Do you sometimes feel like you're not in control of your life or wellbeing? These tips will help you create a life that works for you.
If you're reading this, I can guarantee you own of the most complex things known to man, and it didn't come with an instruction manual! Guess what it is? Your brain! No wonder at times it can get the best of us. Which means, straight away you can cut yourself a break and stop beating yourself up that your mind’s seemingly in control of YOU at times! With that in mind. (wasn’t meant to be a pun). Let's look at what this “wellbeing” thing is all about, and I'll start by asking you a question…but you’ve got to be completely honest.
If I was to say to you, what does mindfulness mean to you? What would you say? “A sense of peace” or “complete and utter focus” or “to be consciously aware of the moment?” All true. But you know what, when I deliver this as part of a training course, you know what I often get?…Mindfulness is just for tree hugging incense, burning, vegan, eating herbal tea drinkers! Which is hysterical and I totally get it, I can completely appreciate why these thoughts can spring to mind, so I just want to reassure you, what you’re not going to get from me is a preach as to how you MUST get involved in mindfulness or take up yoga, meditation or anything like that – I’d encourage you to find your own way and embrace what works for you.
Why even bother looking after our minds?
So question….What’s the point of looking after our mind? What's it even do for us? Well it’s the ONLY thing that allows us to experience our every moment - happiness, creativity, spontaneity, it enables us to perform at our best. It's literally the thing we experience life through. Now, obviously you get that! But I wonder, what’s the balance between the time and energy you dedicate to maintaining your physical fitness vs commitment and focus towards quietening your mind?
I’ll bring this to life. Another question for you. Do you actively drink one and a half litres of water every single day? Do you actively go out of your way to get eight hours of sleep, every single night? Do you actively go out of your way to do one hour of exercise three times a week? How about eating five fruit and veg every single day? Now I'm sure for some it's a “yeah Tom 100% I do”. But actually for a great many of us, we don't. We know what's good for us, but we don't do it. So let’s take this a step further - How much fun are you to be around when you've had a lack of sleep? Now, let me add to that. What about a lack of sleep AND hungry? I'd be willing to bet you’re not fun to be around at all (no offense)…Why is that? Because those things absolutely affect our mood. Good news. You’ve just identified a quick win, a simple first step, to improving your mood – eat well and get some sleep! So let me ask you another question. What exactly is “wellbeing?”
That's an interesting one. Isn't it? wellbeing is finally front and centre of our worlds. It's been a long time coming, it's importance is shared on social media, on the news, highlighted by celebrities and being embraced by corporates But actually, what does wellbeing consist of? The World Health Organization actually describes it as “a state of complete mental, physical, and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” and while that's all well and good, it’s somewhat dry and unsexy. So let's break it down and explore six areas that impact upon our sense of wellbeing
1. Self-Acceptance: So what is meant by that? Having a strong sense of self-worth. Being comfortable in your own skin. To be comfortable in taking ownership of your values and your principles. You’ve emotional intelligence. You’re capable of respectfully standing up for yourself.
2. Personal Growth: You’re open to new experiences. You actively seek opportunities for growth, becoming bigger and better in some way shape or form day to day. Even when there's no monetary reward attached to it. It's embracing the pleasure of feeling as if you’re continuously improving yourself.
3. Purpose and Meaning: I suppose you could call this having a strong goal orientation, although that sort of language doesn't always resonate with everybody. So let's just break it down. What is purpose? Having a sense of purpose might be, you want to make the world a more forgiving and inclusive place, clarity of which would in turn inform your decisions and actions. To bring this to life further. Imagine an asteroid hurtling towards earth destined to impact in a years time. What would you want to do with that time? There’s your sense of purpose. So what about “meaning?” A sense of meaning might best be described as – In what moments do you feel completely and utterly in the zone? Identify that…and you’ve found your experience of meaning.
4. Environment: Nothing to do with climate, environment is where you find yourself, be it your workplace or at home, within which you’ve a sense of control in your circumstances.
5. Autonomy: Do you at times like to be able to do what you like, when you like, however you like? To be honest I already know the answer to that because Author Daniel Pink has already identified “autonomy” as a universal human trait for motivation. What changes can YOU make to experience it more?
6. Positive Relationships: Having a network of people in your world you can trust, are supportive and provide intimacy.
Where’s the area of focus for you? Why’s it important you make those changes? How will those changes make a positive difference for you?
