Here it is! Your route map to self care. My self care model (lovingly drawn for me by one of our fabulous students Anna Short). It’s simple and straightforward but it’s what you need to get sorted. And over the next few days I’ll tackle each element of the triangle in turn and then we can get on to figuring out how to organise it all!
The three things in the triangle won’t come as any surprise to you. In fact most of what I have to tell you won’t come as a huge surprise. Looking after yourself is one of those things where we all know what to do but we don’t always do it. And we don’t always fully understand the impact on us and our productivity.
So… we’ll talk about sleep, we’ll talk about exercise, and we’ll talk about nutrition. This is not to turn you into tofu eating (although I like tofu), marathon running (although I’ve ran marathons), zen like (although I like some meditation) creatures, but rather to show you how these three things interact and have a massive impact on your productivity in your job and in your home life.
Current research tells us that lack of sleep has a significant impact on the risk of us developing things like cancer or alzheimers, never mind the impact of a poor nights sleep on the next day. Your brain and your gut are connected directly by the vagus nerve and scientists are showing how the quality of what is going on in your gut directly effects your mood. And exercise has been shown to be effective in reducing levels of stress. Also, they are are interlinked….
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!
Cox Green by Gordon James Brown
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!
Parkrun!
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.
I saw this image above last night on a friends facebook feed and loved it. I think it’s absolutely right. How can you take care of others if you are not taking care of yourself. If you’re stressed and frazzled, feeling lethargic and tired, feeling snowed under with stuff to do, how on earth are you going to ‘be there’ ‘in the moment’ with the people you are trying to support? You will be distracted and you won’t be delivering the best service you can. And if left unattended this will lead to self doubt, anxiety and stress.
You need the tools to be able to do something about this. I’m not sure professional training programmes and employers adequately teach people how to self-care. Yes, I hear about some employers running a session on mindfulness from time to time but I don’t hear of trainers and employers routinely teaching students and staff how to self care.
And you know what…. it’s not rocket science! But…. it is science. Advances in how we can observe the brain in action have led us to understand much more effectively how we work and therefore what we can do about it. You will already know all of these things but may need reminding or may not be fully aware of the importance of them.
Here’s a flavour of a few things that help support your psychological capital so that you can be productive and do a good job. I’ll start with the thing that me posting the above image led to a conversation about…..
Take a break I can’t stress enough the importance of taking a lunch break! Never mind your legal right to one (which you have!) the impact of not taking a lunch break is significant. There is evidence that says that simply by taking a 20 minute break away from your desk at lunch time and eating something healthy or maybe going for a short work will improve your productivity in the afternoon. You will get back more than the 20 minutes you might feel you are losing in improved functioning and improved concentration. Also, you’ll be less irritable. This is a win, win, win! A win for you because you’ll get more done and feel a whole load better, a win for your employer because you’ll get more done and you will alleviate some of the symptoms of stress which may well lead to reduced sickness, and it’s a win for the service users you are working for because you’ll be more focussed on them either face to face or in the work you are doing on their behalf in the office. A report in the Telegraph states that those who are most productive take a short break about every hour!
Exercise You can use your 20 minute lunch break to go for a walk! If you want to improve your well being through exercise you may be surprised at how very little achieve’s a great deal. I’m not talking about you becoming a gym bunny! I’m talking about some regular moderate exercise. Research has shown that one single 20 minute exercise session (and that could just be a brisk walk) leads (in the short term) to faster cognitive processing, more effective planning, better short term memory, and more effective self control. Bristol University research showed that some exercise before work or at lunch time boosted mood by 40% and the ability to deal with stress by 20%. These things are a ‘no brainer’. Short and regular maintenance improves your outcomes!
Self Management Being organised makes you feel more in control. I use something I learnt on a speed awareness course as an analogy here (I know I know Speeding is bad! I’ve learnt my lesson). We were told on the course that the three things that cause car crashes are speed, space and surprises. [More on this here]. And I think we can use that to think about Person Crashes! If we are hurtling along at break neck speed without taking stock then we will eventually crash. Something will go undone, or a deadline will be missed. Having a routine that makes you look at what’s to do on a daily basis will help avoid this. We need space – and I’ve talked about that above. Space to switch off for a short period so we can recharge. Diary in the lunch break. Have a morning routine that gives you some space to prepare for the day. Schedule a coffee mid morning. Find space for you to recharge. And finally surprises! If you are in the right frame of mind because you’ve had space and if you have a trusted system that means you know everything that is to do you will find it easier to deal with the surprises life throws at you. If you are using your diary effectively you’ll be able to see where the space is and use it to deal with that surprise or move stuff into it to deal with the surprise now!
There are other things that I’ll talk about soon – mindfulness, sleep, nutrition, emotional intelligence – to name a few. But… for now…. make a start! Schedule that lunch break! Go for that walk! Trust me! It will help
