The Difference is YOU

IMYJOB: Week 4

A couple years ago the most desired brand in high fashion recognized they had a serious problem: their employees were bitchy to people they didn't think would spend a lot of money. After I was asked to get involved in solving the problem, I tested these findings. My business partner (a former Microsoft employee) and I wandered into their boutique in Beverly Hills in our yoga gear. Lo and behold, the septuagenarian security guard is the only person who bothered to acknowledge us for the entire 20 minutes we endured being in the store. Not a good feeling.

This type of profiling happens in any business, but the obvious problem is that while missing out on lots of smaller transactions and creating a relationship with 14 year olds who will someday buy the $3,000 handbag, this company was also missing out on transactions from people like me and you who may not dress fancy, but in Sam Walton style can just as easily whip out the platinum AMEX when the mood strikes us. For the company this meant lost revenues. For the employees, it meant both lost sales commissions, and a very important something else - reducing interactions at work to either ones that "matter" or ones that aren't worth having. By adopting a mindset that precludes the majority of moments at work to being irrelevant, drudgery or a waste of time, the employees there had forgotten why they ever wanted to be a part of this proud brand to begin with. They had forgotten that this brand is the embodiment of luxury, of sophistication, and there is nothing luxurious or sophisticated about being rude or sleepwalking through the majority hours of life.

No matter where you work, for a couture name or a non-profit, there is a higher meaning behind the work you do. Each organization has central ideals and provides services others need. Sure we often look at this as nothing more than a reduced version of b.s. bingo - but those ideals are the core of how we connect and contribute to the highest version of what the organization is. Think about it: we can reduce what we do to its lowest meaning, or we can connect with it at the very highest.

As we've done with employees at organizations ranging from the NYPD to Yahoo!, employees at this company were invited to reconnect to why they ever wanted to work there to begin with. After working through their own stories of how they ended up there, the room was full of remembering the legacy, the attention to every last detail, the creativity of the vision, that working there meant "belonging" in a world of absolute luxury. We asked: okay, so if that's what drew you here, isn't it safe to assume a similar longing drew people into the door? How do you give them that experience in everything you do?

The room got quiet. We were all feeling a bit high on these notions of legacy, creativity, vision and absolute luxury. If you could have bottled that vibe you'd have a blockbuster potion no one could resist. Everyone sat with this question: how to exude these values in everything we do from answering the phone to making eye-contact to acknowledge someone even if we are busy helping someone else? How to treat ourselves with this same level of awareness so that in our interactions with each other (both other employees and the clients we serve), that vibe becomes the defining quality of the interaction. Yes, even in conflict.

Here are a couple practices you can use to get YOURSELF into your highest level of functioning at work:

1. What does the organization you work for stand for? Whether you work for SAP and deliver networking solutions or you work in food services and serve meals on trays, there are elements of grace and dignified service that are expressed by what you do and where you work. WebMD employees are a great example - they could see themselves as just working at an internet site or they could remember that this service makes valuable information available to countless people. Both interpretations are true - yet one reveals the grace and importance of their work while the other obscures it. I guarantee you it matters to how they feel about their work, how they produce and what kind of day they usually have. Look at your own job and identify those elements.


2. Ask yourself which of those elements most resonate with YOU. At Disney for example, employees are led through an exercise to identify which character most reflects their values - you can do a similar exercise for yourself. What about where you work got you there to begin with? If having a job period is what got you there, what about the work of your organization holds beauty to you? I call this the Point of Highest Resonance


3. Remind yourself of that Point of Highest Resonance on your way to work, and in the midst of conducting the tasks that are your work. Answering the phone. Responding to a colleague. How does that resonance come alive in everything you do - by doing this you literally bottle that highest vibe within yourself and emanate it with other people.

By using these highest values as an organizing principle as you contribute your energy, intelligence and self to your work, work becomes an outlet for self expression that is inextricably linked to feeling a sense of purpose, whether you've ever thought of it that way or not. Wisdom traditions teach us that Karma is the law of action, and work is another field of your action.

You've got the concept, now work it. Moving through the last week of this series, notice when your action is required at any given moment, and see how it feels to allow yourself to resonate with it at a higher level. Notice when your work calls upon you to create a solution. No matter how mundane the problem or simple the solution, notice that you can respond with a low appraisal of your work, your contribution, your life, or you can choose to embody a higher value for all of the above. Notice that no matter your role, the challenges of your day invite your imagination of other possibilities whether you see it that way or not. Your consciousness and cognitive powers mean that no matter where you are or what your role, it is up to you to make the difference in how you go about whatever it is you do for work.

