Mindfulness in the Working World

 

Mindfulness for the Working Day

 

Dr Gaby Davies, Director of Mindfulness Training at Mindlab, recently shared her insight into Mindfulness at a corporate  Emotional Wellbeing Speaker Event. Mindfulness is ancient Buddhist approach to paying attention in a specific way: on purpose, non-judgementally and whilst remaining in the present moment. The practice increases awareness, focus and acceptance of the reality of the present moment. Alternatively, you could look at it as an exercise for the brain that enables attention and emotional regulation. Consider where you place your attention on a daily basis? I am sure that it isn’t into how you feel within your body; instead, it is more like you are on a mental treadmill of trying to work through the ‘to do’ list. What you may not realise is that the practice of mindfulness has been scientifically proven to improve health, wellbeing and performance.  Employees who practice the technique have reduced levels of stress and have fewer days off due to illness. A few other added bonuses include improved relationships, increased ability to relax and an increase of 53% in a sense of happiness at work.

 

The regular practice of mindfulness affects neuro-plasticity, which is the technical term for how the brain is wired. What this means is that you can essentially re-wire your brain. Many of us are of the belief that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks – however, where the brain is concerned you can completely rebuild, restructure and adjust your brain’s  neurotransmitters into old age. An old dog with a newly rewired brain can create their own new and invented tricks – you might even find that the rewired pooch becomes a trapeze artist. Imagine the potential! If you want to know more about this there is an excellent book called Mindsight, which provides plenty of information on this.

 

According to the Mindlab, Stress can be reduced when you recongise that you have been hijacked by an emotion. It is then that you re-align the mind and refocus within your body and count your breaths. Doing this regularly improves the individual’s ability to think in stress situations and affects your working memory capacity which improves mental adaptability in complex situations.  Just twelve minutes per day has an effect on DNA, reduces cellular aging and enables increased focus.

Mindfulness helps you to:

·         Come off auto-pilot
·         Provide clarity and objectivity
·         Respond rather than react
·         Enables you to experience situations as they are
·         Increases awareness
·         Development of flexible and adaptive behaviour
·         Reduce your stress and anxiety levels

 

So what do you need to do to generate all these benefits? Well you relax into the simplicity of breath. First you ‘check in’ this is when you pause and refocus your mind into your body and notice any areas of tension. When you locate these areas take a number of deep breaths as though directing the breath to the tension area. Actively choose to let go of the tension, which often results in a sigh.

 

 

 

Another technique is to simply breathe in and clench your fists and exhale and open them.  Make sure you do at least ten breaths. The same can be done with the shoulder blades with a ‘shoulder blade squeeze,’ where you sit up and motion your shoulder blades to meet as you inhale and then release as you exhale. After a minimum of ten breaths see how you feel. Obviously there are numerous other Mindfulness techniques that can be used; however, the above are easy and can be practised at the desk.

 

A few tips to maintain Mindfulness during the day:

·         Don’t get highjacked by your emotions
·         Understand yourself better
·         Develope clarity – the result is less misunderstandings
·         Reign in your wandering mind
·         Pay full attention to people – this improves resiliency
·         What can you do at the end of your busy day? What does your body need?
·         Question: who makes you hold your breath?
·         Question: What situation makes you hold your breath?
·         When aware of the situation that makes you hold your breath, breathe, release and let it go.
·         Give yourself a few mindfulness pauses during each day.
·         Practise this when going to the loo, getting a coffee, lining up for a sandwich etc.  recur
·         When you arrive home from work take some time to focus on the breath and let the day go

Enjoy your working day in peace:)

Ruby Writes  Books to Inspire:

LABYRINTHINE AMAZON.COM LINK: Link: http://amzn.com/B012FAYI5U




Olivia, the visionary artist, who fell by the wayside, discovers a way to access her creativity through the inner labyrinths. After visiting Labyrinthine, she awakes to find a mysterious figure holding a gun to her head. The episode triggers a series of events that reveal her boyfriend is attempting to swindle her, her agent has defied death and there is an underlying structure to people's life timings.

