…I’ll tell you what works for me…
….I’ll guarantee it will be similar as we are made from the same stuff…
….but different because we are all unique….
…..you need to find your own balance…. …I’m here to help! đ
Read more below if you can decipher my handwriting…..
….we haver too much choice these days and choice begins to fatigue us…
…we need to reclaim our ‘soul’… …simplify things….
…read more below (if you can decipher my hand writing!)….
Life is all about transitions…. it’s about starting things and ending things and moving between things. That’s what I love about life. Challenges coming to a conclusion. New challenges to explore. Yesterday saw me watch this years graduates walk across the stage to be given their award. It’s a wonderful day because the journey to a degree is not an easy one. It’s a lot of hard work. But what starting a degree does is set you out a plan. The 3 years of an undergraduate degree, or the 2 of a postgraduate degree, sets out a framework around which all other challenges hang. It absorbs you. For better or worse!
We need challenges. We need to set ourselves targets. There’s evidence that if you have a plan that you record in some way you are more likely to achieve it. That’s remarkable. Just by writing it down it’s more likely to happen.
When I turned 50 (just short of 2 years ago) I set myself a ten year plan and I wrote it down (yes! For those who know me… in my spreadsheet!) My plan was simple. That by the time I was 60 I wanted to be making all my income from writing and other freelance work. I wanted to have the luxury of not having to work for an organisation. A kind of retirement of sorts. A ‘retirement’ to me setting the agenda for the part of my life I get paid for. This was a big task because 10 years, in reality, is not a long time. So, I had to make a plan. I had to start building up my writing. I had to think about the financial impact of such a move. I had to think about the skills I had and the skills I needed to develop. I needed to take a big idea and break it down into smaller ideas, smaller steps.
This relies on a nice little metaphor that I love to use which is – How do you eat a whole elephant? One bite at a time, of course. You couldn’t possibly eat a whole elephant at once! You need to work on things incrementally and what you’ll find is that when you tick a step off your list you will get a psychological buzz and that will generate forward momentum with whatever it is you are wanting to achieve.
I find myself with a day at home today. I had a meeting cancelled this morning so now I have a whole day to myself. I’m feeling a bit anxious about some things I need to achieve over the next 6 months because at the minute I don’t have a plan. Firstly, I need to write a book! I’ve signed a contract so it has to be delivered by the end of the year! And at the minute all it is is a list of chapters with a brief outline…. and I’ve never written a book before! I need to map out how this is going to happen. So while a 10 year plan is important so are shorter term plans. Because of the way my job works it’s useful to have a 6 month plan. So today I’m going to figure out my 6 month plan. What am I going to do between now and the end of the year and how does writing a book fit into that?
I’m running the Kielder Marathon in October and I can apply the same principle. So working backwards from the date of the run I’ll figure out what mileage targets I need to hit week by week. That way, I know what I need to achieve and I’ll diary time out to do it.
And finally, for today at least, I need to figure out how to fit the work I need to do at University into my working week. So I’ll plan where the lectures are, when I’m going to prep them, who I might need to talk to and when I’ll do that, when I’m going to work on placements, and so on and so on….. right up until the end of the year.
And I guarantee by the end of the day I will feel a huge sense of relief because I’ll have a plan. As David Allen (author of Getting Things Done) says, “if you don’t control ‘it’, ‘it’ will control you.” There is concrete evidence that having a plan reduces stress both at work and at home.
So get planning, get organised, let’s nail this!!
How do you set your goals? We all want to achieve. We all want to get better at things. We all want to move ourselves towards goals. But maybe the way we set ourselves targets just isnât helpful. There is a tendency to want to put figures on things because we all know how figures work. âI want to lose 10 kilosâ, âI want to run 5k in 25 minutesâ, âI want to run a marathonâ. These are all fitness goals but there will be others. Maybe, âI want to save ÂŁ1000 by the end of yearâ.
These statements are problematic though because one of the things we are good at as people is not hitting the target. Think back to all of those new years resolutions that go unmet. Think of all of those weight loss strategies that didnât get you to your âgoal weightâ. Think of all those fitness regimes that didnât get you ripped and slim.
