Regular relaxation is essential for a long life and personal effectiveness. Here are some techniques for relaxing physically that are used by the most successful and highest paid people in America.

Take Time Off Every Week
First of all, work only five or six days per week, and rest completely on the seventh day. Every single study in this area shows that you will be far more productive in the five or six days that you work if you take one or two days off completely than you ever would be if you worked straight through for seven days.

Get Your Mind Busy Elsewhere
During this time off, do not catch up on reports, organize your desk, prepare proposals, or do anything else that requires mental effort. Simply let your mind relax completely, and get busy doing things with your family and friends. Maybe work around the house, go for a walk, engage in physical exercise, watch television, go to a movie, or play with your children. Whatever you do, discipline yourself to shut your mental gears off completely for at least one 24-hour period every seven days.

Get Away on Mini-Vacations
Second, take one three-day vacation every three months, and during that time, refrain from doing any work. Do not attempt to catch up on even a few small things. If you do, you keep your mental gears in motion, and you end up neither resting nor properly doing work of any quality.

Take Big Chunks of Down Time
Third, take at least two full weeks off each year during which you do nothing that is work-related. You can either work or relax; you cannot do both. If you attempt to do a little work while you are on vacation, you never give your mental and emotional batteries a chance to recharge. You’ll come back from your vacation just as tired as you were when you left.

Give Yourself a Break Today
If you are involved in a difficult relationship, or situation at work that is emotionally draining, discipline yourself to take a complete break from it at least one day per week. Put the concern out of your mind. Refuse to think about it. Don’t continually discuss it, make telephone calls about it or mull it over in your mind. You cannot perform at your best mentally if you are emotionally preoccupied with a person or situation. You have to give yourself a break.

Go For a Walk in Nature
Since a change is as good as a rest, going for a nice long walk is a wonderful way to relax emotionally and mentally. As you put your physical body into motion, your thoughts and feelings seem to relax all by themselves.

Eat Lighter Foods
Also, remember that the process of digestion consumes an enormous amount of physical energy. Therefore, if you eat lighter foods, you will feel better and more refreshed afterward. If you eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain products, your digestive system will require far less energy to process them.

Be Good to Yourself
Since your diet has such an impact on your level of physical energy, and through it your levels of mental and emotional energy, the more fastidious you are about what you put into your mouth, the better you will feel and the more productive you will be. We know now that foods high in fat, sugar, or salt are not good for your body. The lighter the foods you eat, the more energy you have.

Action Exercises
Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, plan your weeks in advance and build in at least one day when you will relax from work completely. Discipline yourself to keep this date.

Second, reserve, book and pay for your three day vacations several months in advance. Once you’ve paid the money, you are much more likely to go rather than put it off.

Third, decide that you will not work at all during your vacations. When you work, work. And when you rest, rest 100% of the time. This is very important.

NEW YORK — Is 90 the new 50?

Not yet, aging researchers say, but medical breakthroughs to significantly extend life and ease the ailments of getting older are closer than many people think.

Harvard Medical School professor who has made headlines with research into the health benefits of a substance found in red wine called resveratrol.

Speaking on a panel of aging experts, Sinclair had the boldest predictions. He said scientists can greatly increase longevity and improve health in lab animals like mice, and that drugs to benefit people are on the way.

“It’s not an if, but a when,” said Sinclair, who co-founded Sirtris Pharmaceuticals to pursue such drugs. The company, which is testing medicine in people with Type 2 diabetes, was recently bought for $720 million by GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s second-largest drug maker.

Aging, particularly aging well and staying healthy, is increasingly a hot topic as the population grays, people live longer and tens of millions of baby-boomers enter or approach their 60s.

The experts here Sunday night said aging research, once a backwater of science, is experiencing an explosion of interest and optimism.

The biggest aging myth is that “cosmetic surgery makes you younger. I think attitude is the thing that keeps you young. And energy and activity and just keep moving.”

Robert Butler, a pioneer of aging research who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for the book “Why Survive? Being Old in America,” agreed that “people live longer and better by having a sense of purpose.” He said that while medicine and biology are important for longevity, having friendships and close relationships also have a big impact.

Butler said a revolution in longevity has already arrived, noting that in the last century life spans increased 30 years, more than in the previous 5,000 years of human history.

Sinclair said  at the longevity event he cautioned that right now there is no proven magic pill to extend life. His suggestion? Exercise.

When Sally Field accepted her Oscar, she yelled out “You like me!” She has been teased about it ever since but it was a natural sincere response to hard work to achieve success. The acclaim from her peers, industry, friends and the millions that watch the Oscar that night.

True, you do not have a party every time one of your employees cleans up their desk or when they remember to do their job well. Your company, your department and individual employees are are worth the star-studded recognition.

Very few of us get moments quite like that in our lives, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t internally long for and deserve public recognition

Here are a few ideas:

Personal development such as earning a degree

The opening of a new office

Meeting earning and profit goals

Promotions

Winning a public service award

Good idea

Caught in the act of doing something kind for one another

Take advantage of these milestones to create recognition. Make it a little holiday with balloons, candy and group participation. Cash is a usually poor choice because it often goes quick or is used to pay a bill. Trinkets are just stored away and forgotten. How many do you already have in your desk or at home from over the years?

A restaurant or gift vacation beginning as low as $25.00 with a high perceived value will not only have them performing it will have them sharing their experience with all they know. They choose the location, the date and often take the family with them for their own private celebration.

** Tell your employees how to win. Employees need to know ahead of time what type of things are important and what they have to do to earn it.

** Create and share a plan for achieving with easy to understand steps and monitoring along the way.

** What are the rules? Will probation discount employees from being recognized at this time.

** Will the recognition be once a month or annually?

Remember presentation counts. Employees should feel that the recognition is something special, not an afterthought. You can’t always bust the budget with a lobster dinner but do what you can to make the occasion memorable. Restaurant incentives can provide 10 dinners to recognized restaurants over 10 months for $25.00. This is a perceived value of $100!

As you plan, keep your efforts in scale. Don’t make an event to honor a single employee with a bigger bang than the ceremony recognizing the company’s own accomplishment.

Reflect the department and company’s culture. If you are a freewheeling start-up company, a black-tie may not be what gets employees most excited. On the other hand, swing night at the roller rink might not be the best choice for commercial bankers. Events should feel like a natural extension of what appeals to most people in your company’s culture.

Don’t attach strings. One boss complained that employees never thanked her when she recognized them. She likened the recognition to Christmas or birthday gifts and said that she expected comparable thank-yous. She decided to solved the problem when she recognized employees who worked on a new product launch then asked them to make comments at the presentation so that other department managers were aware of their gratitude.

Make it personal. When an employee has an accomplishment outside of the office they have shared with you send them a card or flowers to express your congratulations.

Saying thank you is powerful. Say it with sincerity and say it often.