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Mind Work is a corporate wellness specialist that works towards improving employee engagement and overall wellbeing.

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27th April 2020 In Anxiety, Body, Emotional Intelligence, Health, How to, Mind, Personal Development, Spirit, Stress, Uncategorized, Work Life Balance, Workplace Health

WFH VOL4: The importance of Balance

Balance — Why is it so important?

Think about this… If work is going well, but your social life is non-existent and seeing your mates is important to you… how would you feel?

(Actually, this probably isn’t the best example considering the current climate)…

Ok let’s say work is going well, social life is great, but you have poor health…. OR, health is good, social life is great, work is going to plan but you have a toxic relationship at home – how do you think that you will make you feel?

What I’m saying is that it’s extremely important to pay attention to all your life domains if you’re to experience a peaceful, stress-free mind. Most of us do one to two things:

The first — You focus solely on all things going well in your life and ignore the things that aren’t. Which in turn leaves you with that constant unsettled feeling in background that you may be able to shake off now and then, but it will always find its way back to the mind.

OR — You’re the person who solely focuses on the single thing that seems to been going wrong, which causes you to feel like everything in life is ‘going-to- pot’… That one thing is having full domination of all your life’s domains.

So you see, either way, we need to have an awareness of what’s going in order for us to achieve a peaceful balanced mind. The longer we bury our heads in the sand to ignore that ‘thing’ we’re not wanting to face, the bigger it will grow, the harder it will be to confront and the more frequent it will come back to visit us until finally, it will force us to do something about it… and being forced to do anything isn’t the greatest way to handle a situation.

On the other side on the same coin, that one ‘thing’ having such a negative impact on all the other life domains needs to be put into perspective. What’s going well in your life? What will you do about that one thing holding you back from stepping into your power?

Below is a simple exercise called The Wheel of Life. It’s a great way to get a snapshot of the level of satisfaction you’re experiencing in each life domain.

Note: I’d encourage you to try and fill this out with pre-lockdown-life satisfaction in mind.

Wheel of Life Exercise

Completed Version –

Balance

/ˈbal(ə)ns/

noun

an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady.

Allow your emotional state to be standing tall, upright, and steady. Gaining balance prevents overwhelm by giving you more control over your thoughts. It brings peace of mind and allows you to make better decisions… decisions that you’ve made by choice, in your own time, and from a calm place.

So how do we achieve balance, and peace of mind?

Step 1: Complete the wheel of life

The first step is to learn where the imbalance is. It may highlight a few unknowns, and it will for sure cause for action, but it will be well worth it. Of that I am certain.

Step 2: Put things into perspective

Put things into perspective and you may realise that it isn’t your life that’s not going well but in fact, just one thing that we can turn our attention to and aim to solve. Reduce the overwhelm by putting things into perspective. Allow yourself to acknowledge, reset, and start again from a place of understanding and calm.

Step 3: Be honest with yourself

We lie to ourselves way too often when we say things like… ‘I’m actually ok with ‘X’ not going so well at the moment, I have to focus on ‘Y’ right now’.

Please people, don’t fall into the trap of putting something off to focus on something else. Unless you’re truly ok with ‘X’ being how it is, do not ignore it. Face it head-on and your ‘Y’ will be a lot more enjoyable… along with everything else. Be honest with yourself as you will be the only person to suffer in the long run.

Use this time to find your equilibrium… Make balance be a post-lockdown goal.

To get the ball rolling, here are a few links to some FREE wellness practices to keep you active in the meantime;

For the mind:

Personal Development reading list

For the body:

10-minute breathwork session

Live On-demand Yoga

Fitness programme

For the spirit:

(Here is a little video that guided me on my path)

Ted Talk — Science and Spirituality

Insight Timer for meditation

NOTE: If you (like many) find keeping to your best intentions a little challenging at times, gamify it and reach out to a friend/accountability partner to keep you on the ball.

Any questions? Feel free to drop me a line; mason@projectmindwork.org

If you’re looking for something a little more robust to keep on top your physical and mental fitness; The Home 360º Programme

29th March 2020 In Anxiety, Body, Health, How to, Mind, Personal Development, Spirit, Stress, Uncategorized

Keeping on top of your mental and physical wellbeing

WFH VOL1: Habits

Easy to pick up, hard to put down…

We’ve now completed our first official week in lockdown, and it seems that most of us have survived it with our wits still intact. But, how are we all feeling about the week ahead — Week 2?