Be well,

Tevis

IMYJOB - The Series:

• Jobs: Love The One You're With
• Black Holes & Illumination
• Employee ID: Work As Self-Expression
• Rut, Routine or Ritual?
• The Difference is YOU

Related Topics:

• Mind, Body, Spirit: Member Discussion
• The Good Life Neighborhood
• Emotional Wellness - get helpful tips in your inbox

Rut, Routine or Ritual?

IMYJOB: Week 3

You know the drill. With some variation we all experience the following: Alarm. Arise. Bathe. Eat. Drink. Leave. Arrive. Work. When I was in college a popular band called The Godfathers reduced it to a stultifying Birth, School, Work, Death. It was their only hit. The Police captured it beautifully in their drudgery anthem Synchronicity II, and even Francis Ford Coppola says you'd better love what you do because "eventually you will hate it".

Because humans are pattern-makers both in terms of how our brains organize information and how we structure our lives, the workaday mentality is an inevitable one. But equally true, our nervous systems are wired to respond to chaos. Any fitness trainer will tell you that the human body responds best when dealing with uncertainty and will intentionally sequence exercises to wake the body up. Despite first-day-of-school reluctance to step into new situations, we crave both the security of the predictable and the excitement of the unknown. Having both is dependent upon how you cultivate your own sense of presence no matter which seems dominant on any given day.

To convert the hum-drum of everyday, you have to see your day with new eyes. The words "rut" and "routine" might easily describe the patterned events and actions you take everyday, but when held with a sense of appreciation and presence these very same events can bring a elements of comfort, connection and community.

• Savor the Sacred - What ARE the sacred moments in your day? What are the small pleasures that you experience because of the routine of your day? The sacred doesn't have to involve chanting, incense, or some other more esoteric ritual, although it might. It does require you look at your day as a series of patterned actions that create ritual, no matter how mundane they might seem.


• Patterns of Pleasure - Chances are the routines you experience have evolved from countless repeated choices you make based upon what gives you pleasure. Your morning beverage of choice; the route to work; what you read or listen to while in transit; pleasure can even be found in how you settle into your work-space. We all have endless small pleasures sprinkled throughout our days, often without notice due to the constant chatter of the brain. Take an inventory of your work-pattern pleasures this week.


• Cultivate Community - From the moment you awaken, how does your work create opportunity for beauty, for connection with others, for resolution, for rest? Is it saying hello to a neighbor as you collect the paper from outside? Is it the joke with the barista when you get your morning jo? Might the shared pre-meeting personal anecdote actually be a moment of connection? Is welcoming a new team member secretly a moment of compassion and kindness?

Anything from preparing for a meeting to organizing the things on your desk can be seen as creating order and ritual. When viewed with a beauty-seeking eye, any given day is full of sacred, pleasurable moments. By recognizing these moments of connection and sacred beauty in midst of the absurdly mundane, we elevate our work experience from being "what I do to get paid", to being another venue in which to experience the delight of being alive.

Be well,

Tevis

IMYJOB - The Series:

• Jobs: Love The One You're With
• Black Holes & Illumination
• Employee ID: Work As Self-Expression
• Rut, Routine or Ritual?
• The Difference is YOU

Related Topics:

• Mind, Body, Spirit: Member Discussion
• The Good Life Neighborhood
• Emotional Wellness - get helpful tips in your inbox

Employee ID: Work As Self-Expression

IMYJOB: Week 2

If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that there are lots of ways to perceive work challenges. For some people impediments to being happy at work roll like water off a duck's back. For others, not so much. From obstacle to growth-opportunity, the ways we frame the world around is of our making and has real impact on the quality our life experience. The comments submitted by readers of this series give great illustration of this - ranging from (paraphrasing) "I love my job if not for all those irritating people I have to deal with", to "It IS our work to interact with each other".

But what IS your work? Is it part of your identity? Although there's a cliché that Americans live to work and Europeans work to live, in both equations work is somehow separate from life. Taking a clue from nature, all living things work and live. A tree could not be a tree without doing the work of being a tree (photosynthesis, etc.). While all other plants also conduct this work, the essential nature or treeness of the tree is what that work (photosynthesis) supports. The work supports the tree's essential nature, as our work supports ours.