Rapidly, her world spirals into chaos. She learns that everyone on the planet has a divine blueprint contained within the iris of their eye. Unfortunately, there is a loophole in divinity. When death erases the blueprint, those who defy death affect the timing of everyone else on the planet. It seems the answers lie within Labyrinthine. However, the wisdom comes at a price.





21/08/15

 

"An Unexpected Gem"

***I was provided a copy of this audio book for the purpose of a review ***

With the required disclaimer out of the way, let me be brutally honest, I had not expected this little gem. In fact, I had expected my listening would be a bit rough and was fortified by it being less than 2 hours.

The synopsis says the author wrote the book as a takeaway from her evening classes on creative writing. My mental context was ... Community Ed evening classes ...and expected a well intended but kind of amateur product. However, I am interested in adult education, and batter my own nerd head against a giant personal creativity brick wall.

So you have an idea of my mind set... low expectations along with high interest.

Amateur hour it was NOT.

I don't know where the author teaches her class, but Sign Me Up! And bring the narrator. Wow. Two hours of unadulterated, straight up, right on, good learning material delivered by a close friend just sharing the material. The narrator's voice was warm, sincere without any artifact or pompous patronising, and well modulated throughout. The material was mind opening for me, with the right mix of the mechanics of writing exercises, sufficient context that using prompts now makes sense to me, and a sprinkling of the inner heart work of creativity through written material.

This was just what I didn't dare hope for in a how to creative writing listen.

Truly an unexpected gem and a learning and growing experience for me.

A keeper and one I will return to many times as I deconstruct my own wall, one block at a time.

Thank You, Ruby and Thank You, Erin.

A thought provoking workbook. 27 Aug. 2015

By SwordsLight - Published on Amazon.com

This book is great for some step by step, bullet by bullet guidelines on things you'll need to think about when starting a project and working through it. It's less inspiration and more practical advice for what questions you need to ask yourself before sitting down and creating characters, setting and story. It's rather like a workbook. I found it helpful to listen, pause and jot down notes, unpause and continue listening.

The narration was great too - it felt like the narrator was actually asking me insightful questions instead of blandly reciting the author's text.

 

 

TO BUY MONEY FARM ON AMAZON.com http://amzn.com/B010F04W9O

· Frode

06/08/15

5 STAR

"M.O.N.E.Y. is bad? This book is not!"

So Money Farm by Ruby Allure was a surprise! When I REALLY did not read things about this book I review for Audiobook Blast, I sometimes get books I don't know something about. BTW: I read 99% about the books I want to review, but this book I can't remember I did that for. Anyways: This was a nice surprise, and I think it is one of those books that is better the second time you read it. No joke! I listen to this twice before I made this! Money Farm makes you thin, and who does not like to hear a book that makes you think? It is an awesome book, that I will recommend to all that likes audiobooks, and really to people that does not!

Helen Lloyd English accent its the topic like a glow and a hand! Her "lady like" voice is so cold, and clear I feel that the author made this book thinking that Helen Lloyd would read it out loud! That is how I feel those two fits together! The 2 times 14 hrs and 6 mins I spend with her never feels boring or uninteresting! I would love to spend it again, and I will because this book I will hear again, and again, even when it is 14 hrs and 6 mins long! That is saying something!

I was provided this audiobook at no charge by the author, publisher and/or narrator in exchange for an unbiased review via AudiobookBlast dot com

 

Money, Health and Wellbeing

Money, Health and Wellbeing.

 

Who would have thought that money, a metal lump, can actually make you sick? Can you imagine worrying over a shell, how many shells you have and whether you will survive without those shells? You then dedicate the hours of your life accumulating shells and work yourself into the ground to survive. Over time you accumulate a mass of shells so that you can feel as though you have more shells than others because the more shells you have then the more important you are. What makes the illusion worse is that your peers view you in esteem according to how many shells you have. In fact if you have over a million shells your sense of power enables you to be viewed as something special, someone important. Then one day someone comes along and takes away your shells. Suddenly you are worth nothing in the shell view of the world. You then descend into depression because your life has collapsed because you have no shells. Your partner leaves you because you are shell-less and goes for someone who has plenty of shells to support their way of living. You realise he or she was actually a ‘Shell-digger’.

