balance

Good day, team.

The coach’s challenge this week is about restoring ourselves. It’s a great topic for this time of year, as nice weather beckons us to relax and take some time off.

I’ve often gone on vacation only to find myself more stressed than refreshed when I return home. Vacation has more to do with our state of mind than how much time we take off. A lot of people try to use the skills that make them effective at work — organizing, planning and directing — to make their vacations a success. The trouble is, this approach is generally not compatible with a state of rest and relaxation. Putting ourselves in a relaxed mode is a real trick when we’re used to moving quickly and efficiently throughout our days.

One way to aid mental relaxation is to engage in a recreational activity that requires attention. Many people say that when they go skiing in the mountains, they don’t think about anything else because it requires their full attention. This focused activity allows them to stop thinking about anything else and just be in the moment — and these kinds of activities are highly restorative. Yesterday, while canoeing with my grandsons, I stopped thinking about work or what to fix for dinner or anything other than being in that canoe with my husband and the kids, paddling across the lake. It was glorious!

The key to taking time off to restore oneself seems to be in our ability to stay in the present moment, to think only of what we are doing now, where we are now, who we are with now. If we’re still thinking about work while we’re talking to our families, we are not very effective at communicating with them. If we’re lying in the hammock on the weekend worrying about something at work, how much are we able to relax? Conversely, if we’re in a meeting dreaming about our upcoming vacation, we’re obviously not being effective at work.

This week, try spending at least 30 minutes each day (outside of work!) just relaxing and allowing yourself to “vacate.” Try not to put any demands on yourself. In the words of Josephine Rathbone, pioneering professor of health and physical education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, “If we could learn how to balance rest against effort, calmness against strain, quiet against turmoil, we would assure ourselves of joy in living and psychological health for life.”

Have a great week!

Kathleen

Good day, team,

Here’s a challenge I wrote last year that seems appropriate to republish. Since many of the conditions that inspired it are still with us, I thought you’d appreciate seeing it again.

Lately, many of my clients are going through a particularly stressful time so I thought it would be useful to understand more about what’s actually happening to us when we become too stressed.

Here is an excerpt about the chemistry of stress from “Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership” by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatizis; it appears in the September 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review. (The entire article is well worth reading.)

“When people are under stress, surges in stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol strongly affect their reasoning and cognition. At low levels, cortisol facilitates thinking and other mental functions, so well-timed pressure to perform and targeted critiques of subordinates certainly have their place. When a leader’s demands become too great for a subordinate to handle, however, soaring cortisol levels and an added hard kick of adrenaline can paralyze the mind’s critical abilities. Attention fixates on the threat from the boss rather than the work at hand; memory, planning and creativity go out the window. People fall back on old habits, no matter how unsuitable those are for addressing new challenges.

“Poorly delivered criticism and displays of anger by leaders are common triggers of hormonal surges. In fact, when laboratory scientists want to study the highest levels of stress hormones, they simulate a job interview in which an applicant receives intense face-to-face criticism—an analogue of a boss tearing apart a subordinate’s performance.

“Researchers likewise find that when someone who is very important to a person expresses contempt or disgust toward him, his stress circuitry triggers an explosion of stress hormones and a spike in heart rate by 30 to 40 beats person minutes. Then, because of the interpersonal dynamic of mirror neurons and oscillators, the tension spreads to other people. Before you know it, the destructive emotions have infected an entire group and inhibited its performance. Leaders are themselves not immune to the contagion of stress. All the more reason they should take time to understand the biology of emotions.”

Your challenge this week is to check your stress levels and try to regain balance for your heart, mind and body. Perhaps you’ve noticed a tendency to disengage when you’re at work. If that’s the case, try finding one particular thing you really love doing and focus on that for awhile. Passion naturally re-engages us, and lends us a new source of energy. Maybe you find yourself becoming negative toward your co-workers; try getting some exercise at lunchtime to counter those feelings. If you find that your behavior is having a negative impact on others, try asking for help. Talk to someone you trust on the team. Let them know you’re having a hard time and could use help seeing things in a more positive light. Experiment with meditation techniques. Recent studies have proven that daily meditation reduces high blood pressure, high levels of cortisol, migraine headaches, and a number of other high-stress symptoms.

Whatever your experience of stress, remember that it’s not just your brain that does the work: A healthy body and an open heart are necessary to face each day as it comes, with all of its successes and failures. If you’re running at a deficit, figure out what you need to do to turn that loss into a gain. And chill out from time to time throughout the day. It might just help you think more clearly and creatively while it supports your body’s ability to be stress free.

Have a great week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

Tag: balance

8/22/11 “Restore”

11/16/09