Foster abundance, energy and vitality

Today is World Health Day and a great opportunity to reflect on our wellbeing.  Although it’s a complex concept with many layers of meaning, if you ask most people they’d all agree that their health is important to them. Without good health, it’s much harder to live life to the fullest.

What’s exciting is that wellbeing is starting to be taken far more seriously in the workplace and there is also more and more serious research into the topic from the health sciences to the field of positive psychology.

I like to think of wellbeing as fostering abundance – of energy, vitality and zest for life.

A simple way for us to examine our wellbeing to consider

1. Are we healthy of mind?
2. Are we healthy of body?
3. Are we healthy of spirit?

These are deeply entwined and interrelated with each impacting on, and shaping the other. And for each person, our relative emphasis on these dimensions will inevitably be different. Moreover, what helps one person foster wellbeing in each of these areas will look and feel different to another.

What matters is that you have a balance across all these areas and a variety of tools up your sleeve to help you promote your overall health and wellbeing.

Below are some simple tips for fostering wellbeing.

MIND

1. Schedule some reflection time – do you start your day booting up your computer and diving straight into email? Each morning for the next week, see if you can start your work day in a different way. Perhaps give yourself 15-30 minutes of quiet reflection time, thinking about the most important tasks you need to achieve, the relationships you want to foster, and the impact you want to have on others in the process. Give yourself an opportunity to focus on what matters most.
2. Notice the substance and quality of your thoughts – we spend a large part of our day on autopilot and often miss some key opportunities in the process. Periodically throughout the day, take some time to notice the sorts of things you think about. What does the dialogue inside your head sound like? Do you give yourself grief about stuff? Are you preoccupied with small trivial matters? In particular, can you tune into the negative self-talk and rewrite it to be more positive and self-affirming?
3. Pause – It seems that the pace of work is more and more frantic with each month that passes. We bounce from task to task, meeting to meeting, without much, if any time to think. When you move from one task to another can you stop and take 3 deliberate slows breaths? Give yourself a little mental space.

BODY

1. Increase your incidental  movement – when it comes to physical wellbeing there’s loads of focus on exercise, and rightly so. But we don’t always have time to hit the gym to bring some movement into our day. Can you expand the way you see ‘exercise’ and look for ways to bring more incidental movement into your day? What opportunities do you have to move more where you are? Can you go for a walk and talk with a colleague, take the stairs, or jump off the bus or train one stop early?
2. Release tension – we hold a lot of our stress and tension in our bodies. Consider when you’re annoyed or tense what happens to your hands or shoulders or jaw for example.  Can you take a moment to notice the tension you’re holding onto in your body right now? Where it is? What can you do to ease that tension a little? Open and close your hands or roll and relax your shoulders or soften your jaw.
3. Foster abundance and vitality – our lives are made up of a series of gentle habits. We get home from work, perhaps pour a glass of wine or flop onto the couch to put our feet up. Many of us spend time watching TV or engaging with multimedia. Can you carve out a new habit somewhere in here and opt to make a different choice today? Perhaps you’ll take a walk after dinner or skip the TV and read a book, go into the yard to play with the kids or opt to take a bath.

SPIRIT

1. Connect with someone – social connection and a sense of belonging are absolutely vital to wellbeing. We come across people all day long, but how often do we take the time to truly connect with them, ask them more than the requisite ‘how are you’ and then take the time to really listen to their response? Is there an opportunity for you to connect more meaningfully with someone today?
2. A little kindness – it feels good to do good. All the research tells us this. So why not create an opportunity each day to do something small for someone else? It could be a simple as lending an ear or stopping yourself from interrupting to allow them to finish their thought or giving them some positive feedback.
3. Be generous – like kindness, all the research points to the feel-good component of being generous. And being generous doesn’t have to be with money or things. Are there opportunities for you to be more a little more generous with your time or with your words? Can you find and share the positive in someone or something or bring a little extra energy and enthusiasm to your next meeting? These are all ways of sharing a little something with others and being generous.

World Health Day is a wonderful reminder for all of us to bring our health and wellbeing into conscious focus more often. It can start with bringing one small thing into your day.

Feel free to add and share your own ideas to the list we’ve shared here – we’d love to hear your suggestions!

From all the team at M.A.D. we wish you well!