 

When you replace money with shells you become very aware how ridiculous attachment to money really is and how we define ourselves through it. Yet money is a reality we have to deal with. What’s more, money is one of the biggest causes of stress, anxiety and worry. If you consider the fact that these three negative states affect your immune system then why would you be surprised that money can directly affect your health?

 

About twelve years ago I was transitioning from working on cruise ships and returning to land to study my Master’s Degree. The transition resulted in me worrying about how I was going to survive financially - and boom – my lower back went. My fear that I would not be able support myself got me right at the base of my spine. It was so bad that I could not walk for two days and during the time I was in laying on my back I noticed the churn of thoughts about money streaming through my mind. Was it any wonder that this mental pattern had migrated to the base of my spine?

 

It was during a random conversation that someone told me that the lower back ‘going’ was a classic sign of financial worry. Me being as analytical as I am, thought ‘rubbish’. Yet the more I looked into it then the more I realised that during times in my life where I was financially worried then my back would go. It seemed that this was more common that I realised. Such a revelation made me realise that people’s bodies responded to their thoughts. It was then that I discovered somatic psychology and the relation between thoughts and illness.

 

Later on in my career I became a business analyst and worked trending financial patterns. At the same time I watched colleagues go through different wealth related phases. I noticed when they were under financial strain a number of them developed back issues. When they wanted to avoid money issues they developed stiff necks. Others got stomach aches when large bills came in. The most simple of all was when they had been worrying about finances they developed colds. Obviously there are far more factors involved yet money seemed to be a trigger for many of their health issues.

 

One of the main causes of relationship break-ups is down to money. With this in mind is there anything we can do to improve our wealth health?

Here are a few questions I asked myself to enable movement beyond the financial flus:

Am I willing to be completely responsible for my finances?

Have you ever looked at how you view money and how much of your money is you?

How can you separate your identity from how much money you have?

How can you demonstrate your self-worth without using money?

If you have debt why do you maintain it?

If you have debt what do you need to do to pay it off?

How can the action of paying off debt be stress free? Note: a tip is to automate the pay off on your pay day so you the debt gets paid off without you having the temptation to touch the money.

What if money was simply an object or a tool?

What thoughts do I have about money?

How do my thoughts change when I start feeling stressed about money?

Where do I feel this in my body?

Have there been times in my life when I have become ill due to financial worry? Where did that turn up in my body?

 

Once one becomes aware of the patterns then one can take action. I read numerous books on finance and money management: The Richest Man in Babylon, Think and Grow Rich, The Rules of Wealth and The 4 hour Working Week. These were excellent books and provided plenty of information on how to make and manage money. Yet I had not fixed the actual issue – my attitude to money.  Nor had I looked at the health aspect. So a few more books later: You can heal your life, healing body healing mind and numerous other somatic psychology books, I realised that the body, the mind and our monetary situations were all linked.

 

 

 

I needed to understand how money made me feel and what emotions I experienced. So there I am feeling guilt when I go into an overdraft. I then felt angry when I received a huge bill. I felt levels of excitement at purchasing a new dress. I am sure you don’t need to my emotions about buying new underwear. The emotional money diary is revealing especially when you write down how you feel, the thoughts and why you need to buy something.

So I may as well share this with you – I realised that quite often that spending money compensated for boredom and made me feel free. After I had bought an object (that I did not really need) I would then descend into a cycle of guilt. After a few weeks patterns emerge and you will see what you are really up to. Through the money diary you may well identify beliefs such as ‘money must make me miserable.’ ‘I will never have enough money’. It is worth writing these beliefs down and affirming the opposite. This can make you feel quite queasy when you really hit an in-depth belief. When you do an affirmation over such an issue do it until you either feel free of the belief or you make a large exhale. Once you are clear of old beliefs then it is time to take action. Learn how to manage money, monitor your thoughts and shift them from worry to positives. It is amazing how the development of self-awareness relaxes you. The more relaxed you are then the less likely you are to become ill due to money.  

 

I hope the above inspires you. If you have any examples of how you shifted attitudes to money then please share in the commentsJ

 

MONEY FARM Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B010BJOYFQ

LABYRINTHINE Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B011LX0WUW

A SHORT COURSE IN CREATIVE WRITING Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B012OV8JPU