Consider this example: when asked what his greatest work was, passion-driven workaholic, inventor, artist and renaissance-man Leonardo DaVinci responded, "Leonardo DaVinci". His sentiment contrasts with our modern demonization of identifying with work. I remember at a party asking someone what they did for work and being lambasted with indignation that such a question has anything to do with who they are suggesting that only people reminiscent of the greedy banker character Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street so identify with their work. But wait - if we are on a path of cultivating satisfaction in our lives, shouldn't EVERYTHING we do somehow be an expression of who we are?

Back to the tree example: imagine a tree that does less that 100% effort in photosynthesis - not much of a prognosis for survival. Suggesting there can be no conditions applied to how we embrace and exert in all venues of life, Martin Luther King Jr. said this:

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: "Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well."

Ego, status, self-conscious competition, and co-worker drama aside, King suggests - as many ancient wisdom traditions from the Bible to the Bhagavad-Gita do - that connecting full-heartedly to what we do is our real work. This concept is expressed by the term dharma meaning one's righteous duty (wikipedia).

This week's practice surfaces your insights about the identity-work connection. At any gathering of adults, often the first question exchanged is "what do you do for a living?" Set aside any conditioned guilt that this is the easiest way to break the ice with strangers, and take a new look to see just why that question yields so many pieces of information that allow us to learn about each other.

1. When held with fascination these conversations provide subtle clues that allow us to connect and establish common ground, and insight about un-familiar territory. Beyond job title, what do you learn about others by asking this question?


2. Notice what you surmise about other's education, interests, skills and social networks. How are these assumptions validated by further conversation? How do people's complexities surface? Can you allow people to be full human beings even in this conversation?


3. When you meet people you assume you have nothing in common with, how can you learn about and respect them? How do you connect with them even when you're not sure where to find common ground?


4. Do you get a sense that whomever you speak to is passionate for what they do? Do you perceive that they have interpersonal and executional challenges that arise in the course of "getting the job done"? Do they allow both passion and imperfections to coexist within this conversation? Do you?


5. What about outside passions? When you meet people who convey simply "working to make a living", do you find they typically have an outside passion? Do you find people with passions for work are the people with passions outside of work or do you find people who use passions outside of work to compensate for their lack of passion at work? BONUS: Would you say that passionate people are simply passionate no matter if the topic is work or leisure?

Wherever you go this week, don't forget to ask these questions of yourself as well. Notice how you express aspects of yourself by talking about work. Rather than allowing your work-centric conversations to be habitual venting or complaining, simply allow work to say something inherently powerful or meaningful about you and the people you meet. In embracing work as a form of self-expression, you practice an aspect of dharma integrating work into life and life into work.

Let me know how it goes.

Be well,

Tevis

IMYJOB - The Series:

• Jobs: Love The One You're With
• Black Holes & Illumination
• Employee ID: Work As Self-Expression
• Rut, Routine or Ritual?
• The Difference is YOU

Related Topics:

• Mind, Body, Spirit: Member Discussion
• The Good Life Neighborhood
• Emotional Wellness - get helpful tips in your inbox

Black Holes & Illumination

IMYJOB: Week 1


Borrowing from 12-step wisdom, one of the biggest leaps you can make towards loving your any area of life – work included – is admitting that you are a part of the problem. What problem? Well, whatever you consider to be the problem. All too often we hold a magnifying glass to the world looking for evidence of how we think things are and judging them according to how we think they SHOULD be rather than simply being present with how they are. And let's face it: until you are appointed as chief designer of the universe, the contrast between how you think things should be and how things are is often a vast one, that open empty space between the two often filled with discontentment. This week offers exercises to help you dive into that gap.

Let's get clear about a couple of things. Loving your job does not mean you think everything or everyone is perfect there. Loving your job DOES mean that your involvement with whatever is going on, imperfections and all, is not a source of unhappiness or resignation. Instead, held with love and commitment, the challenges you find are calls to action, catalysts of effort, and starter flames for investment of passion and cultivation of compassion.

Think about it this way: most of us can think of people who have "black hole" areas in their lives. A black hole area is an area in which they don't have much success or satisfaction, and when you hear them talk about it there's not really an upside present. For one friend it might be money. For another it might be romantic relationships. The possibilities are very broad, and can even be boiled down to specific phobias or discomforts such as heights, public places, being out of control, etc. These black hole areas are like neon indicators pointing to our most unconscious but limiting perspectives, ones that put us at odds with what IS, and each of us has them.

