Not sure how you do with music when you’re working or when you are resting but I find the right stuff at the right time does wonders for me!
I can’t work while playing music with words but there is some great instrumental stuff out there that just settles into the background and into your head and calms and relaxes create a great ambience for work.
I also love music when I meditate. Sometimes focussing on my breath just doesn’t work for me so listening to some music I can focus on a particular element or the feeling of the whole piece and try to clear my mind that way.
Here are some of my favourites – Spotify is my weapon of choice but I’m sure these playlists/artists/style are available on other platforms.
I’ve got into the habit when talking to people about self-care of finding myself often saying, “all we are doing here is playing psychological tricks on ourselves to get the best out of ourselves so ‘ourselves’ stop getting in the way”.
There’s a funny thing goes on in my head when I go for a run. Sometimes I head off and run a big loop but sometimes I run laps close to home. I have a route that is ‘near as damn it’ exactly a mile long and I have another route that is ‘as near as damn it’ one and a half miles long. If I want to run three miles I find it easier to run the longer route than the shorter one because I only have to do two loops and I’m done! On the shorter one I have to do 3 loops and that, psychologically, seems so much harder. Which is daft really because either way, it’s 3 miles! But it’s a very real thing. In fact, sometimes (like today) when I get to the end of the 3 miles on the 2-lap route, I think, well I might as do another lap because I usually have to! What’s that all about!
Everything we do has a psychological element to it that we can either let get in the way, make work for us, or use to trick us into convincing ourselves that something is a good idea.
Lockdown is difficult for a lot of us. Many people I sense are finding it hard to motivate themselves to do things they would usually just get on and do. Exercise is a good example of this. Lots of people seem to be finding it harder to motivate themselves to do what they know already is good for them.
How can we overcome that moment of inertia when, at the end of a busy day we know we should take some exercise but we just don’t feel like it.
Firstly, let’s give ourselves a break and in some ways identify the problem. When you are feeling stressed you don’t feel like exercising. This is a fact – well researched – well established. An American study from Yale University tested this out and found that levels of stress are a predictor for low physical activity. But it’s a double bind because exercise is a great stress buster. Indeed the same Yale University study showed that those who managed 30 minutes of exercise during the day experienced a reduction in stress.
There are lots of reasons why this might be and all have been researched. Which it is for you is probably down to your own uniqueness! For some the exercise simply takes their attention away from the thing that’s causing them stress and gives them a break from it so they can return to it refreshed.
For others it could the rush of feel good endorphins, the ‘runners high’ you might have heard of. It could be that our stress response, the fight or flight adrenaline and cortisol rush, readies us for physical activity, so in doing something physical we ‘burn off’ these chemicals and we return our body to a state of calm. We in effect ‘took flight’.
So, given exercise is good for us, how do we get past our inertia?
We need to plan for our future self – arrange what it is our future self needs to do. Then, trust our past self to have arranged things that are good for us. The just do them at the moment our past self planned them, safe in the knowledge that our future self will thank us for doing what we planned!
When we try to imagine our future we are strongly influenced by how we are feeling in the present moment. So if you try to imagine what something later in the week will be like when you are experiencing a tiring Thursday and you are just a tad grumpy and ‘down-in-the-mouth’ you are likely to think about the future event negatively. ‘That run will be hard work’, ‘Getting my gear on to do the online workout will be sooooo time consuming!’ And the same works the other way – if you are in a good place then you will think positively about the future. (See Daniel Gilbert’s book ‘Stumbling on Happiness’ for more – Professor Gilbert has spent his life studying the psychology of happiness – he knows his stuff!)
So, how do we make this psychological quirk work for us. Let’s keep going with the exercise example. When on a weekend are you feeling in a good place? I find I have a sweet spot that usually occurs early afternoon on a Sunday. I’m feeling rested and I’m not yet grumpy because it’s nearly time for work again. In this sweet spot I plan my exercise for the week because I’m feeling at the top of my game in terms of motivation. I still keep my planning realistic. I bring the future into the present so I can do something with it. I plan what I will do. I remind myself that about 20 minutes a day is sufficient and if I can do more great!
