Everyone has their own ways of waking up the office – maybe it’s a cup of coffee or a trip outside for some fresh air. However, new research from Japan has found that chewing gum can not only make your breath smell better, but it can also improve your mood and help you focus. When workers chewed a piece of gum for at least five minutes twice a day, they cut their rates of depression and workplace fatigue by half!

The researchers thought that the lift in mood and performance came from the repeated act of chewing. They found that chewing increased blood flow to the brain and other parts of the body and it can even reduce the levels of stress hormones in the blood!

SOURCE:

Men’s Health, March 2012

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Watch Dr Sylvia Gearing on CBS 11 discuss the Mega-Millions mania and how lotto fever can go too far - click here.

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Money worries got you down during the holidays? Ninety percent of Americans report insomnia during the holidays. But tired people are also depressed, angry, and hopeless people. If you’re looking for how to make your holidays happy – start with getting back to sleep.

Now, most people turn to the medicine cabinet next for one of a slew of sleeping pills and aids. Not so fast.

Prescription sleeping medications are fine to get us through a difficult day or two, but if there are more serious issues -- like stress, anger, and depression -- pills do not address the underlying problems. It’s like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.

However, a combination of prescription sleep aids and cognitive behavioral therapy for sleeping issues cures over 80% of sleeping problems. Cognitive therapy addresses false beliefs about sleep, teaches techniques for lowering anxiety, helps people not to worry all night long, and relax long enough to drift off to sleep.

Here are a few suggestions from sleep experts combining behavioral and cognitive cues to get you back to sleep:

Regular Schedule: Become disciplined and keep a regular bedtime and avoid naps like the plague. Bedtimes aren’t just for children, a regular bedtime cues your brain and body that it is time to rest and sleep. Naps disrupt your body’s schedule and can really mess up your natural sleep/wake cycle.

Watch What You Drink: Do not drink anything with caffeine within four to six hours before bedtime. Also, an alcoholic nightcap will actually keeps you awake.

Don't Remain in Bed: Restrict the amount of time spend in bed waiting for sleep. If you are unable to sleep, don’t toss and turn all night! Get out of bed and go to another room, do something relaxing, and return to bed when sleep is imminent.

Bedroom for Sleeping: Reserve the bedroom for sleep. If you read, watch TV, or work in bed, your body will become confused and will have trouble shutting down at bedtime.

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As the season of office parties begins full tilt this holiday season, many of us will be tempted to let loose and have a little too much fun. But a new study reports that around 40% of us have been embarrassed at a holiday party and a shocking 23% of attendees have been reprimanded for their misbehavior.

So why do so many people get in hot water at the annual holiday party?

There is a basic misconception about these parties - this is a business event and you must remember that. Even if it’s supposed to be social, similar office expectations prevail. Your boss and coworkers do not want to see you dancing the night away after drinking too much! They want to see the relaxed, congenial side of your personality behaving appropriately. Whether it is fair or not, you are being evaluated on some level by everyone in the room. The bottom line is that you can use the office party to enormously enhance your career or you can land yourself in a heap of trouble.

More than 1 in 10 Americans say they know someone who has been fired for their inappropriate behavior at a holiday party.

Here are a few ways to get in trouble at the office party:

• Saying Something Inappropriate to a Colleague or Boss
• Drinking Too Much – please stop at 2 drinks and nurse them throughout the event.
• Hooking Up with a Coworker
• Disinterested and Arrogant Behavior
• Overly Friendly or Familiar Behavior
• Forgetting Someone’s Name – take a look at the nametags!

Looking to make a good impression at this year’s holiday party? Here are the do’s-and-don’t’s to have a great time AND impress your boss:

Please Limit Alcohol: Even though that open bar looks inviting, that is the last place you need to park yourself. Have a drink or two and then chase it with club soda. Never, ever get drunk at the party—it is career suicide.

Talk It Up: Use the event to demonstrate how conversational you can be. Since most business, especially at the higher executive levels, requires an excellent ability to interact well with others socially. If you’re looking for a promotion, it is vital that you work the room: move with confidence, sincerely show interest in others, and shake everyone’s hand.

Dress Well: The office party is not a time to deck yourself out with your most seductive attire. Remember, this is a business event so you need to be festive but professional. Your boss and other superiors may not make the rounds in your direction but they will get a glimpse of you and you want that moment to serve you well. Reserve the wild ties and low cut dresses for your personal party time.

Don’t Gossip: Please come prepared to talk about something other than your job—your children, their children, the best hamburger in town, etc. Most of all, avoid gossip that can be repeated by your inebriated coworkers. Office parties mixed with booze are renowned for inspiring inappropriate disclosures.

Follow Up: A lot of people are careless about making promises at office parties to provide information—like a phone number or a business lead—and then fail to follow up. This is a huge mistake since people tend to only remember what you don’t do for them. Following up is an opportunity for you to gain credibility by being the one person who actually sends the information after the party is over. People truly appreciate the self-discipline such efforts require.