We ALL experience the same feelings…
So, let's take this one step further and think about experiences that each and everyone one of us has day to day. It can be hugely reassuring to discover those things that impact upon us and trouble us from time to time are not unique – Life isn’t picking on you, we ALL do this… As human beings we tend to be what’s called, “future focused.” What do I mean? Well, even today, I'd be willing to bet that at some point you've been thinking about what you're going to be doing (or have to do) later on today, this evening or tonight. That thinking has probably also extended into what you're going to be doing at the weekend, next week, even your tentative plans for the coming months! And you've been doing a form of this all your life - We think about what school we're going to go to, what exams we're going to take, what job we want, what’s next for our career…we’re continually looking forward. (I’m not suggesting by the way, that planning, scheduling and organising aren’t important things - Clearly they are).
That said. It’d be amiss of me not to highlight the past. Obviously for some people their past experiences are of great significance, with sadly trauma and intense emotional impact. And if that's you, obviously I would encourage you to gain professional help. However, the thing with the “past” is, it’s exactly that. It no longer exists, it’s simply a narrative that’s playing over and over in our minds. So let me bring this to life with an example. I'd be willing to bet you've been for a job interview, or a date or maybe met a key stakeholder or client, and on your journey home you’ve replayed the conversation over and over again, thinking to yourself, “why did I say this?” “Why didn't I say that?” it’s a troubling hour or so of “over-thinking” but come the next morning, our busy lives take over, we get past our minor emotional discomfort and we move on.
Why then is any of this important? Let’s return to our future focus. Take a moment now…If you think about some of the things that are causing you feelings of anxiety and stress in your life, how many of those things are actually happening RIGHT NOW, as you read this? Probably not many. A great deal of our mental turmoil is based upon our future focus, worrying about stuff that’s not actually happening right here right now! Filling our minds with “what if's.” So how do we prevent our minds from doing this? Well here's where you get someone really annoying like me, turns around to you and says, “you know what you need to do?...”Live for the moment and put things into perspective!” And sure that's all well and good, but it's a bloody hard thing to do at times. Luckily psychologist Martin Seligman, created some great questions that can support our thinking.
1. What's the worst that can happen.?
2. What's the one thing that you can do to help stop the worst from happening?
3. What's the best that can happen?
4. What's the one thing you can do to make the best thing happen.?
5. What's the most likely thing that will happen?
6. And what can you do to handle the most likely thing? If indeed it happens?
But let’s get real…Who at times when life's getting you down, sometimes reaches out for a little retail therapy to ease the pain? Just something to lift you up, create a little happiness in your life – You deserve it, right? Now seriously I’m not trying to put you on a guilt trip, what’s not to like about going to decent restaurants, having wonderful holidays and buying the latest gadgets! I’d imagine if I was to ask you, “do you like beng happy?” you’d probably think it’s a ridiculous question…Of course you do! So let’s explore happiness, because you maybe surprised to learn that it’s not necessarily happiness you’re striving for - it’s possibly something else.
Are you sure you want to be happy?
Think about it, what is happiness? Happiness is just an emotion. It’s transient. You have ups and downs. That's just life. But happiness isn’t a permanent thing. Contentment however, a general overall feeling of satisfaction, now that’s something to work towards. The thing is when we experience emotional pain (dissatisfaction with something in our lives) what do we do? We seek comfort in the buying of “things” or perhaps look to change our jobs because that’ll give us more money. Thing is there'll always be another job, that always be another gadget, it’s a never-ending cycle.
So what happens is…You experience emotional pain (I can’t live without the latest mobile phone!!!), you go and buy it, it makes you feel pretty good in the moment, then over time you get bored with that “thing” and guess what happens? More emotional pain! So we begin the whole process again! I'll bring this to life. Think about that thing you were really excited about purchasing perhaps a year, 18 months ago. I'd be willing to bet when you think about it right now, it doesn't fill you with quite the same level of excitement it once did. And therein lies the rub. These things we reach out for because we feel they're going to bring us happiness. They don't. At least not for long periods of time. Now before you think I’m a complete kill-joy - I'm not suggesting for one moment you shouldn't have aspirations or enjoy the finer things in life. What I’m highlighted here is that lasting happiness has a great deal to do with gratitude, enjoying and appreciating those things you’ve been blessed with, good health, supportive family, secure job, a reliable car, the fact you can have food delivered to your door, a warm shower, enjoy central heating, food on your plate, a roof over your head, a garden to relax in, your pet who loves you, free health care, a caring community…the list of what you can be grateful for goes on.
You want to feel safe, secure and in control…
So let's build on this and explore further other themes that are relevant to absolutely all of us…. So we've all got a primal urge to feel safe, secure and in control and everyone suffers from two basic fears - The fear of abandonment. And the fear of overwhelm. I appreciate from a work-based perspective abandonment probably isn’t language you’d use, so how about “unsupported?” Abandonment leads to feelings of anxiety. Overwhelm to feelings of stress and a feelings of being unable to cope.