Then, my week starts. And, as we know, motivation wanes as the week goes on and stress rises. So when I spot at 5.30 on Wednesday evening that my diary says ‘3-mile run’ I trust my past self, when I was in a good place to have thought, ‘I’m going to need something to pick me up by Wednesday and I’ll feel great after a run. Clear headed, invigorated, and if I get some exercise I’ll probably sleep well’. Had I left my planning for exercise on Wednesday until I got home at 5.30 I would probably have said, ‘I can’t be bothered, stuff it, where’s the wine’. Familiar?
In that moment when you think, ‘I can’t be bothered with this running thing in my diary’, you have to trust your past self to have done the right thing for your future self and thought, when in a good place, he’s going to NEED a run by Wednesday. On Wednesday his future self will thank his past self for insisting he went for a run!
There is great power in planning. And there is great power in trusting what you have planned. David Allen (productivity guru of the highest order) says you can’t plan and do at the same time and this is why. The feelings of past self, present self, and future self will get all confused. Our ‘selves’ need to find a good positive moment and plan for our future selves so when we hit that ‘present’ moment we can be fully in that present moment knowing that this must be the best thing that can be done right now or why would I have planned it so!?
Plan. Then deliver on the plan. You’ll thank your past self in the future for knowing what will be good for you.
I don’t know about you but despite being a regular meditator I find it really really difficult. My mind just keeps chattering away!
I do like to think of meditation as having many facets and methods and I have written about ‘meditating on’ something as being a thing. I do like to quieten myself and see what comes to mind and then think about that. I have some wonderful thoughts and ideas when ‘meditating on’. But you have to be careful that you don’t get into ruminating and worrying and overthinking something so that ‘meditating on’ becomes negative.
Sometimes though I do like to (try to) clear my mind – and there are two things that I find helpful in doing this.
The first is my Shakti Mat – I’ve written about that here. I love it. Yes, in the first instance it’s uncomfortable but it does become blissful after a few minutes. But what I find is I have to concentrate on managing the discomfort and this helps me clear my mind of other things as I relax into that.
The other thing that helps is music. I listen to lots of meditative music not only when trying to meditate but also when working as it creates the right atmosphere for me in which to work. Now, you may or may not know but I am also a musician so I thought why not write some music for myself to meditate to and then i thought – well – why not share it with everyone.
And that is what I’ve done – and here it is! Available on Spotify and iTunes/Apple Music as well as many other lesser known but equally fabulous platforms!
Excited to be telling you that today (Friday 15th January 2021) the new book is out! Strictly speaking it’s a reworking of the other book – a remix if you like for the music people among you!
We wrote a book (myself, Lisa and Steph) and we aimed that book at Social Workers because we are all social workers and wanted to provide some sort of ‘toolbox’ to social workers to help them with their self-care, wellbeing, and productivity, because we knew for ourselves and from our social work friends that social work takes its toll.
But, what we and the publisher noted, as we were finishing the book and it was set for publication, was that the advice in it was relevant to so many more people than just social workers because many people in many workplaces experience work based stress and indeed many people experience the stresses of life overall. The book would work for everyone.
So, the publisher, Critical Publishing, had me re-write the book for the general market as the launch of their Business in Mind series – and there are more books to come in that series! Exciting!
So there are two ‘How to Thrive….’ books. How to Thrive in Professional Practice is the one aimed at Social Workers and How to Thrive at Work is the one aimed at everyone (and social workers would find it useful too). So buy one or the other – whichever suits who you are – but don’t buy both as they are very very similar.
I would say though there’s a very nice chapter in the How to Thrive at Work one on Rest which isn’t in the first one…. and even though I say it myself it’s a very nice addition!
Whichever you were to buy – I hope you get something from it!