As soon as you set yourself a fixed goal then you run the risk of missing it. But even if you hit it youâve still got a problem! Once youâve hit your goal weight what do you do? Go back to eating like you did? What do you do when you hit that 25 minute 5k? Do you stop running? Well, sometimes we do! Sometimes itâs like âright thatâs it â Iâve done it so I donât have to worry about it anymore!â And the weight goes back on or the fitness slides and you have to start again with another goal.
How about simply framing what you want to do differently? I want to get better at being a healthier eater? I want to get better at being a runner? I want get better at being a saver? These things have no end point. They have nothing to âfall offâ or âfail atâ. You want to become a healthier eater so you start nailing the salads and the baked potatoes and then you have a take away. Well, what you are trying to achieve is still there. Youâve not done anything wrong because just because you had a take away doesnât mean you canât continue to try to be a healthier eater. When you choose a measurable goal like weight loss and you donât lose any weight because of that take away the scales shout at you, make you feel bad, and make you think âwell hey â Iâm never going to hit my target weight â so why bother!â But you can still follow your dream of being a healthier eater because thatâs still an on going proposition â it never ends so itâs always available to you to help you frame what your doing. âHey, I had a pizza, but Iâm still trying to be a healthier eaterâ
The difference is maybe a subtle one but the psychology of it apparently really works. Itâs like when you have a big task to achieve like, say, write a 3,000 word report. If your goal is to write the report then every time you sit down to do it and you donât complete it your mind sees that as a failure â âI didnât finish the reportâ. But if you break it down to manageable chunks. âI need to read this articleâ, âI need to think about the structure of the reportâ, âI need to map out what I want to writeâ etc etc then you achieve a result whenever you do these individual things giving you a psychological boost. This is called ‘The Power of Small Wins”. This is the âhow do you eat an elephant â one bite at a time’ strategy!
Thereâs a similar thing at play with the psychology of setting goals. If your goal is to run a marathon then every time you donât run a marathon you havenât achieved it. If your goal is to work on being a better runner then every time you run you are working on that. If your goal is to be a healthier eater then every time you eat you are working on that. Personally, I find that taking this approach helps me make better choices. What I eat isnât governed by the scales or a target weight but by simply wanting to try and achieve âeating healthierâ. Yes, I do hope that what that means is weight loss but if it doesnât it doesnât and I will continue to try and eat healthier because the positive impact on my life is broader than what the scales say.
Letâs do it!
Hello everyone! Monday! First day of the working week for a lot of us and a lot to do I’d imagine? But I want you to make sure you do something for me today… and then every day. I want you to take a lunch break. I want you to take at last 20 minutes even if you don’t think you have the time. I want you to go for a walk and eat something.
A study at the University of Bristol showed that exercise can boost mood and motivation by 41%. Now that’s got to help you get through your afternoon work! They also found that exercise improved the ability to deal with stress by 20%. I suspect you need that to help you out. Yet research by BUPA showed that up to two thirds of workers feel they can’t take 20 minutes away from their desk at lunch (Davison 2015)
In 2017 Pulg-Ribera and some fellow researches looked at a ‘sit less, move
more’ programme in the work place and discovered that simply by getting up and moving about people reduced their stress levels. Imagine that! Exercise, even gentle in nature, ‘burns off’ the cortisol and adrenaline produced by our stress response. When you are at your desk and you are feeling overwhelmed your stress response kicks in ….only the problem is it’s designed to prepare us for fight of flight… and when no fight or flight is required we don’t use these chemicals for what they were intended. That gives us the problem of those chemicals hanging around. Some gentle exercise will help mitigate that response.
Afternoon performance is bad enough as it is even if you don’t miss out on your break. Daniel Pink tells us that judges hand down harsher sentences for the same crime on an afternoon, and a study in North Carolina showed that the chances of something going medically wrong in one of their medical centres was four times higher at 4 p.m. than any other time (Pink, 2018, ‘When’)
In his wonderful book ‘The Joy of Work’, Bruce Daisley (creator of the fabulous podcast Eat Sleep Work Repeat) recounts the story of Laura, a manager at the Museum of London who, during a heavy period of work, went without lunch, and reported as a consequence that her mood, energy, diet and attitude to her job all crashed.
