Dr. Gary Carlson

Meetings are always tough to schedule for unscheduled moments. It is always best to establish a regulary meeting time agreed upon by the team. First Monday, last Friday, or everyother Monday are examples. It is always better to schedule out in front and you can always cancel if necessary. People can then set their priorities by the schedule created.

For many years I supervised teachers for behaviorally disordered youth. I would always give them the advise that when a situation becomes emotional to not let yourself rise with the emotion. What often happens is the each party rises higher and higher until you reach the uncontrollable level. If you can stay calm it often brings the emotion down.

Communication and how we do it is so important. We always need to be considerate but we have to be who we are as individuals. How we present that in verbal, written and body language sets the tone. We can make progress with the right amount of communication and listening.

Some the best remediation in a negative situation is to take on the climate with positive activities organized by a very positive team of people. It is easy for a negative person to control a group if the team allows it by falling into the trap of enabling the negative person. One measure to take is by creating a positive atmosphere. They usually will join in in time or they will be so uncomfortable they will quit.

Working out is a peaceful way of getting rid toxins created by stress. Communicating with your friends is positive as long as it doesn't turn into negative. Keep the conversations constructive and not destructive.

There is both positive stress and negative. Some positive can breed negative if the solution to the stress is not reached within an expedient period of time. It is always important to maintain stress relievers. A balance in anyones life is important. Cognitive, physical and spiritual balance is important to maintain.

Sometimes the stress may unavoidable but how you deal with it is the answer to your health and better decision making. Solutions will often not do aways with the situation but your solutions would be on how to deal with it in consistent healthy way.

I have been working with a nutritionist for the last four months. One of the recommendations for stress was meditation. Yoga is a wonderful way of completing this exercise. There are other methods but Yoga is well accepted by the medical profession and health advisors. Walking is another great activity for physical exercise and stress release. I would do the research and approach the idea again. There is enough documentation on the subject to communicate its benefits. If you can't do it at work for your office then do it on your own. It will benefit you in many ways.

You are a very observant person. Much can be determined just from the body language and facial expressions. We probably don't realize how much react to people just from those standpoints. They obviously keep us from making mistakes with peoples emotions, attitudes and agendas. In the book "Blink" we make these judgements in a split second from how these individuals approach us. Good answer!