Activity and “busy-ness” are so prized in our society that it can become a badge of honour to talk about how many hours you are working, how many balls you are juggling, and how few hours you sleep.
In fact someone very close to me loves to use the saying “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, and I have pointed out that he will be doing that way too soon if he doesn’t actually get some sleep while he is alive!
Taking time for daytime renewal and nightime sleep are both crucial for our well-being, and a shortage of either has a huge impact on our ability to be effective in our lives. We often delude ourselves that we can pack everything into our day without our exhaustion and/or emotions affecting us in our work but our physiological, mental and emotional states are so closely intertwined that they affect each other even when we are not aware of it ourselves.
Our bodies acclimatise to our environment and so we begin to accept whatever we are experiencing as normal, whether that be an inability to wind down, feeling exhausted, crankiness, poor memory, brain fog or a lack of sex drive. As we increasingly run on cortisol our hippocampus and pre-frontal lobe literally shrink, which further impairs our memory, our emotional control and our decision making ability.
In fact someone very close to me loves to use the saying “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, and I have pointed out that he will be doing that way too soon if he doesn’t actually get some sleep while he is alive!
Taking time for daytime renewal and nightime sleep are both crucial for our well-being, and a shortage of either has a huge impact on our ability to be effective in our lives. We often delude ourselves that we can pack everything into our day without our exhaustion and/or emotions affecting us in our work but our physiological, mental and emotional states are so closely intertwined that they affect each other even when we are not aware of it ourselves.
Our bodies acclimatise to our environment and so we begin to accept whatever we are experiencing as normal, whether that be an inability to wind down, feeling exhausted, crankiness, poor memory, brain fog or a lack of sex drive. As we increasingly run on cortisol our hippocampus and pre-frontal lobe literally shrink, which further impairs our memory, our emotional control and our decision making ability.
Wouldn’t it be terrific if we all had a little fuel gauge on the side of our head showing how high our level of cortisol is so that we could always know, and others would know, whether we were in the right frame of mind to be making certain decisions?!
Maybe in the future our Fitbits will be able to tell us our cortisol levels but for the time being the key is taking the time to stop and listen to our bodies, and acknowledge our emotions. If we pause and take a deep breath we can start to pay attention to all the small physiological changes in our body when we experience an emotional trigger. Once we start looking for the physical signs, such as tightness of breathing, a knot in the stomach, clammy palms, we can learn to spot the signs as they start to arise and then we have a moment when we can make a conscious choice about our emotional response, or leave the room if necessary before we say or do something we might regret!
Mindfulness is a hot topic at the moment but rather than get hung up on the idea of having to learn meditation think of it this way: it is simply paying close attention to what is happening both within us and around us, without judging. Taking just a few minutes a day to sit and breathe and focus our attention on something as simple as the breath will help you both identify your physical and emotional triggers, and to switch off the sympathetic nervous system (your fight or flight response), and switch on your para-sympathetic nervous system (rest and recover). This can help you refuel your energy levels, with research showing that just 12 weeks experience of mindfulness practice can lead to lower stress levels, a re-wiring of the pre-frontal lobe and an increase in self-awareness, and who wouldn't want those things?!
There is an old Zen master’s saying “You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes every day, unless you are too busy, in which case you should sit for an hour”.
And if you are really struggling to get started then consider this quote:
Mindfulness is a hot topic at the moment but rather than get hung up on the idea of having to learn meditation think of it this way: it is simply paying close attention to what is happening both within us and around us, without judging. Taking just a few minutes a day to sit and breathe and focus our attention on something as simple as the breath will help you both identify your physical and emotional triggers, and to switch off the sympathetic nervous system (your fight or flight response), and switch on your para-sympathetic nervous system (rest and recover). This can help you refuel your energy levels, with research showing that just 12 weeks experience of mindfulness practice can lead to lower stress levels, a re-wiring of the pre-frontal lobe and an increase in self-awareness, and who wouldn't want those things?!
There is an old Zen master’s saying “You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes every day, unless you are too busy, in which case you should sit for an hour”.
And if you are really struggling to get started then consider this quote:
If you are interested in re-balancing your own life or supporting your staff to re-balance theirs then please get in touch to discuss either one-on-one coaching or a workshop designed to improve the well-being and performance of your whole team, contact me at [email protected]
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