This second answer had no more appeal to me than the first one; firstly because I could neither make it with my craft materials, nor could I buy it in the shops and secondly because it seemed equally non-inspirational.

Health ? As a child we take it for granted. As a young adult we start to realize how its absence can have devastating effects in the middle of an important project at work … so we get annoyed when we fall ill…. curse our illness as if it’s  nothing but an unexpected obstacle on our path.

With more and more life experience and a few more serious health crisis’ under our belt be become more respectful towards this secret language of our body.  Those fortunate enough to have become more aware, realize that the body “talks” to us through pain and other bodily symptoms. We begin to listen. This is a breakthrough. We still get our body’s messages wrong from time to time as we are perfecting our communication with each other but we are improving.

Finally, we develop a whole new relationship and we realize this body of mine is on my side. It’s not there to stop me or hold me back from my important projects. It’s there to support me, to keep me going in the long run to provide the right environment for my mind and my ideas to flourish – it’s my friend !

Through a headache it warns me that I am taking on too much today, that I should rest. Through a flu it tells me to drop it all and THINK before I pick up the many pieces again. Maybe a few pieces don’t deserve my attention anymore, maybe I am stressing about things that are not worth it when I take the time to step back and see the big picture.

Life threatening illness can alert us to much more. They shake up your life entirely. They put your life as it used to be to such an abrupt and brutal hold that your head gets knocked against the wall before you can even begin to think again.

Those lucky enough to get through it (and I will ever be grateful to have been one of them and be able to be around for my little daughter) will feel like they start a new life.  Nothing will be like before. What mattered so much before, is a small matter now. Suddenly, things become so much clearer. As if for a moment the clouds disappear and you see clearly into the blue sky: you understand the few things that truly matter to you, and they are so different from what you put most of your energy to before….

Health is now everything. It’s safety. As long as we are healthy, we can think new solutions, create new paths for us and our families and get back on our feet regardless what life throws at us.

Life can take away our job, our house, our car, our little treats and luxuries… but it can’t take away our opinions, our thoughts and ideas, our experiences, capabilities and beliefs.

As long as we are healthy we can use these latter ones to build up the first one’s again.

Health is everything.

It’s not just important.  It’s your safety net.  It’s your friend.

Make it your best friend !

Have you been following the principle “work before pleasure” or “business before play” and wondered why you always feel stressed ? The hard scientific truth is: these principles don’t work !

Let’s first have a look what stress actually is: You feel stressed when….

… you feel helpless

… you feel driven by others

… you don’t know how long the pressure will last

… you feel you are a victim

… you feel you can’t handle it

Stress is a natural body reaction to cope with extraordinary pressures. The key is not just to know how to avoid those stressful feelings but to know how to get rid of them fast.

The more you are in control of your life and the way you spend your time, the less stressed you will feel. So stress relief is a matter of organization !

First Aid against Stress:

1. What is the source of my stress ?

Your first task is to figure out the real source for your stress. Just ask yourself what really causes you to feel pressured. The daily way to work ? The routine tasks at home ? The noise ? Your boss’s comments .. and what about them exactly ?

2. Relaxation

Breaks from your work are vital for staying balanced. This sounds simple and yet, sometimes, the simplest solutions are the best. Taking a break allows you to switch off or step back so you can see the big picture again. It will put your current task in perspective and allow you to see new solutions and opportunities. At the very least it will just recharge your batteries for you to keep going.

3. Sport

Find a sport or a form of movement that you enjoy. Enjoyment is key here. The impact of sport on eliminating stress hormones is well documented. And regular activity is also proven to prevent stress from building up in the first place.

4. Say “No”

Many people say “yes” to often when they wish they had said “no”. As a result we pile up to many tasks and finally feel we can’t cope anymore: stress emerges. So why do we say “yes” when we mean “no” ? Most people think that “yes” makes them look competent, strong and helpful and that saying “no” is a sign of weakness. Yet, the opposite is true. Saying “no” is a sign of strength. It takes courage to say “no” to a friend or a boss and it shows that you value your own goals, family and friends.

Quick – Fix for Any Stress Situation

Often stress is a matter of perspective. Ask yourself the following questions to find new perspectives that will immediately relieve your stressful feelings:

1. Is my life in danger ?  Yes: Act quickly ! No: Relax, it’s not all that bad.
2. Is the life of someone I love in danger ? Yes: Act quickly ! No: Relax again.
3. If I had only 3 more months to live, would I get annoyed now ?
4. If I explained my situation to a 4 year-old child, would it understand what I find stressful ?
5. Could I imagine that I’d laugh about my current situation in 5 years ? Or in 5 months ? If so, why not laugh about it in 5 minutes ?