Happy Christmas we have all just been saying to each other. And then Happy New Year. We’re obsessed! Once a year we say Happy Birthday to each other as well. Clearly ‘Happy’ is very important to us. Yet it alludes us – or at least its elusive more often than we’re like it to be. Daniel Levitin in his book ‘The Organized Mind’ says that generally we think life should be easy, so, when it proves difficult we don’t like it.
‘Life’ (in all its guises) is largely difficult and takes some ‘doing’ and every so often we get that little pocket of happiness. So, if there are little pockets of happiness then the more we can find them then the more we can be happy – and happy people get more done – more in their work lives and more in their personal lives
Sometimes we look for happiness in things – but that’s not where to find it. Advertisers and sellers of things wouldn’t tell us that though. ‘Buy this’, they say, ‘and it will make you happy, have the perfect life’ etc etc. This comes with a ‘Halo Effect’. The thing you buy is wonderful. The new TV, the new car. But after a while it becomes just the car you get from A to B in or the TV you watch Masterchef on. Oh – except you are now in debt possibly paying for it for the next ‘however long’ and now you’re not happy anymore!
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says we have to find joy in everything in order to create flow. Flow is that ability to move effortlessly from thing to thing and get things done. But he means joy in everything – not just that new purchase. Joy in the washing and ironing, joy in the reporting writing. By doing this we will find flow and flow leads to people being happy.
We find happiness in the most unusual places sometimes
Sometimes, I’d argue, we get joy in difficult and problematic things. In Alex Pang’s book ‘Rest’ he talks about how difficult things – things that we are trying to master but are difficult – are actually restful and good for us – something that is mentally absorbing, that feels difficult to do, is deeply satisfying – such things – difficult things – hard work – make us happy.
In a Jewish Parable there are two men arguing over some knotty issue in the Torah. God gets annoyed so comes down from on high and says, ‘I’ve listened to you two argue about this for 20 years so let me tell you what it means’. ‘No’, they say, ‘what right have you! Clear off!’ They delight in the difficult thing – they are thinking, striving, and making a connection with one another.
I find that I am a person who finds great joy in the process rather than the outcome. Stoic philosophers say that some things are outside of our control, but we still need to do them. Some things are completely under our control and some things are not fully under our control, but we have influence. The influence is where we have control.
The secret, they would tell us, is to focus on the bit you can control and as Massimo Pigliucci (in a video presentation I watched recently on iai.tv) said “bet your happiness on those things”. We have no choice other than to take the stuff we can’t control just as it comes, because, well, we can’t control it. We also have limited control over the outcome of things. I can control when I write a blog, what I write about, what words I use, and take great joy in the doing. But I very little control over how you receive it. That is dependent on so many things, like, what you already know about the subject, what you think of me, whether you agree or disagree with the idea. So I set my happiness on the doing of it (I am currently very happy in the doing!) and not on how many ‘likes’ it gets, or how many people read it…. although I do hope you enjoy it. The pleasure and happiness is in the doing not in the plaudits.
So we need to find our happiness in every moment – the work we do – the study we do – the fun we have – tidying things up – we need to find joy in all of these things. Where do you find your joy and where do you find your happiness I wonder? And here’s the thing – if we think that everyone else has found it and we haven’t – then – sorry – for the most part they haven’t either.
Sometimes those difficult things will be at work, some will be home, some we’ll create all on our own by not being in charge of ourselves – how we approach things – how we set our minds to what is to do
Daniel Gilbert in ‘Stumbling on Happiness’ says that we come into this world wanting to control things and we go out the same way – and that research suggests that if at any point during our arrival in, and departure from, this world, we lose our ability to control things we become unhappy, feel helpless and hopeless and can become depressed. I hate to use the ‘P’ word again but planning is the key. Bringing the future into the present so we can have a look at it and control, I’d suggest, is the root to happiness. Delight in the doing!
We look into the future so we can make predictions about it and control it – that’s where happiness is.