Oftentimes the black hole areas of others are much more obvious to us than our own, and offer great insight into the power of deeply held beliefs. For example: let's say I have lots of healthy friendships with women I admire and respect and then I meet a woman who tells me she struggles with friendships with women. I would be able to see her black hole as a black hole and experience my own wisdom in that area, while she might simply feel it as a foregone conclusion that by nature women are not trustworthy, loyal, supportive, etc. Multiplying this awareness opportunity over the countless people you encounter over the course of your day, conscious observation of your own mindset and the mindsets of others is a great step towards choosing ones that free you up from judging the world around you and reposition you as simply learning from it.

You may have heard conventional wisdom that the definition of insanity is "doing something over and over again, expecting a different result." The "doing" in this case is how we perceive the world around us and offers a key to creating powerful shifts. This week, apply this practice to the subject of WORK, looking for black holes and opportunities for illumination:

1. Begin to take note of how people in your life talk about work. Is it positive? Is there expansive curiosity or limiting judgment? Notice how many times you detect resignation, indignation, or other less than expansive states of being when the issues of work are involved. Direct this inquiry to your own inner circle: how do your parents or other primary life influences talk about work? Friends? As a parent, how do you talk to your children or other young people about work?
2. How many expansive or life-affirming attitudes do you encounter about work and how many times do you experience "black-holes"? As you survey these attitudes about work, notice your inner response to their attitudes. When speaking to people who express well-being and positive attitudes towards work, do you feel at ease or like running to your most reliable venting-partner? When you hear negativity about work, does it affirm your world view or bum you out? Responses can be a mixture of both, just get in the practice of NOTICING.
3. As you conduct transactions and commerce at work and in life, what do you notice about the attitudes of the people you come into contact with? That barista, cashier, call-center attendant, receptionist, etc., what do you notice about how they go about what they do? How do they handle conflict or less-than-perfect aspects of their jobs? BONUS: how do you engage with and respond to people who seem at peace with what they do?
4. As you take note of all these various attitudes and beliefs, ask yourself who seems happier with themselves and life. Ask yourself who around you seems to have something you can learn from in order to better your relationship with work. Remembering that whatever we focus on grows, allow yourself to take note of moments in which you are with people who are at peace with what they do (no matter how simple/menial/unglamorous/poorly compensated). Focusing on their energy, their language, and their overall sense of peace, what happens inside of you when you allow yourself to be present to their state of being?

By observing examples of black holes and illumination, you can begin to cultivate a greater relationship with illumination and greater awareness of your own black holes. If you are getting together with a group or undertaking this practice on your own, either in writing or in moments of reflection, honor your own process by considering carefully what you have observed and what you can learn from it. Resist the urge to dismiss another's state of well being as "unintelligent" or otherwise invalid. Instead, focus upon what they get and what they give out in terms of peace of mind and satisfaction. Is there some aspect of their way of being you can try on from time to time this week?

Be well,

Tevis

IMYJOB - The Series:

• Jobs: Love The One You're With
• Black Holes & Illumination
• Employee ID: Work As Self-Expression
• Rut, Routine or Ritual?
• The Difference is YOU

Related Topics:

• Mind, Body, Spirit: Member Discussion
• The Good Life Neighborhood
• Emotional Wellness - get helpful tips in your inbox

Jobs: Love The One You're With

If loving your work sounds like a luxury you can't afford, think again. You MUST be in harmony with what you do every day. As a biological organism and life system, feeling positively about what you do is necessary for both your well-being and effectiveness. When you hate what you do, you carry the chemical reality of those negative feelings around inside of your body, impacting both critical functions of vital organs, as well as diminishing your ability to respond well, communicate, recall, formulate ideas and create solutions.

This is no time to be less than optimal. With unemployment higher than most of us can remember, never before have new ideas, good communication skills, reserves of energy, and an ability to stay cool through chaos been more important. But if the notions that happiness at work is an operational norm and that true success is an inside job rank somewhere between Hallmark-wishes and reality TV, you may have to make a practice out of shifting how you think about where you earn your daily bread.

Whether it's bosses, subordinates, peers, clients, IT, finance, marketing, the news or even the company cafeteria that is getting you down, you can't afford to let anything stand in the way of feeling good about where you spend the majority of your days. If health reasons and quality of life aren't enough to motivate you to try on a new attitude, consider this: there are plenty of people out there who really, really, really want your job right now. So how do you do it? How do you adopt a positive mental framework about WORK?