So what even is stress? We hear it mentioned everywhere all the time…so where’s it come from? Stress is when we feel threatened and we believe that we're not able to meet what we perceive as a threat. It comes from two distinct areas, external stress and internal stress. External stress for example could be an event - you've just heard an announcement within your workplace that there's going to be redundancies so there’s potential job insecurity, giving you sleepless nights. Or it could be a situation happening around you. For example you've been tasked with delivering a presentation to a key stakeholder or an important client, and public speaking isn't your thing! And then there’s other people! There's no getting away them. Perhaps there’s people around you you find obnoxious, abrasive or confrontational.
What is stress?
And then of course we've got internal stresses. So our beliefs. Our thoughts and our feelings. More of which we’ll explore later in this blog.
But of course stress in moderation is good for us. We know we need stress (or if you’d prefer, a feeling of being stretched) to perform at our best. Obviously we don't want to be subjected to high levels of stress, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year however staying in “your comfort zone” isn’t where the magic happens! It’s fair to say if you’re not pushing yourself in some area of life you're probably not growing, expanding and becoming big and better, enjoying that feeling of personal growth. So feeling stretched at times is a great thing. That said being in the stretch zone while great it’s ideally only for appropriate periods of time. If we remain in the stretch zone, we’ll find we enter the “strain” zone and when that happens life has a habit of catching up with us and if not identified early enough a sense of overwhelm enters our world and we’re forced to make changes!
Now, before we move on, let me just go back to the comfort zone because it definitely gets a bad rap at times and I think it's got a hugely important message for us. To bring this to life however you’re going to need to work with me a little, because I need to create a scenario and it's a bit of a strange one. First of all have a think about YOU in your comfort zone - If possible think about it from a work perspective. Now I want you to big yourself up. What I mean by that is, think of those things you’re responsible for that others may consider to be difficult, challenging or complicated but secretly between you and I, they’re a walk in the park for you. You could do them with your eyes shut! Okay. Now, you've pictured that. Just imagine I was to wave a magic wand and you were to go back in time and discover yourself standing in front of your 15 year old self. You then turned to your 15 year old self and said “tomorrow, you're going to be doing all of these things” (“these things” being YOU at work in your comfort zone). How would your 15 year old self respond? Now I'd be willing to bet they'd probably experience a sudden onset of panic, overwhelm and be shaking in their boots. Thing is though, YOU’VE just admitted that those things are ALL a walk in the park for you…So what’s this telling us?
It means those things you've got coming up, those things you're thinking about in the future causing you anxiety and worry, guess what, even though they may feel as if they're in your stretch zone right now, one day they'll be in your comfort zone. You've coped in the past and you'll cope in the future. You’re living proof of that. It’s a really powerful message your “comfort zone” has to share. And hopefully provides a small sense of reassurance.
We tell ourselves stories and give meaning to stuff!
Let’s continue on our journey of identifying other psychological experiences, universal for ALL of us. We tell ourselves stories! What I mean by that is, when stuff happens in your life, it’s just stuff that happens - It doesn't mean ANYTHING at all. The ONLY time stuff going on around you means anything… is when YOU give it meaning. For example, you could be stuck in a traffic jam, perhaps you're driving along, you were hoping to get to someplace at a particular time. But here you are stuck in a jam. And that’s all it is, you're in a car stuck with loads and loads of other cars all together in a long line, not moving. That’s the reality of the situation. However your internal dialogue starts to create meaning. Perhaps you get cross and angry because you're going to be late for wherever it is you're heading, or you get frustrated that the traffic doesn’t appear to moving because “some idiot can’t drive properly and has probably had an accident and delayed me!” Which is or course a completely made up story as you’ve NO idea what’s happened up ahead! But now you’re allowing your thoughts to run wild, which in turn adds even greater emotional turmoil. Alternatively of course you’re capable of applying an entirely different narrative to your situation. One of calm, peace and composure. That might sound like – “great what a lovely opportunity to just to chill and relax.” Perhaps have a conversation, listen to music, a podcast, whatever…You’re completely in control of that of how you view your made up scenario.
That said I totally get it. It can be super hard and I’m not suggesting it’s an easy thing to do. But what if I said, “you can literally change your thinking in a heartbeat!” How would you respond? If you're thinking to yourself, don’t be utterly ridiculous NOT in a million years. I’ll give you an example. Just imagine you’re driving to the supermarket. As you pull into the car park AMAZING, there’s a space right outside the entrance. So being the health and safety conscious person you are, you swing round and prepare to reverse in. In that moment somebody else drives in and parks right in the space you’re about to reverse into! Is it reasonable to suggest in that moment you’re probably not best pleased! So for the purposes of the story I'm going to go over the top and imagine you’re actually fuming! So you jump out your car, walk over bang on their window and start to give let them know EXACTLY what you think about them. In that moment, they jump out the car, turn to you and say - I'm SO sorry. My partner's gone into labour right here at the entrance I need to get in there as soon as possible.
