Being Mindful - does it make a difference?

Being Mindful  - does it make a difference?

Heard the term mindfulness and not sure what it means? Is it buried deep in mystical meditation and feels out of reach?

Stop wondering and give it a try. In the simplest of terms it can mean just being in the moment. Instead of dwelling on what’s happened in the past or being worried about the future, focus on the here and now. Yes, this is easy to say and recommend to others but it takes real practice to be able to shake off what we’ve been used to doing all our lives.

Take a moment right now to concentrate on your breathing. Take a deep breath and count slowly alongside in your head up to 6. Be aware of the breath travelling from your nose down through your throat and into your lungs. Feel the movement in your belly. Hold that breath for a further count of 2 and then exhale, this time slow counting to 4. Feel the breath taking the reverse journey and eventually out through your mouth. Repeat this two or three times and notice how your breathing slows down and how you can begin to focus better on a single thought.  While you are in this moment keep your attention on that thought. Your mind may wander as this is a natural process but concentrate on that one idea, that one goal, that one experience.

This gives you a very brief taster and will hopefully spur you to find out more.

Would you find benefit in combining some stress prevention, stress reduction, resilience-building and mindfulness?

If so, take my call for action and get in touch for more ideas or to receive some free stress-busting tips. 

It only takes a minute

Well as Take That once famously said ‘it only takes a minute girl….’  

Well they were talking about falling in love and I suppose I am also.  However, the love I am talking about is the love of oneself and caring about oneself enough to take a moment in time to be fully present.  Leaving the past where it is and letting the future take care of itself, just for a minute.

A little bit of mindfulness goes a long long way and in the same way that love can put a glow in your cheeks and some pep in your step so can this.  In fact this mindfulness exercise is going to take 30seconds – so beat that, Take That.

Just close your eyes and simply count your breaths. 

Slowly inhale and then slowly exhale – that’s one breath and so on.  For about 30 seconds you are going to be totally at one with your breathing.  Taking the time to feel the air enter your lungs all the way to your abdomen and then realising it through your mouth listening to the sound as it escapes through your lips when it leaves your body.  For 30 seconds, simply count your breaths.

That’s all …but I suppose that it only takes 30 seconds is not quite as catchy as it only takes a minute, but it can do a whole heap of good.

Have a mindful and present day.

Never make it home for dinner with the family?

Never make it home for dinner with the family?

Feeling like being stretched could shortly turn to snapping?

One senior leader in the second largest government department described how he ‘was clinging on with his fingertips’…..the room reverberated with the echoes of agreement.  This group similarly described working 25% more hours per week compared to three years before and only one in twenty-five regularly took a lunch break.

This was a very typical set of responses within a programme of 25 similar workshops for senior leaders and managers seeking to build resilience to overcome stress and improve all-round well-being.

Whilst self-awareness was high, there was no sign of the situation changing……until we set the challenge to get that family dinner back and be prepared to take some risks with unread e-mails and questioning whether unrealistic deadlines could be deferred.

The workshops were tailored to a series of factors about each group, for example, recorded levels of stress-related sickness absence; prevalence of long working hours; results of staff surveys outlining low engagement and concerns about decreasing discretionary effort.

So what did they all achieve? One delegate sent a simple message to say he had gone home after the workshop without accessing his e-mails to have the first family dinner in two years; another had experimented with gently challenging selected ‘by return’ deadlines and was pleasantly surprised by the flexibility he was met with; another said that taking time to be in the moment for a few minutes each day had given him the confidence to stop his habitual need to respond to management requests within his self-imposed 10 minute rule.

If any of this strikes a chord and you want to change then please let me know…..take back control

Resilience - The Art of Bouncing Back

There has been comparatively little research conducted on the area of resilience.  However, one of the pioneers of this area is Dr Ann S Masten.  In Masten’s book ‘Ordinary Magic resilience in development’, Dr Masten discusses the ordinariness of the resources required for one to become and maintain resilience. 

Did you know that the word resilience stems from the latin word reslire meaning to ‘bounce back’ and that is exactly what resilience is all about, the ability to bounce back from stressful or traumatic situations.

Masten’s work on resilience centres around the ability of children’s bounce back capabilities but she opens up her book talking about the fact that the word is used in many different walks of life.  For example, A metal’s ability to withstand cracking under high stress is called a resilient metal…we put all our electronic and engineering innovations through stress tests to establish how much pressure they can withstand before they break.

In life we test a person’s resilience by at how well they can recover after a knock back or bad experience. When they are able to do this quickly and, with some people, are even better from having had the experience we tend to imbue them with some sort of mystical or as Masten suggests magical power that escapes ordinary humans.  However, the simple fact is that this magic is ordinary and all it takes is the ability to access simple resources to make everyone as magical as the next resilient person.

Here are a couple of resilient resources borrowed from Paula Davis-Laack the founder of the Stress and Resilience Institute in America and the people that she borrowed them from.

Amy Cuddy’s Power Pose – Simply put, this is using your physicality to trick your brain.  When you are feeling in a weak position then strike a ‘Power Pose’ such as the ‘Superman stance’, no not when he is flying that would just be a bit ridiculous, his standing pose of hands on hips with leg shoulder width apart, chin held high and body perfectly balanced.  Cuddy’s research showed that adopting a power pose literally tricks your brain into feeling more powerful and therefore resulting in you feeling more empowered.   So the next time you feel as if you are being overpowered by work or just life think ‘Superman’ and strike a power pose for a minute and feel your power grow from within.

The second is so simple that you can do it right now and that is to change the password on your most used electronic device.  Think of how many times you actually enter your password.  So instead of it being a boring throw away moment make the password mean something. I.e. link it to a goal you are trying to achieve or something that makes you smile or a short empowering statement almost like a mantra and see how this continual reminder of your brilliance impacts your feeling of confidence and wellbeing.

If you would like to explore more from Ann S Masten or Paula Davis-Laack here are a couple of websites that might be useful

http://www.mtnforum.org/sites/default/files/publication/files/4720.pdf

www.pauladavislaack.com

Peace