Chances are your attitude DOES need a shift. Even before the downturn, Gallup reported that less than 27% of us were "truly engaged" in our work. And in companies where layoffs have occurred, chances are employees are feeling even more forlorn as they head to their desks. Post-layoff, the damage to the sense of trust between employer & employee is so grave companies can anticipate a multiple of 3x however many people were laid-off to leave their jobs in the next 12 months. And since the US Department of Labor recently reported productivity has improved 6.6% - the highest level in six years- chances are also pretty good that your company isn't about to spend bunches of money on extra bells and whistles to put a smile back on employees faces.

Here's how IMYJOB works:

1. Practice Makes Perfect: For the next four weeks, by each Monday at noon you will find a specific Focus Practice to help you shift your mind out of the work gutter.


2. Progress Not Perfection: Based on the ideas in the post, you will work with each concept and practice for a week and see if you feel a change in perspective or new energy. We're not talking magic wand here, we're talking personal empowerment at work and in life.


3. Happiness Loves Company: Some of us work best alone, but there's also something to be said about community and support. If that resonates with you, tell your friends, forward this as an invitation, talk to them about what it means to you to feel better at work every day and see if they are interested in doing it with you. Make sure they understand this will not be a scheduled gripe session or opportunity to vent, but will be all about looking at and practicing how you cultivate happiness in the midst of your workday.


4. Playing Nice (If you're going it alone, you can skip this point): Decide together how your group is going to function. If you work in the same company you can meet in a conference room at lunch time. If you prefer virtual, you can agree to swap notes on the posts and what you are observing. In some companies, people have even named their groups, a Success & Satisfaction Salon or whatever you want to call it. Agree that participants are all peers and only speak from the "I or ME" rather than giving advice to each other. Respect your meeting times and/or online sharing commitments, and also, what people SAY in the group STAYS in the group.


5. Keeping Zentention: Okay, so maybe "love" or "happiness" at work seems excessive - especially after a bad meeting or challenging commute. Whether you do all of the posts over the next four weeks of this IMYJOB or you just pop in from time to time, hold the zen-tention of being at peace with whatever is happening around you, and compassionately seeing the very real humanity in whomever is around you.

Confused? You should be - this is a confusing time. Then meet me back here in a week and let's get started using confusion as a catalyst for learning to be even more clear and satisfied.

Be well,

Tevis

IMYJOB - The Series:

• Jobs: Love The One You're With
• Black Holes & Illumination
• Employee ID: Work As Self-Expression
• Rut, Routine or Ritual?
• The Difference is YOU

Related Topics:

• Mind, Body, Spirit: Member Discussion
• The Good Life Neighborhood
• Emotional Wellness - get helpful tips in your inbox

Job Search Sanity

Pamela Skillings

I was recently lucky enough to serve on a panel on career options at Right Management with several brilliant entrepreneurs including a dear colleague, Pamela Skillings. Pam's book, Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams, was perfectly timed to remind folks of their options at the height of the boom. And now that so many professionals are being forced to consider alternative paths, she has given lots of thought to navigating change when it's hasn't occurred by choice.

"I spend a lot of time with job hunters on a daily basis. Many of them are overworked, stressed-out, and on the verge of burnout. That's because managing a career transition really is a full-time job - and it can be an exhausting, demeaning, and thankless full-time job at that", she commented after the panel.

From the feedback from participants, it's really true. Overwhelming to-do lists of calls to make, resumes to send, job listings to comb through, cover letters to customize, and networking events to attend leave very little time for self-care. And in today's competitive and challenging job market, positive reinforcement or any sense of accomplishment are a rare occurrence, but desperately needed to keep the search energized and effective. Add very real anxieties about finances to doubts about contribution, identity and self-worth, and you've got to take action.

Here's what Pam suggests:

1. Stop taking rejection personally. Easier said than done, but you must understand that the current job market is challenging for everyone. It is going to take you longer to find a great gig and you are going to get rejected. That's just a fact. And the fact that you're out of work is no reflection on your worth as an employee or as a human being. Almost everyone has been through a layoff these days. It's a rite of passage. So stop torturing yourself with "shoulds" - you "should" have a new job by now or "should" have aced that interview. The only way to find a great new job is to keep putting yourself out there to be rejected.


2. Structure your days. It's easy to lose track of time when you're staring at job listings (or when you're avoiding the painful prospect of staring at job listings). The best way to keep your momentum going is to schedule your days. Put together a proactive plan and allot time for your different career transition tasks and other important pursuits (see below).


3. Get moving. Make time for exercise and get sweaty on a regular basis. Pick something that forces you to focus all of your attention on the moment (like yoga or my personal favorite, spin class). It's good for your body and it's a very necessary break for your mind.