It’s such a small thing to do but it’s so important. Take your lunch break and have that brisk walk before having something good to eat. …and by ‘good’ I mean healthy đ You will improve your mental performance, clear your head and enhance your performance in the afternoon. You absolutely need some distance from your work half way through the day to energise yourself!
Go on… you know you want to. You’ll thank me for it…. as will your clients and colleagues.
Recently I got to wondering when I started setting myself big long term goals and I realised I’ve probably always done it. Most productivity commentators will tell you that you should have at least a 5 year plan. Personally I think you need a life plan! What is it you want to do, next week, next month, next year, the rest of your life!? Planning stuff and writing it down has been shown to make it more likely to happen. If you have a plan written down it sets it in your mind. You can refer back to it and when you’re ready break your plan down into manageable steps.
Starting with think big – what is that you want to achieve. I remember my first day at college studying social work, listening to my first lecture, and thinking about her, “I want to to do what you’re doing.” And 13 years later I found myself doing just that thing. When I started being a lecturer I decided I wanted to write and here I am 7 years later writing regularly about social work and a book in the pipeline! It’s important to have a growth mind set. In her book Mindset, Dr. Carol S. Dweck tells us that people fall into two categories – those with a fixed mindset and those with growth mindset. If you have a fixed mindset you think that talent and ability is inherent. It’s something you either have or you don’t have. You think that you’re either intelligent or you not. But what Dweck shows in her book is that we can all do whatever we set our minds to. What it takes is hard work and dedication. Things aren’t easy but things are achievable if you have a plan and you apply yourself to that plan. Broadly speaking we all have the same potential, it’s our mindset that dictates what we do with that potential. So you need to think big! What do you want to achieve?
Then you break it down into small steps. Because, if you had to eat a whole elephant, the only way to do it would be one bite at a time! Those steps need to be small and achievable. By breaking things down into little steps you draw on the psychological power of small wins. Every time you complete a step you get a psychological buzz! A feel-good boost. If you don’t break things down into small tasks, firstly you won’t know where to start or what to do next. And secondly, you will only get to feel that buzz when you achieve the final goal. Write down the goal, break it down into smalls steps and write those small steps down and then start…..
And start you must! Breaking things down into small manageable steps will help you beat procrastination. But the thing when starting something is to simply do that – start it! Do something. Even if what you have to do is break down your first step into micro steps to fit into the time you have available then do that. But do something!
As i’m fond of saying – making a start is the hardest part! Because it is… but the reality is that once you do start you will keep going!
So here we go..…
Write down your long term or life goals
Think about which of them you want to tackle first
Break it down into manageable steps
Write these steps down (I’d put them in my electronic calendar)
And then… do the first thing.
Photos from www.goodfreephotos.com
What a weekend I had last weekend! I actually never stopped! Yet, I woke up on Monday morning morning feeling refreshed and excited about how much I was going to get done! Why’s this! Why was I not shattered and daunted by the week ahead!
Well, for all it was busy, the weekend was choc full of things, all of which I consider as self care. There’s a meme kicking about that I see that says something like, “self care is not about chocolates and pamper days, it’s about creating a life that you don’t want to escape from”. This weekend has been awesome and tiring both at the same time – and I didn’t want to escape from it! Let me tell you about it.
It started Friday tea time with a 14 mile bike ride home from work. I just took my time, I wanted to be home, but I also wanted to delight in the scenery around me. So, I took a detour down to a little place off my route called Cox Green and I just spent a few moments there looking at the river and the beautiful vista. I then continued my way home. For me, exercise is mindfulness in motion. You can think of all sorts of things if you want to while you exercise. It’s just you. On your own thinking things through and mulling things over. Or it can be you thinking of nothing. Just you and your body doing this thing to the exclusion of everything else. I love the loneliness of a solo run or bike ride. Some quality time with yourself.
Self Care checklist: Alone time, you time, exercise, getting outdoors tick!
Saturday started with Parkrun, starting at Durham’s Maiden Castle and ending by the River Wear in the shadow of the glorious Cathedral. We’ve got quite a little team going on now for Parkrun and we’ve pretty much ran it every weekend this year. So my eldest son Jonathan picks me up and, in the car are usually the Whellan’s brothers and Oliver’s girlfriend Sarah (although she didn’t make it this week). The run and the scenery is great and is an absolute delight. Parkrun is 5k which is doable and not too tough. But for me the most important part of this is the camaraderie of the whole thing. We are all at different levels of fitness but all in it together. The banter in the car on the way there and on the way home is great. And it’s wonderful that these young pups tolerate this old guy tagging along!
