to take the proverbial stock market 'Bull' by its horns and 'Bear' in mind what you need to do whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond. Society's development has a lot of do with the necessity for money smarts. Recent statistics show that more females than males were widowed due to women's longer life expectancy rates. While divorce rates have doubled, women are less likely than men to get re-married and more likely to be single parents (imagine running a household on your own income and bringing up kids at the same time). What's more, one in five females above age 30 is single, so don't wait for Prince Charming to come waving his Platinum card.

The trick lies in learning how to plug the holes that could drain the contents of your wallet, so to speak. Or as they say (about things unrelated to finance, but which, funnily enough, also applies to money), "It's not the size or age that matters, it's how you use it".

Ways to avoid stress.

According to professional stress consultants, the first step to beat stress is cut down on the caffeine. It keeps people on an emotional roller-coaster as they lurch from caffeine hit to caffeine hit. Instead drink lots of water.

• For instant relief, keep a small bottle of famous stress-beaters such as lavender essential oil and use them when the going gets tough.
• Learning to breath properly. When we are stressed, we often hold out breath. Deep breathing is essential. Close your eyes and switch off for a minute, breathing deeply and calmly while you focus on yourself.
• Learn to say 'NO'. Practise "no", a word that women especially, seem to have trouble articulating.'
• Keep an uncluttered environment. An untidy work space makes you feel like your mind's cluttered and leads to a feeling of lack of control. spending just a few minutes each day sorting, filing throwing things away can clear your head and send stress levels plummeting. Don't react so impulsively.
  
• Don't watch the news. Bad and distressing events on the news often makes you feel stressed and helpless. Read a book instead.
  
• Get enough sleep. A priority. Stress and insomnia can be a vicious circle but if yo learn some end-of-day wind-down techniques that will help you to sleep better, you are likely to find your stress level improves enormously.

Good stress

Some stress professionals suggested learning tricks for turning life's hurdles into opportunities. In fact, we all need a certain amount of stress in order to function well. Andrew Slaby, MD, American author of several stress handbooks, observes; "The fires that lead to burnout also fuel success. Conversely, the formula for success can be the same as a formula for nervous breakdown. The difference is your perspective."

Dr.David Lewis, a stress-busting psychologist who has run workshops for companies such as IBM, explains that there are two kinds of stress; good (for which the word eustress was coined) and bad stress (or distress). "If the phone rings, it's stress. If it's a bill collector calling, it's distress. If it's some offering you a better job,it's good stress. We need some stress to get us going ,but not so much that stop us functioning."

Illnesses cause by stress

According to Anne Woodham, author of Beating stress at work, "In the UK, an estimated 270,000 people take time off every day because of stress0erlated illness, a cumulative cost in sick pay and lost production of around 7 billion pound a year and rising. These are just reported cases.

Doctors' surgeries are filled with sufferers from countless illnesses that often fall into the category of 'stress-related' like high blood pressure, anxiety, ulcers, depression, tension, exhaustion, insomnia, diabetes, eczema. PMT can also worsen when we're under high pressure. Ultimately, in fact, it's believed that stress can depress the immune system, leaving us prey to every bout of cold and 'flu (or more serious complaints) many of us manage conveniently, to schedule those illnesses for our free time, a syndrome that's recognized by doctors. Work till Friday, get a cold on Saturday, back to work Monday..

There are those brave enough to risk black marks against their names for daring to complain while their colleagues put up with equally stressful workloads. But suing your boss could become the latest bandwagon. According to Anne, "stress occurs when life's out of control and suing your boss is within your power." Some stress professionals suggested learning tricks for turning life's hurdles into opportunities.

Stress Out!

This was supposed to be the decade we finally got to put our feet up. Discovered hobbies. Found ourselves with time on our hands. And it didn't happen. Just try to think of a woman who isn't suffering from a bad case of too much to do, too little time. According to Anne Woodham, author of Beating Stress At Work, it's worse for women, "because we have to juggle two roles. A woman might have a high-flying job but it's likely she then has to go home and run a house and the whole thing can fall apart because the nanny's sick. Even if you're not actually doing the caring, you're organizing it. It's very common for women to feel like they're not fulfilling any one role to the best of their abilities but instead being spread around like a very thick layer of margarine."

Another factor, women may feel they have to perform better and try harder to prove they really were the right choice for the job even if that pressure exists only in their heads. As a result, we are all, to a degree, the girl who can't say no.

Everyone has a personal stress limit beyond which cracking the whip will lead to burnout. The number one cause of stress for people working in tech office is , the office. In a survey of over 5,000 office workers in 16 countries, conducted by Harris Research for Associates for Research into the Science of Enjoyment, on in five people said they've taken time of work through stress. One in three said they were currently under stress at work an nearly half said the amount of stress had worsened in the last two years. work was higher up the list stress-triggers than money worries (29 percent) and family worries (20 per cent).