Most people are way to pre-occupied with themselves to truly be interested in you. Everything they say and all their behaviour is only an expression of what is going on in them, what is on their mind and needs an expression. So when these people say something about you or behave in an unpleasant manner vis a vis yourself, what they are actually doing is giving away information about themselves. If they judge you e.g. by calling you lazy, you get to know that laziness is something that bugs them, probably about themselves. If they try and push you aside at work, you get to know that they might be afraid of you, that they might feel insecure and worry they might not succeed otherwise. If someone snaps at you without much of a reason, you get to know that they might be very stressed or have been snapped at themselves….maybe by their partner….

Once you realize that other people’s comments or behaviour are nothing personal but simply information about them, then you can relax. You can even become curious and maybe even feel sorry for their situation or behaviour. The main thing: you are free.

So next time you feel the rising anger or hurt because of someone else’s comments, tell yourself “It’s not about me !” and become curious instead “I wonder what is going on with that person ?”

Try this for the entire next week and see what difference it makes !

Former Soviet dissident author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had unique insights into the best and worst aspects of capitalism and communism. “Self-limitation is the fundamental and wisest step of a man who has obtained freedom and it is also the surest path to its attainment.”
English philosopher Bertrand Russell captured the concept elegantly: “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”

Isn’t it true that our pursuit of more and more has in fact made us more unhappy, unhealthy and exhausted ? There are plenty of studies to prove it. Emotional distress is a disease of the affluent world !

Yet, our most fundamental needs as human are to feel secure, to be part of a community, to feel competent and to feel autonomous and authentic. So in these nerve-wrecking times, with many of our savings being wiped out, it is high time to preserve our mental health and remember what truly matters to us:
The things that truly enhance our lives – family, friendships, good neighbours and health – have one thing in common: They can’t be bought. Having and working towards them is REAL WEALTH, a wealth no financial crisis can ever take away from us.

For many people it is desirable and for some it is even exciting to work hard in order to buy (and own) a bigger house, a bigger car, a bigger (fill in the blank). Owning the land, the house, the car etc etc. provides a sense of achievement and the peace of mind, that nobody can take this away again. In fact, I have many coaching clients you are striving to own their own dream house so that they can relax, be safe, have peace of mind.

They are accepting to work hard and to sacrifice their current life for the future dream life. Some never reach the dream life, or they reach it so late, they don’t have time to enjoy it anymore. You already know all this. But here is something more.
Have you ever realized that owning the big estate and all the other things that go with it, are actually restricting your freedom ? The more you own, the more trapped you get: trapped in responsibility to maintain it, to protect it, preserve it and hold the status quo. You start worrying about losing it all again. So after all the hard work, you get the prize and more worries and responsibilities come as a bonus.

Do you remember those days in university or the first days at your first job when you owned little, had a small room or apartment and few things to worry about ? Do you remember the freedom you felt ? Life was comparatively simple, you enjoyed it and you had peace of mind.

Lately, I have been both longing for the simplicity those days had as well as living in my dream location (don’t we always want it all !) and suddenly I had this insight:

You don’t have to own it to enjoy it !

I realized that there are many more ways of enjoying what I want without necessarily owning it. I can enjoy a beautiful holiday spot without necessarily owning a place there, I can enjoy a beautiful painting without needing to own it etc.

My personal dream is to live in a cosy, spacious, airy and light-flooded house in the midst of green countryside. So far, I thought I would have to be able to afford the house and enough land around it to create my dream. With this new insight a whole new set of possibilities emerged. Why not live in “someone else’s garden”, i.e. have a house in the countryside with little land owned by me and lot of common land around for me to use ? Or why not live in a park and find a way to be of value to the park owner ? Of course all of these options come with their specific compromises attached but the point is, I would not even have considered them. The possibility of reaching my dream in other ways gets me excited, feeling alive.
The advantage of this new set of ideas is that I would get the benefit of enjoying the views and surroundings without being responsible for them. I can contribute to them as much as I want rather than having to. I would be freer to do whatever I want to do with my time. And finally, the less you own, the easier it is to move on if I felt like it – another form of freedom.

