Tag: #wellbeing

The importance of simplicity in our messaging

I’ve worked in technical fields throughout my career, using words that most people would simply not understand. A key skill has been to make these things understandable and relatable for anyone.

I could easily bamboozle the people around me through specialist language, acronyms and obscure terminology. But learning to explain things to people in simple, short sentences has greatly enhanced my ability to get people to actually care about the stuff I’m talking about. Unfortunately, many people are not doing this very basic step, even though it is available to all of us.

Our language creates how we experience the world

This week, I’ve been in several conversations about the massive power language has in the way we live our life.
The language we use is the way we create our reality. For example, if we say that the meeting we’re going to have this afternoon is going to be ‘tedious’ or ‘boring’, we are already creating this to be how we are going to experience it. I’ve been far more mindful in the way I have been prejudging situations. Holding off on these labels has meant I show up in situations far more open. This in of itself is a massive lesson.
But the power of language goes even deeper. The way we describe events can cause emotional reactions which frame our wider worldview

We can enjoy each day – even when we are sick

I’ve been laid low by illness. What I thought was a cough was actually a throat infection. And whilst it’s nothing serious, it still took me out of action for the whole of this week.

This week’s article was prompted by a short conversation I had with someone. They told me that taking time to be sick made them feel bad because they felt unproductive. It made them feel like they are doing nothing.

This is a feeling that many of us have experienced in our lives. We don’t want to let the team down, and feel anxious at the idea of not doing something. When society instills in us the idea that we have to constantly be active, the idea of stopping feels like a bad thing.

But I’ve come to enjoy my sick days much more than I used to. Rather than sit still pondering the universe until I go crazy, I take this as a moment for me to slow my movements and withdraw into myself.

An invitation to try less hard in your life

This is the first weekend I’ve spent at home in Brussels in over a month.

The last four weekends I’ve been away, on a mix of travels through India and successive trips to the UK.

And you know what? I’m tired. Not because of any overt travel fatigue, but because I’ve felt like life has been a consistent set of new hurdles.
The irony is that the only person who fundamentally has been placing these hurdles is myself.

Having now got through a lot of courses and personal adventures, I’m feeling quite worn out. I’m really glad I did these things, but I’m also conscious at how hard I have been pushing myself. Do I really need to live life as if I don’t have time to breath?

How to be truly consistent in your life

Early in my career, I worried about being a ‘streaky’ character. I would often ask myself – can I really be consistent over longer periods of time in the workplace? After all, I had done several internships of shorter timeframes ranging from 2 to 6 months.
In fact, this article is actually a particular achievement for me. It marks a year since I last missed writing an article for a week in this newsletter. In other words, I’m on a 53 week streak. It’s crazy to think that I’ve managed to keep up this level of consistency for such a long time.
The consistency worked because it worked for me. It is a personal thing after all. But equally, the way that I am being has shifted to naturally be more consistent.
The way I see and act in the world is very different to when I first started publishing articles.

Our anxiety is stopping us from making positive change

Through my professional and personal life, I’ve come across many extraordinary, driven individuals who want to make a positive impact in the world.
Unfortunately, what I also see is a lot of stress, anxiety and overwhelm. There is an increase in the amount of burnout which is negatively affecting people’s personal sense of wellbeing. This is sad in of itself – everyone deserves to live a happy, fulfilling life.
But also, when we are stressed or burnt out, we are also becoming far less effective in making the change we want to see in the world. This means the positive change is severely limited.
But the great news is that we can change our outlook. One of the big revelations for me was recognising that the barrier to my own performance was the way I treated myself.

I thought 2022 would be less remarkable than 2020-21. I was wrong.

I’ve found this holiday period a good moment to slow down and reflect on the year – and what better day to do a reflective article than on 31 December?
I’ve firstly noticed how much residual fatigue I’ve been building up, particularly in the last few months. I got hit by an illness for the first two weeks of December, and since then I’ve felt myself battling to return to my previous routines of productivity. Of course, this isn’t a real battle, instead it’s one being waged within my mind.
Looking further back through 2022, I thought this year would be a period of stability and foundation-level building. After 2020 and 2021, years which felt like a period of survival (and physical upheaval for me moving to Belgium) I was hoping for something a little more solid but a bit less remarkable.
Spoiler alert – 2022 felt very different to what I thought it would – it certainly was more remarkable than I expected.

Welcoming our unpleasant feelings as friends

In the quest for the nice feelings, we implicitly learn that the unpleasant feelings are bad. So we look to avoid the pain and sadness, after all, why feel those feelings when we can feel happy?
Many of us spend a lot of time avoiding things that make us uncomfortable, or look to distract ourselves when we are sad. Even when we are finally forced to face these feelings, we bare through it with gritted teeth.

I have been reflecting on this theme as I have battled through a biting cough and severe sore throat over the last few days. In the past, this would be the cue for me to be frustrated at my body, and look at how inconvenient this all was.
But this time, I took time to appreciate what my body was telling me. It was time for me to slow down and heal

The mind is self- cleansing. You don’t have to do anything to fix it.

I’ve been having issues sleeping in the last few weeks. I fall asleep quite easily, but I have a tendency to wake up in the middle of the night. Sometimes I manage to fall back asleep for a mediocre night’s sleep, but some nights (including two nights ago) I woke up in full alertness and was awake from 3am.

I don’t think this will be ‘fixed’ overnight. But I also recognise that I don’t need to be defined by my tiredness or lethargy, nor let it overly negatively affect my life.

Our minds go through pain, but we don’t actually have to do anything to heal it. If we trust the process of letting our minds be, it will return to its natural state of health and wellbeing without us interfering with the process.

Life is an ever-shifting enigma. Embrace it.

What is change?

There’s been quite a few notable events in the UK over the last week – The Queen’s passing, Liz Truss as the new Prime Minister, and most dramatically of all, Thomas Tuchel being sacked as Chelsea Manager.

The more I’ve focussed on the idea that everything is changing the more jaded I feel. The human mind looks for patterns to explain why I feel the way I’m feeling – if I feel a sense of insecurity, I look for a reason.