How to Use Your Lunch Break Effectively!

Taking your full lunch break can be one of the most productive things you can do! You will work all the better for it (assuming you don’t spend it drinking alcohol and eating masses of high carbohydrate food; then you’ll fall asleep!)

Tips for Great Lunch Break

• Avoid the rush and take it before or after peak hours.
• Meet a friend and don’t talk work.
• Go and give blood – you’ll feel very altruistic.
• Try a short power nap, or siesta, but preferably not at desk…
• Go to local library and browse.
• Once a week use it to learn something new-Spanish?
• Get outside in the fresh air, a park if possible.
• Go window shopping.
• Walk around local area as a tourist and look up. It’s amazing what you can see on buildings!

What has been the best lunch break you have ever had?

Are You Open to The New?

Highly successful people rarely focus all their energies on one single thing; great scientists and artists tend to have broad interests and are open to new experiences. And new experiences give you new sources of knowledge which inspires everything you do.

New experiences give your life more depth and colour and will help inspire your creativity.

So if you’ve become a bit stuck in a rut, what new experiences can you broaden your mind with this week? Go on, try something new. The results may surprise you!

Your One Minute Mood Lift!

Next time you begin to feel stressed, (unless you are driving!) take one minute out of your hectic schedule to try this.

• Imagine you are making a scan of your body starting with your head right down to your toes. As you mentally travel down your body be aware where any tension is located and as ‘your scanner’ gets to it, exhale noisily and see the tension flowing away from you with the breath.
• Close your eyes and allow yourself to smile very slowly. Make sure that you don’t have a clamped jaw and a gritted teeth smile! Just allow a slow soft smile to form on your lips. You should feel your face muscles relaxing as you do this.

• Think up your own calming words. Words which help you slow down and repeat them slowly in your head. They might be: ‘soft’, ‘calm’, ‘soothe’,’ love’, ‘comfortable’, ‘release’, ‘warmth,’ or ‘relax’. Choose one that works for you.

When life gets a bit busy, give yourself just 60 seconds every day to try the one minute mood lift!

Do share any quick de-stressors you find helpful too!

Are You Lonely?

Do you ever feel lonely? I was recently asked my for my thoughts on loneliness by Health & Fitness magazine, following the publication of a Mental Health Foundation report on that topic. The report discovered that 1 in 10 people frequently experience loneliness, and that 42% of us have been depressed because we felt alone at some point in our lives. That’s an awful lot of us!

Women Suffer More?

The report also had some statistics to show that women, particularly younger women, seem to be more lonely than their male counterparts.

I think there may be two reasons for this:

One, women need the friendship of other women when they are under stress and recent research indicates that they need to bond. They release oxytocin at times of stress, the bonding hormone, so is it possible that women feel the absence of company more strongly?

And two, I wonder if women are more likely to admit to feeling lonely than men? Women certainly discuss their emotions more and are more likely to seek help in other areas of life.

Tips to Fix Loneliness

• Take some time trying to work out how your loneliness has arisen. Often it’s about loss, of a partner, a friendship, a new job meaning a move. Or it may be the isolation of finding yourself home with a new baby, or unemployed. Sometimes there is no discernable cause; relationships have just drifted, friends are in new relationships, etc, or have moved away. It’s worth taking a few moments to ponder why.
• Texting and social media sites are no substitute for real human contact. Touch is especially important. Try and get out most days and actually speak to a real person, or phone someone you care about.
• Think about what you like doing. If you love reading, for example, that might not seem to present opportunities for contact being a solitary activity but book clubs abound! Bookshops often host them, or you could even start one of your own!
• Some kind of physical activity has the added bonus of raising your spirits and if you can combine that with meeting others, double whammy! So, if you like walking, what about the Rambler’s Association? This has the added advantage of usually being a week end activity and week ends, especially Sundays, can be peak lonely times.
• Offer your services to a charity. Helping with a fundraising event can give you a feel good factor but will also bring you into contact with others.
• Take a sneak peek at yourself in shop mirrors. We communicate so much by our body language. What is yours saying? Do you see a miserable looking person, eyes down, no smile. If so, you may be unwittingly putting up a barrier to friendship. Try smiling, even when you don’t feel like it! It really makes a difference.
• And finally, sometimes we just need a bit of extra help in our lives, some encouragement and support to do the things we know will help us but lack the motivation to do. That might be from a friend or a professional. Sometimes it takes time to unravel why we feel like we do but it’s time well spent and can lead to a much happier outlook on life!

