Everyone can find time in their busy schedules to pursue their dreams. Here are some ideas of how to find an hour or two here and there to follow your passion. Whether you have 10 minutes or 2 hours at a time, just by following these examples you could find up to 20 hours per month or more!

• Get up an hour earlier one day a week.
• Turn off the TV two to three hours per week.
• Set aside one hour every weekend.
• If you’re a parent, get a babysitter once a month for a couple of hours.
• Dedicate one lunch hour a week.
• Start a carpool for taking your kids to school.
• Share duties around the house: Ask your spouse to do the laundry this week.
• Make sure you set aside these times in your appointment book or calendar so you can’t make excuses or forget!

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Like millions of other Americans, I often have trouble with insomnia — either I can’t fall asleep, or I awake prematurely and am unable to get back to sleep. The following sleep tips, compiled from various sources, may prove helpful to some of my fellow insomniacs.

• Only use your bed for sleeping or having sex, not for reading, doing paperwork, watching TV, snacking, or making phone calls.
• If you’ve been lying in bed but are beginning to fear you’re not going to drop off, try some of these techniques: Count sheep or count backwards from 100 (one of my favorites) to stop yourself from thinking about the problems of yesterday or tomorrow; breathe deeply for awhile; or visualize some peaceful place.
• If you can’t get to sleep after lying in bed for 30 minutes or more, get up for awhile. What to do? Try reading something incredibly boring.
• Develop a bedtime routine.
• Keep regular bedtime hours.
• Before bedtime, avoid tobacco and caffeinated beverages (not just coffee, but other drinks like tea, cola, and Dr. Pepper).
• Avoid alcohol right before bedtime — a nightcap might get your mind fuzzy enough to put you to sleep, but such sleep may be interrupted by periods of awakening. By contrast, the stress-lowering effect of a drink with dinner may help to promote sleep later.
• Avoid naps (or falling asleep in front of boring TV programs, as I do).
• Try to get up at the same time every day rather than sleeping in on weekends.
• Exercise every day, but not shortly before bedtime since exercise gets the adrenaline going.
• If you use an illuminated clock for a wakeup alarm, place it where you can’t keep looking at it to check the time.
• Buy a firm mattress and keep your bedroom well ventilated (a cool temperature works best for me).
• And you might also try some of these: a warm bath, warm milk, light bedtime snack, massage, or quiet music (which turns itself off automatically).
• Use earplugs for extreme quiet.
• If you have a painful joint or a headache, take a pain pill before bedtime (but be sure it doesn’t contain caffeine).
• Avoid stimulating reading or television shows late at night.

If the insomnia stubbornly persists, check with your doctor to make sure some underlying health problem (such as depression, anxiety, hyperthyroidism, heart failure, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) isn’t keeping you awake. If all is well, you might ask for one of the several types of prescription sleeping pills that can be useful in the short term.

by Johns Hopkiins University

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Five Ways to Calm the Jitters

By Naomi Barr
Sweaty palms, jagged nerves, choking insecurity: LEVEL ORANGE.
Heart pounding out of your chest: LEVEL RED.

Most of us know what it is to feel like a walking Homeland Security alert system. In fact, an estimated 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety disorders, and millions more face the everyday panic that comes with job interviews, public speaking, entering a party, and other stressful situations. What’s surprising, especially to the highly strung, is that we don’t have to live with it.

Accept that you’re having an anxiety moment.

Allow yourself to be nervous—trying to squelch or deny it will only make it worse—and just focus on what’s in front of you, says David Barlow, PhD, founder of the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University. If you’re at an interview, meeting, or party, listen intently to what the other person is saying. Make eye contact. When it’s your turn to speak, be conscious of every word you say.

If you’re at your desk, respond to overdue e-mails or tackle the pile in your in-box. Whatever you’re doing, take a few deep breaths to help let the anxious thoughts and feelings float on by.

Stop trying to be perfect.