Is it fair to say that in that moment you’d go from incredibly cross and angry, to being supportive, empathising and asking how you can help? If your answer is yes. You've just demonstrated to yourself you can literally change your thinking in the blink of an eye. I'm not suggesting it's easy. What I am suggesting is you absolutely 100% can do it.
Our beliefs determine our actions…
This leads us nicely onto our “beliefs.” Do you believe you can control your thinking that easily - or not? Let's just expand upon that a little bit. Another question for you. What is a belief? Where do they come from? You know you've got them, but how are they formed? In simple terms they’re our brains way on making sense of our worlds. Beliefs can be broken into three key areas. Opinions, beliefs, and convictions. For example you may have the opinion that since I'm a celebrity get me out of here has been filmed in Wales – It’s sucked. However one of your friends thinks it's SO much better now it’s based in Wales and they shouldn't go back to filming in Australia. Now, neither of you have massive emotional attachment to the thoughts, it's just an opinion, you could be easily swayed by one or another. So I suppose you could class an opinion as a lightweight belief.
Next up you've got beliefs. Beliefs are formed through personal experiences, your conditioning from your parents, your culture, your friends. Your beliefs provide you with a strong sense of certainty. They help you feel as if you’re presenting a consistent self-image. Thing is what we’re not always aware of is, your beliefs…may not always be YOUR beliefs! You may well be living somebody else's beliefs. Why’s this important? Here’s a real-life story. I'm an asthmatic. My mother was anti-steroids. I had childhood asthma and didn't take the inhaler that would prevent asthma attacks because my mum from an early age had planted the seed in my head that steroids weren’t a good thing. My asthma was stress-related, as I entered adult life and found myself under-pressure I'd have repeated, significant and sudden asthma attacks. I finally got to the point where my additional responsibilities (having children) forced me to rethink my priorities. I began taking the drug – Guess what? I haven't had an asthma attack in over 17 years! So how do we identify our limiting and at times distorted beliefs? Well that’s where coaching comes into play. Coaching can help us get past our limiting beliefs through the asking of powerful questions, forcing you to delve deeply into why it is you do what you and if’s there’s a moment of epiphany make changes. Who’s beliefs are you living?
The third and final element to beliefs is convictions. Convictions are exceedingly strongly held beliefs. Those with strongly held convictions attach great emotional intensity to these beliefs. They can be highly resistant to questioning from where a particular belief came from. You’ll find language used by those with strong convictions sound like “it should be done this way” and “it must be done that way.” Now there’s positives too, someone with conviction can be very determined and get things no matter what – On the flip side there’s rigidity and tunnel vision. What beliefs have you got that you unquestionably follow? And never question?
Your rules impact upon the quality of your relationships…
Now what we've also got, is something very closely linked to our beliefs. Our rules. Those things you consider to be the “right way” of doing things. I'll bring this to life, and try to make it humorous. For example, you might have a rule that says after a shower a wet towel NEVER gets left on the bed. Or the toilet seat HAS to go down after its used or perhaps you’ve a rule that says the dishwasher MUST be started before everyone goes to bed. Thing is, when someone “breaks” your rule, that’s typically when arguments start. Will the world keep turning if you were to let go of some of your rules? The answer is probably yes. The quick solution – communicate. Let others know what your “rules’ are. Here’s why that maybe time well spent. Our rules can have a huge impact upon our relationships. For example, if your rule is “when I buy you flowers it means I love you” but your partners “rule” is “when someone makes the bed for me I feel loved” you can see why even when you’re doing what you consider to be a nice thing, it’s impact upon your partner may not have the same emotional significance. Don't get me wrong. Some rules are actually good. They create structure in our lives. So you may have a rule, that says…I’ll always be there for my children to pick them up at 3:30 from school. So what rules can you let go of? Or would at least, be wise to share?
I’ll leave you with this. When it comes to wellbeing having a philosophy and psychology that that empowers you is a positive foundation. So ask yourself these questions…
1. Are you a realistic optimist? Do you appreciate life isn't all rainbows and lollipops? That life won’t always offer what YOU want, you’ll have knock backs and tough times – But despite this you’re able to maintain a positive and balanced outlook?
2. How do you handle “failure?” Do you learn from your mistakes?
3. When life challenges you, are you able to make choices and take actions without excessive emotional disturbance?
4. Do you live your life according to your own values? Not allowing others other's views and opinions to sway you. Are you able to respectfully acknowledge others opinions. Appreciating it’s simply their world view and not yours?
5. Have you got a strong sense of self-worth? What do I mean by that? Are you able to hold true to your convictions? Those things that define who you are?
6. Are you clear on what's important to YOU? Are you open and true to yourself? Can you look yourself in the mirror and say that with honesty?