What can you enjoy without needing to own it ?

So is wealth measured in money or abundance in all areas of life ? The advertising of a financial service organization a friend showed me recently, really spoke to me when it said: “Wealth is not measured in millions, it is measured in a feeling called freedom.” What I like about this definition is that it puts money in its place as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. So is it the feeling of freedom, that defines our wealth ? I think there is some truth in this.

When you have enough money to cover your basic necessities (what that is exactly is entirely different topic), you are free ! You are free to choose how you want to live, which experiences you want to have in your life, whether you want to follow what your environment expects of you (e.g. making more money and upgrading your house, your car, your branded clothes and your private banker) or whether you want to follow your heart (and maybe have money come in as a side product). Of course, every choice you make automatically means a choice against something else, so it requires courage to stand up for one’s choice. But choice you have. Choice is freedom.

You may have sensed it by now, there is something intensely subjective here about the feeling of freedom. Some people have much much more money than covering “basic necessities” and still don’t feel free. They feel slaves to their possessions and commitments. Others have very little and feel free. Who is wealthier ?

If some people manage to (and hence it is possible to !) really feel free with just covering the basic necessities and if feeling free means wealth, shouldn’t we all work on reducing what we define are our “basic necessities” in order to get to wealth faster ? Studies show that the opposite is happening. When a television set or a car was not defined as being “basic necessity” decades ago, several TV’s and cars are now seen as basic necessity my many. Yet, studies also show that despite increased numbers of luxuries available to households in the developed world, happiness has not increased. So is it time for a paradigm shift ? Wealthy with less rather than more …?

I would like to offer another different view on wealth and this is my absolute favourite. The wealth of a person is the sum of that person’s experiences. I love this definition because in difference to money, experience is the only thing nobody can ever take away from you. The more of them you have and the more diverse they are, the more you learn, develop and grow as a person and that truly must mean being wealthy. People worry a lot about money, the money they don’t have but also the money they have: they worry about losing it, protecting it, insuring it, investing it safely. People worry about money being taken away from them again. Money (beyond basics necessities) does not make you free, it builds you a golden cage of responsibilities. Experience can’t be taken away. Once you’ve got it, you have it FOREVER ! It is forever yours. And the more you have, the richer you become. Accumulating experiences (rather than money) makes you free: free of worry (there is nothing to lose) and makes you rich as an individual. The saying “a wealth of experience” hasn’t been invented for nothing.

I could not remember anymore what I used to do in my house, my office. I asked myself “what where my routines my habits ?”…. STOP ! Breathe, think. Don’t remember the old routines, old habits, old ways of living, thinking… This is plain delicious opportunity to establish new habits, new routines that suit me better, fit better with my values, my priorities and life purpose. I got all excited and started journaling how I would like my new life to be. And so before I could even remember the old ones, I got clear about how I wanted it to be from now on. Isn’t that a great opportunity ?

I have to say that the traditional recreational benefits of vacation are well known (and felt) and need no further exploration here but I discovered another benefit of vacation this summer: the power of discovering new perspectives through new location. During my 5 week absence in Europe, I changed location about 7 times: a team coaching training in London, stays with the family on 2 different occasions , 2 different stays with friends, family holiday on a pony farm and a city break to Munich (yes, you are right, this is a bit mad but hold your judgement !).

During the whole time I carried a few big life questions with me (metaphorically speaking , one of which I had already been pondering on for quite a while back in Dubai. Everytime I changed location (and that included changing weather !, landscape, people around me, sleeping arrangements etc etc) I came up with new thoughts on the old topic. You need to know that I journal every day, so I consciously spend time on the big questions in my life. It was really astonishing how different I felt about the same question depending on where I was. I started tracking my thought process and at the end of the vacation I realized, that – without planning it – I had done what we coaches call perspective work: finding new possibilities by trying out several new perspectives on one and the same topic.

Instead of doing this just as an intellectual exercise, I had done it physically moving my whole self around from location to location. At the end of the process you get to choose which perspective feels most resourceful and resonant and from that one you work out possibilities for your big question. I must say, I am overwhelmed as I have found my answer to MY big question and it is a big scary and risky decision I took, and I am proud of it. On hindsight, I realize how much the location changes and the different perspectives have helped me (and of course the daily time I spent thinking) to not just THINK about different ways of looking at my issue but to really feel into each new perspective and “really TRYING IT ON to see whether it fits”.