The Sunday saw me running again with two of my colleagues from work. We were doing the Sunderland 10k. It was an absolute delight. A huge group of people all with one endeavour in mind. To test themselves against the distance in front of them! There was a great atmosphere as the gun went off and we started and it continued all the way around and into the finish funnel!
Then, in the afternoon, tired and weary I had a gig to play. I’m a musician in between other things (!) and I was playing in the Union Rooms, a lovely bar near Central Station in Newcastle. Music is a gift to us all. I love playing on my own at home or in front of people in a bar. Music lifts the soul. Or ‘resets’ it, as I like to say. And it creates a wonderful connection between people. It was great to watch people chatting and enjoying themselves as I played, and from time to time joining in singing along to the tunes they recognised.
There’s a Stoic ‘saying’ that ‘the obstacle is the way’. When confronted with an obstacle don’t avoid it – go through it! Because it’s in doing so that we grow and develop. My tiring weekend left me re-energised because of how the things I did contributed to who I am – my idea of ‘self’ – and therefore to my self care. Connections made, existing connections enjoyed, exercise engaged in, getting outdoors, the healing properties of music – food for the soul – all meant that the busy weekend was a refreshing weekend.
The obstacle really is the way
Embrace it!
I’ve always felt that how I start the day is crucial to how the whole day goes. So what I have for breakfast is therefore crucial to what I eat during the rest of the day. A nutritionally sound breakfast gives me a good chance of a nutritionally sound day! That Full English breakfast sends the wrong signals to my brain. Although I’m not decrying the full English completely. Having a decadent breakfast once in a while has its place! Best to avoid those sugary processed cereals though!
So what do I go for!?. Here are my three favourite breakfasts!
Overnight Oats
Simply gorgeous and so easy! I’m not a fan of porridge (I’m not a fan of hot sweet things in general…. sadly I’m fine with cold sweet things!) so getting my oats on a morning (…stop it!) is difficult! But then I discovered Overnight Oats. I’m not one for measurements just go with what it looks like! So, take a pot of yoghurt, or a couple of good scoops, and mix in some oats until it’s ‘claggy’ (for those of you not from the north east of England go for ‘sticky looking’). There needs to be enough yoghurt, but not too much, as the oats are going to absorb the liquid in it to soften. I then add in some seeds – pumpkin seeds are my thing at the minute – and some soft fruit – blueberries, raspberries, strawberries. And leave it in the fridge overnight. If you forget you can get away with doing it on a morning and waiting about half an hour. Not as good but not bad.
I also have a prepared mix to hand most of the time to make this even quicker. I get myself a decent sized jar and half fill it with oats. I then grab a range of dried fruits and nuts. Chuck the nuts in and chop the dried fruit up into small pieces if required. Chuck the dried fruit in and give it all a shake! My favourite dried fruits are apricots, cranberries, mango, and figs.
Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a particularly low calorie option. It’s healthy but fairly calorie ‘rich’ especially once you get some greek yoghurt (my favourite) on there. So if you are dieting then don’t have too much of this!
Scrambled eggs with mushrooms and ham
Chop the mushrooms however you fancy and put them in the frying pan with a little oil. Chop the ham and crack two or three eggs – depending on how fuelled you want to be – into a jug. Chuck the ham in the jug and give a good stir. Once the mushrooms are cooked turn the heat right down – this is the crucial bit as you want the eggs to cook really slowly so they don’t go rubbery – and then pour in the eggs gently stirring to combine them with the mushrooms. Gently does it with the heat – you can’t rush this bit. And once the eggs are just done…. serve. Lots of people tell me that of all the breakfast options out there eggs keep you full for the longest. I have to agree!
Smashed avocado on wholemeal toast
Easy, and lovely. Select two slices of your favourite wholemeal, granary, brown, seedy, nutty bread (or make your own!) and pop them in the toaster. Slice open a ripe avocado and mash in a bowl. Spread on the toast! How easy is that! Get fancy if you want! Personally I like a little splash of extra virgin olive oil in mine as it seems to ‘loosen’ the avocado while you mash it. And I love to chop in a little basil! …and for a nice ‘hit’ try some chilli flakes!