Make Some Friends: We know from new research that social interactions are like medicine. In fact, a review of 148 studies found that socially connected people have a 50% lower chance of dying. In addition, the holidays can be stressful for all of us and these office parties can be a great place to enjoy an interesting conversation and lower your stress. Even if you aren’t interested in the corner office, friends will keep you alive longer!

And finally, show some gratitude. The party planners never get any attention. People love to be thanked and genuine appreciation creates enormous good will. When you depart, find the people who were instrumental in hosting the party and thank them generously. Your appreciation will never be forgotten.

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Dr Sylvia Gearing was quoted in an article on MSN's CareerBuilder.com!

Check it out here:

http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-2418-Job-Search-Does-Persistence-Really-Pay/?pf=true

Does Persistence Really Pay?

By Kaitlin Madden, CareerBuilder Writer

While we can all recite quotes about how persistence is the key to success --"If at first you don't succeed ...", "Nothing good comes easy" -- they're easier said than acted upon when we feel instead like we're "banging our head against a wall" or "beating a dead horse."

The fact is many workers and job seekers struggle with persistence nowadays. It can be hard to keep going when your job search proves fruitless after months of hard work, you still haven't gotten that promotion you were hoping for or it seems like your "big break" is always just out of arms' reach. With so much time and energy put it our efforts to persist, doing so to no avail can cause us to wonder if our persistence will ever pay off.

According to Caroline Ceniza-Levine, co-founder of SixFigureStart, persistence does pay off, so long as we remember one thing about our path to achieving our goals: There is a difference between smart persistence and blind persistence.

"Persistence to a goal pays off as long as you can be flexible on how you get there," Ceniza-Levine says. "If your job search isn't yielding offers, then whatever you are doing is not working. You may have the right role and companies in mind but your marketing, your interview technique, your networking approach, or something else about how you are presenting yourself to these prospects is off. Or the prospects themselves may be wrong for you."

With that in mind, here are a few strategies for successful, smart persistence.

Pursue your goal from all angles

According to Tyler Tervooren, author of the blog "Advanced Riskology," persistence works best when there's a method to your madness.

"Persistence does pay, but only if it's persistence with a real strategy" he says. "If, in the worst economy of our time, your strategy is to send out a résumé and say 'Here, hire me please,' you're never going to get anywhere no matter how many times you do that. On the other hand, if your goal is to make enough money to support yourself and you're willing to try a bunch of different things like submitting an online résumé or portfolio, going to networking events, meeting influential people in different industries or even starting your own business, then yes, persistence pays off," he says.

To elaborate on Tervooren's example: As a job seeker your overall goal may be to find a well-paying job in your industry. You decide that you will send out 10 résumés per week until you get a job -- but after months of searching, you have yet to land a position. While your ultimate goal may be a realistic one that's well within your reach, your way of going about getting the job is unrealistic.

Instead of just sending out résumés:

Seek out new networking opportunities by joining a professional organization or volunteering in your community AND

Engage the companies you'd like to work for on Twitter and LinkedIn AND

Take a class online or at a local community college to freshen up your skill set and enhance your résumé AND

Consult a professional résumé writer to make sure you résumé is fine-tuned and captivating

"You need be willing to try any crazy idea you get to make [your goal] happen; give up on the tactics that aren't working and pour more into the ones that look more promising. Do that over and over again and you'll get what you want," Tervooren says.

Take off your blinders

While it's important to have goals, it's also important to make sure you don't get so set on one particular path that you miss out on other opportunities that may prove equally rewarding.

"You cannot get so stuck or focused on that one goal that you forget to see other opportunities that might be even better than your original goal," says Jason O'Neill, teen entrepreneur and author of "Bitten By the Business Bug." "While goals are good in theory, if someone doesn't reach their goal, they often feel like they failed. However, if they take off their blinders, keep their eyes open, they just may see some other direction they never even thought of."

Accept that waiting is part of the process

It's important to remember that your goals won't happen overnight, and that you need to maintain a positive attitude in order to persist successfully. Believing that your goals will happen in your ideal time-frame will only lead to discouragement, so be willing to wait for your reward.

"The ability to delay gratification is vital," says Dr. Sylvia Gearing, a clinical psychologist in Dallas and owner of Gearing Up Counseling Centers. "Sacrificing short-term pleasure for a long-term goal is key here. Success has everything to do with tenacity. The world is full of intelligent, talented people who never achieved anything -- simply because they gave up."

Essentially, while persistence is necessary in achieving any goal, blind persistence isn't. Pouring your time and energy into a method of achieving you goal -- when that method isn't working -- is a waste of time. Trying every avenue you can think of in order to achieve a goal, on the other hand, is when persistence really does pay.

Kaitlin Madden is a writer and blogger for CareerBuilder.com and its job blog, The Work Buzz. She researches and writes about job search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues. Follow @CBForJobSeekers on Twitter.

Copyright 2010 CareerBuilder.com. All rights reserved. The information contained in this article may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without prior written authority.

Story Filed Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - 11:41 AM

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