STOP! 21 Stops to Reduce Stress and Enhance Joy: Recent Episodes
Eric Parmenter
“All too often, we seek happiness by adding new actions to our calendars when we should be subtracting them. STOP! looks at our frantic lives with fresh eyes, offering guidance to help us focus on our top priorities.” – Adam Grant, PhD,
I love spending time with my friends and family. The simplest things in life give me the most pleasure: cooking a good meal, enjoying my friends.
―Cindy Morgan
Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is far better to be alone than to be in bad company.
―George Washington
If you want to soar with the eagles, don’t hang out with the turkeys.
―Author Unknown
I am positive that personal finance is 80 percent behavior and only 20 percent head knowledge. Our concentration on behavior—realizing that most folks have a good idea of what to do with money but not how to do it—has led us to a different view of personal finance.
―Dave Ramsey, The Total Money Makeover
In the US and much of the industrialized world, cheap clothes are everywhere. At any fast-fashion chain store, you’ll find piles upon piles of jeans that cost less than $20. The problem is, all that low-cost clothing is produced, sold, and finally discarded in mass quantities, which has serious consequences for the environment, the workers paid poorly to make them, and even the mental well-being of the people buying them.
―Mark Bain, “The Case for Expensive Clothes,” The Atlantic
. . . Our impulses are too strong for our judgment sometimes.
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
To me, impulsive means foolish. But if a person’s not a little impulsive, they don’t have a pulse.
―Jarod Kintz, Whenever You’re Gone, I’m Here for You
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
—Jesus, Matthew 6:34 (NIV)
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
—Henry David Thoreau
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
—Theodore Roosevelt
We all do it: Texting while walking, sending emails during meetings, chatting on the phone while cooking dinner. In today’s society, doing just one thing at a time seems downright luxurious, even wasteful.
—Amanda MacMillan, 12 Reasons to Stop Multitasking Now!
With great power comes great responsibility, however, and scientists are starting to learn that spending so much time staring at our phones is actually doing some damage to our physical, social and intellectual lives.
—K. Thor Jensen
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.
—Yogi Berra
Do you set personal or work goals? I have set goals for many years and sometimes those goals have been D.U.M.B., because they
· Don’t
· Up
· My
· Behavior
“Mr. Carnegie,” Taylor said. “I would advise you to make a list of the ten most important things you can do. And then, start doing number one.” And, the story goes, a week later Taylor received a check for $10,000.
—Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy
The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.
—Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit
The ability to live in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
― Abraham Maslow
Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.
―Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Flow: The Psychology
of Optimal Experience
If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.
―Hippocrates
In all things moderation, including moderation ― Arnold Beckman
Homer Simpson said, “Alcohol is a way of life, and it’s my way of life, and I aim to keep it.” Well, alcohol is a way of life for many people today. However, as with most things in life, too much of a good thing can be dangerous.
The solution is simple but not easy. STOP drinking too much. For those for whom alcohol is an addiction and cannot stop taking a drink, total abstinence has been proven to be the only viable solution. Alcoholics Anonymous is based on this principle—staying sober one day at a time. For the rest of us, follow Beckman’s Rules for Success.
Do you feel sluggish, lacking energy and uncomfortable in your clothes? Are you tired of dieting? Listen to this podcast to learn what to STOP doing to regain vitality and look your best. This is not about diet and nutrition but about lifestyle habits.
STOP! is not a podcast about health, wellness, stress reduction, diet, and exercise. Stop is a podcast based on the latest behavioral and brain science, combined with his Eric Parmenter's own life experiences, to help you figure out what you can STOP doing to create more space in your life to enhance your joy, your wellbeing and productivity, so that you can live a life on purpose. Now more than ever, we need to STOP! Eric draws upon 30+ years as a consultant and advisor to employers on wellness and health benefits programs to address the off-the-chart stress levels and lack of joy that too many of us are experiencing in our lives. Candid and funny, Eric speaks in plain English, maybe with a hint of a slow southern drawl, while providing plenty of resources to aid readers seeking to STOP! negative behaviors.