If you have any tips or advice to share I’d love to hear from you!

How’s Your Balance?

There are some fundamental pyschological conditions we need to be met for us to feel stable and content; if one of these is out of kilter we can feel very out of control.

Our fundamentals are:

• Physical security
• Emotional security
• Economic wellbeing
• A sense of belonging
• Recognition from others
• Control over our lives.

When we begin to feel our life is getting out of balance in one area we can overcompensate in another, comfort eating for example when we feel undervalued.

Identify Your Strengths

One way to counteract this is to identify our strengths and then invest time in developing them. Energy we spend worrying about we perceive is wrong can be very self defeating and distract us from finding a solution. The more we focus on what ails us, the more out of control we’re likely to feel.

So if you’ve been feeling life is beyond your control lately, try this over the week end:

If you have a problem try to rethink it in your head as a challenge, rather than a catastrophe outside of your control.

Slow down and focus on one thing at a time.

Try and spend some time reflecting and studying your issue, rather than rushing ahead in order to solve it. Talking to a sympathetic, but neutral, listener can be very helpful in gathering your thoughts.

Set yourself a small manageable goal towards resolution, do it, and then set another. This gives time for better solutions to arise and allows you to exert some control. Confronting in a positive way what is happening, rather then trying to ignore or suppress it will also develop your skills and strengths and enhance your self esteem!

What one goal might you set yourself this week end to enhance your overall sense of well being?

Show Off Your Hidden Gems!

What hidden gems do you have stored away that could be working for you right this minute?

Recently I have received a plethora of compliments about my voice and coaching style (thank you!) I was telling my husband, somewhat wryly, that lots of people really seemed to like the sound of my voice. He replied, with due concern for my sensibilities (wise man) that naturally he thought I had a lovely voice but he hadn’t really thought about it before.

And then during a recent course I was delivering a participant came up and said:

“I love listening to you. You make difficult ideas sound achievable and your voice is perfect for this”

I think I’ve always had this voice, although clearly it has matured over the years, but lately it seems to have become a real asset to me. And it made me think about what noticing what is right under our noses (literally in my case!)

Your Gems

We’re with ourselves all the time so naturally we tend to take ourselves for granted. Women in particular are notoriously reticent at ‘selling’ themselves and putting forward their skills and qualities. In the UK we still have a slight distaste about what we perceive as showing off. But times are difficult and if you don’t showcase your talents no one else will.Time for a rethink…

The You Audit

If you haven’t taken out your CV for a while do so now. Chances are it is well out of date. I recently asked an American CV specialist (Julie Walraven) how many of her clients were actually unemployed when they came to her. Her answer surprised me. Over 60% of her client base come to her while still in work but they are proactive about their development. They recognise the importance of keeping themselves up to date and ready to meet opportunities as they arise.

It’s so easy to forget what you’ve done if you only grab your CV when applying for a new job. You will have masses of new achievements during the course of a year so keep a record of them. Obviously you’ll tailor your CV to the circumstances but you’ll have a positive cornucopia of material to choose from. You are more fabulous than you know!

View from Outside

And try this:

Ask a representative group of friends and colleagues what they think is your best asset. You may get answers which don’t immediately seem to relate to work, such as you’re always so supportive and helpful. Get them to be specific. This can translate into ‘good team player’,  ‘educator’ or ‘mentoring skills’. You’ll probably be blinded by the glow when you start to uncover your hidden gems!

And if you want to decide for yourself about the voice, there is a free audio download here! It’s called ‘Your Perfect Working Day’. I hope you enjoy it! And if you have any tips and experiences to share, please do!