“Almost by definition, if you’re anxious, you’re being overly perfectionistic in the goals you’re setting for yourself,” Barlow says. “You see all the ways you won’t meet them, the thought of failure makes you anxious, and anxiety makes you think the worst.” Look at the hard evidence from past experiences. Honestly, have you ever been laughed out of a job interview or a work presentation for not getting every word just so? “Most of the time, people will see that things went all right, even if they thought they could have done better,” says Barlow. “Tell yourself, ‘It’s extremely unlikely that anything will ever go as badly as I think.’”

Stop being so nice.

When you find yourself on edge for no obvious reason, it’s your body’s way of signaling there’s a problem you’re avoiding, says David Burns, MD, author of When Panic Attacks: The New Drug-Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life. Most anxiety-prone people try so hard to be agreeable, he says, that when confronted with an upsetting situation (being denied a promotion though they know they deserve one, for example), they’ll sweep their feelings under the rug rather than stand up for themselves. Look back over the last week or so, he suggests, to see if something like this happened, then take steps to express your thoughts and resolve the situation.

Take a walk on the mindful side.

“Whether a threat is from a scary thought or an actual danger, your body tenses up,” says Jeffrey Brantley, MD, director of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program at Duke Integrative Medicine and author of Calming Your Anxious Mind. A walking meditation sends an instant message that it’s okay to relax. To begin, turn your attention to your right foot. Slowly start to walk, noting every sensation as your foot lifts up, swings forward, and settles to the floor. Do the same with your left foot, observing and allowing whatever thoughts and feelings arise. Keep moving until you feel the sense of urgency ebb. “Walking like this helps restore balance so you can gain some insight into what’s bothering you,” says Brantley.

Face your fear.

If there’s a specific activity like public speaking that always makes you break into a cold sweat, try a technique used by cognitive-behavioral therapists: First do something similar but less frightening (making a toast each night at dinner), then gradually move your way through more nerve-racking occasions (giving a toast at a wedding, guest-teaching a class). “Your fear diminishes with each step,” says Martin Antony, PhD, professor of psychology at Ryerson University in Ontario, so by the time you get to the original alarming activity, it will feel less overwhelming. It helps to progress quickly through the list and practice as frequently as possible, he adds: Research shows that this is one of the best ways to reduce anxiety.

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Most of us scarely have time to organize our to-do lists. What are we chasing after? And what would it take to make us rest?

There is a colleague I often bump into at the university where I teach, and we exchange a similar greeting every time. “I stayed up past midnight reading application forms for today’s meeting,” she says. And I answer, “I got up at dawn to prepare for a class.” We groan, laugh lightly and rush off to our busy day—until the next morning’s story of being too busy.

A friend in Senegal tells me that people there address one another very differently—family to family. “Blessings on your father and mother,” one might say upon seeing a friend, “and blessings on your mother’s parents, and blessings on your father’s parents, and blessings on your children.” It is a pleasant greeting, and it takes a while to say it. So why do we Americans greet one another in our grim, rapid-fire way, workload to workload?

Because overworking has become our national way of life. More of us are clocking longer hours, and we seem to be packing our free time with extra activity. According to a report from the International Labour Office, Americans now put in nearly 2,000 hours per year, which comes out to two weeks more than our counterparts in Japan, formerly the long-work-hours capital of the world. The Hilton Time Values Project reports that in a national survey it conducted, 26 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “I consider myself a workaholic.”

What drives us to stay so busy? Some of the pressure to overwork comes from the boss and the need to pay rent. But when I asked those I interviewed for my book The Time Bind why they worked long hours, many of them told me, “We do it to ourselves.” Indeed, some of the pressure to overwork comes from ourselves. Some may feel addicted to the adrenaline rush of doing too much, and at the last minute; others seek appreciation from a supervisor or co-worker. And still others see work as a measure of their value. They think that if they do more, get better, go faster, stay at the office later, they’ll be worth more—and be happier.

But many who struggle still aren’t happy. And with every additional task, we become a little less able to tell what it is that we really feel. What emotions would we experience if we weren’t working ourselves to death? What wishes drive us? What fantasies hitch themselves to our continual busyness? Only when we step away from our frenzy can we know

by O, The Oprah Magazine

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