4. Ask for help. Job searching can be a lonely pursuit. Form a casual support group of friends and/or former colleagues who are also looking. You can help each other with practical things like job leads and resume tips. More importantly, you can get some much-needed emotional support from people who know what you're going through. Sometimes, you just need to vent to someone who understands and won't judge. Find some people like that and connect with them on a regular basis.


5. Boost your own self-esteem. When you're dealing with regular rejection and frustration, it's important to find time for activities that actually make you feel good about yourself. Find some energizing and motivating activities to work into your structured schedule (see number 2). These activities can include exercise (see #3) or spending time with supportive friends (see #4). You could also look for an inspiring volunteer project or an interesting class. Both of these options will help you exercise your brain, remind you of your talents, and probably make you more marketable to employers too.

And after you DO find a gig, be sure to keep these practices up - they are a great formula for worklife satisfaction for anyone!

Be well,

Tevis

Related Topics:

• WebMD Video: Tips for Coping With Being Laid Off
• 10 Ways to Protect Your Heart From the Tolls of Recession
• Mind, Body, Spirit: Member Discussion
• The Good Life Neighborhood
• Emotional Wellness - get helpful tips in your inbox

Worklife Now

Between eying the empty chairs steadily appearing in many work environments and watching declining employment numbers across the country, staying energized and motivated can be more than just a daily challenge. Because of the mechanism of the Human Stress Response, the very behaviors that help us function optimally are often the ones our stressed nervous system says "don't bother", "not critical", or "bah, that's an indulgence." Being at your best in times like now requires overcoming your self-defeating behavior with discipline and awareness.

Think about it: when we're under stress it's because we feel fear and uncertainty. This is the trigger for the nervous system to prioritize survival activities, automatically diminishing the functioning of important systems such as circulatory, autoimmune, reproduction, sleep and digestive. Ironically, dysfunction of any of these systems simply exacerbates our experience of feeling stressed. So the moment you feel most "deer in the headlights" about your survival is the moment that you most need but are least likely to engage in activities such as a long walk, dancing in the living room, playing with a puppy or child, or reading inspirational ideas to counteract the survival response and jump-start our nonetheless critical "luxury functions."

Three Reality Checks
First, forget getting more hours in the day in which to take care of yourself. We all get the same amount of time in each day and last I heard, even President Obama squeezes in a workout in the midst of his job demands.

Second, don't wait for someone to create perfectly scheduled options that somehow fit both your preferences and comfort zone. You've got to take advantage of the options you already have even if they require adjusting to something that feels awkward or new.

Third, you've got to take responsibility for taking care of yourself. No one is going to come take you by the hand and lead you to self-care. If the term "self-care" feels too indulgent, why not shift your perception of these actions and treat them as leadership practices?

Making Your List
To get going, take a sheet of paper (or pixel) and write in two columns RELAX YOUR MIND, and ENERGIZE YOUR BODY.

Under ways you relax your mind, write anything you know to do to ease your level of mental activity. Studies show that working on puzzles and solving problems, creating something through activities such as cooking or building, playing, dancing and watching the breath are all ways to counter the Human Stress Response. Identify at least three things you can do on any given day to ease your mind.

Ways to energize your body: even if you've canceled your gym membership, there are still many ways for you to move around for cardiovascular, circulatory and functional health. Exercise the 1970's way by just walking/running outside and doing calisthenics. Maybe you actually USE those videos you bought forever ago or tune into TV workout programs readily available in just about any market. Another option: many yoga studios and community centers have downturn specials and offer free classes in exchange for light volunteer work. Whatever it is, from parking further from your destinations to walking flights of stairs, you CAN do something every day to improve your physical health.

Net Net
Navigating uncertainty with grace and well being is a conscious act. Imagine our executive team being too stressed to workout or too busy to eat right: who would want our top global decision makers feeling foggy from lack of exercise or lack of downtime to clear their perspective in solving these global issues? Hold yourself to those very same standards. Post your lists somewhere you can see them easily and regularly. Decide each day one activity you will do in each category and then do them even if only for 5 minutes apiece.

Doing something, anything, can make the difference between staring at the headlights and moving further along the road. Each time you engage in mental or physical well being activities, congratulate yourself for taking another step along your journey.

Be well,

Tevis

Related Topics:

• WebMD Video: Guided Meditation - Relax and Restore
• 5 Tips for Better Work-Life Balance
• Living Better - Wellness news in your inbox