(Quick shout out to those in the NHS working their butts off to keep on top of this pandemic, and a further shout out to the wellness professionals offering free classes to keep us all moving while much of the world stands still.)

I expect that this week maybe a little more daunting, especially as we start to look forward and consider the likely possibility that the 3 week lockdown period will be extended. Fear not, it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom, as bad as this thing is, it’s happening and if I’ve learned anything from my years of working with people in crisis is that acceptance is a powerful and useful tool.

We must accept that it’s happening, as we have no choice. However, we do have a choice as to how we wish to respond. Let us look at a few responses to the lockdown that I’ve heard over the last week:

“I’ve just been taking it easy, I like the extra time in bed and making the commute to the kitchen”

“I’ve had a few glasses of wine each night and catching up with friends via video call, it’s been nice”

“I’m going to need some more Netflix recommendations”

Do any of the above resonate?

We are in a time of crisis and I agree that we have to make ourselves feel calm and comfortable to keep our panic levels down, but on the other side of the same coin — when will your physical and mental fitness work its way back into/into your everyday life?

Surely you must have thought about it, and probably decided that this week (week 2) may be the week you start, if so, use this post as a reminder, if not, use this post as a sign that your wellbeing must take priority if you’re to get through this with minimal physical, and minimal emotional damage.

habit

/ˈhabɪt/

noun

1. A settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.

See, even the definition says that they’re hard to give up. Solution? Don’t pick them up in the first place. Now is your opportunity to pick up the habits that will serve you well. Good Habits — Just as an FYI, this post isn’t just something to get you through the COVID-19 pandemic, this is the chance for you to literally decide and design the (elusive) version of yourself that you were looking for before this whole thing hit us.

So over the next few weeks, we’ll be supporting you by providing some of the fundamental tools and practices needed to get you through the next few weeks to ensure an easy transition back to the ‘new version’ of normality.

I’ll be introducing new topics each week to cover a 360º approach to your wellbeing i.e. Your mind, body, and spirit. Next week we’ll be looking at Routine, their importance, the benefits, and how to implement.

If you’d like to jump ahead and grab a free eBook — Be your own life coach — simply follow the link. Re your habits, consider these 5 steps;

Step 1: Decide on the version of you that you’d like to see.

An easy trick for this is to close your eyes and visualise your perfect day — What time do you get up, what do you have for breakfast, what does your morning routine look like. Do this for your week, and your month. How awesome is that you?

Step 2: Look at the habits you have and would like to lose.

We’re talking habits, not addictions here although there can be a fine line. Habits can be ingrained into or subconscious, but bring mindful of them i.e. bringing them to the conscious mind is the first step to letting go of them.

Step 3: Recognise when these ‘bad’ habits arise — take notes, write a list.

A little NLP technique for you — Take your list of habits, and simply acknowledge when they arise. By having the awareness of when the habits arise/their triggers — we allow the conscious mind to beat the subconscious to the punch.

Step 4: Write down a list of the ‘good’ habits/ lifestyle habits you’d like to have instead.

Go back to your perfect day exercise — What did you do regularly. What habitual behaviours did you exhibit and contribute to your day, week, and month?

Step 5: Introduce these habits into your new routine.

Just to give you a clear distinction between the two — A habit is an action we do often in a regular and repeated way. Routine is a regular way of doing things in a particular order. The main difference between habit and routine is that habit is a recurrent with little or no conscious thought whereas routine requires a high degree of intention and effort

Bonus Step: Check back in for next weeks post — Routine 🙂

In the meantime, I encourage you to start this very moment — we have a lot more time on our hands and this is the very same time we’ve all been asking for since forever. If you’ve ever said ‘Only if there were more hours in the day’… now there is so use them well, use them wisely, use them in the name of personal development.

To get the ball rolling, here are a few links to some FREE wellness practices to keep you active in the meantime;

For the mind:

Reading list

For the body:

10-minute breathwork session (An amazing way to start your day)