There you are – 3 great ways to start your day! I’m off for my overnight oats now which have been gently doing their stuff in the fridge!
See you soon!
I bumped into one of my neighbours this morning and we discovered something about each other that we didn’t know… we are both passionate about self care, particularly meditation and mindfulness.
As we talked she was telling me how she enjoyed our conversation a lot and we pondered how conversation is becoming a little bit of a lost art. Conversation, at least, where we explore and discover shared interests and something new. I wondered, as I finished the walk with the dog, what the impact of our move into the online world was. The online world lends itself beautifully to the sound bite. Conversations are linear and come to a logical conclusion. It’s harder to take things in a different direction as we did. We started on the weather (as most conversations do) and ended up talking about friendship, photography, art, music, property developing, meditation, mindfulness, walking, holidays…. the list went on. Such a conversation would be unlikely to develop in that way online. Don’t get me wrong, I love online. I think it’s a great medium. Accessible, instant. But it lacks the flow of a real life conversation.
Part of the problem may be that we are all very busy. It needed a Sunday morning, a chance meeting, and the fact we were in a field away from distractions for this conversation to take place. It just takes someone to start. Then we join in. When I teach communication skills I’m always saying that as human animals we are instinctive communicators. We can’t help ourselves. But, as ever, it is the quality of the conversation that is important. It takes being in the moment without those distractions.
We agreed that because of our conversation our day would be changed. We felt invigorated and motivated through this chance contact. The desire to connect is part of the human condition.
So I want to challenge you to have more conversations. It is such connections that develop us. Enhance us. Take the time. Create the space. Be mindful. Be in the moment. Let it flow.
Let’s talk!
The establishing of a morning routine is vital to starting the day on the right foot (thatâs the âcorrectâ foot not necessarily the ârightâ one â you could start on the left one if you want!). Your first âstepsâ into the day are crucial to how your day goes. Some advocates of this suggest creating a 30-60 minute routine to benefit yourself and start you off on the day right. (Although 30 to 60 minutes feel like a bit of an ask for most of us). This comes as no great surprise to me, but it is nice to have what you know affirmed. You want something that will physically and mentally prepare you for the day. Ideally it should involve a period of mindfulness or reflection. Visualising the day ahead had been shown to help.
Thinking about our day, visualising what you want it to look like and what your objective is, has been shown to have a significant impact in how it actually turns out. Neuroscience has plenty of research to tell us it is so.
My morning routine has changed since we got a dog because she won’t wait for her walk until I’ve sorted myself out!! So my mindfulness and visualisation takes place while I’m in motion!
But it used to look something like this….. On waking I’d start with some deep breathing â this is before Iâve even got out of bed. Next, I’d press play on the music that is the backdrop to my yoga stretching the Om Mani Padme Hum (Ven. Dharma Nauka). I do sun salutation, downward and upward dog, pigeon pose (which I completely struggle with!), cat and cow pose and some additional stretches for good measure âŚ.and it usually takes me the time of the full mantra to do this. I then sit on the floor for more deep breathing and some meditation â just for a few minutes. I still do this as often as I can… but now after the dog walk! She sometimes joins in and shows me how to do both downward and upward dog… and she’s much better at it than I am.
Next â water. Then â coffee and settle down to read for quarter of an hour or so â something thatâs currently intriguing me about the human condition âŚ.and then Iâm done âŚ.and all ready for breakfast!
The reality is, for me anyway, is that I still fit all of these things in at various points but it has to be flexible. With a little planning I generally donât have to miss too much.
And what are the benefits? For me (at my age!) I feel physically ready for the day. I feel aches and stiffness when I wake up â but if I get my stretching in early I feel none of it for the rest of the day. But more than this I feel energised and ready to face the day in a state of calm. It certainly benefits me as if I miss too much of this out Iâm convinced I donât have as good a day. If I do these things, including the dog walk, I feel I’ve activated my body, activated my mind, and started my day by achieving a great deal. And that’s before I start on the other things that are waiting for me.
Start your day well and your day will go well – I’m convinced of it!