Self-care IS energy.
And it’s easy when life is stable and we have time.
But we constantly experience change. What then?
Change is a time crunch.
And in exceptional situations, we intuitively do the wrong thing.
How is this relevant for your team? …
This lockdown has battered our daily routines like a sledgehammer!
For instance: Everyone who knows me well, has seen me strive to eat super clean, because it keeps me sane and focused. And the past few weeks of the Corona lockdown have created a vicious cycle of me stuffing myself with food after dinner, like STUFFING. I have not yet found a way out of this hole, but I’m on it.
So this week’s blog is directed to myself more than to anyone else. But you might find it useful to, if you have been tired, or grumpy, or bingy lately. So read on if you need to shift something in your daily routine to get back that energetic self of yours …
As the wave of advice around New Year’s resolutions is ebbing, this year’s alleged “quitter’s day” is approaching fast: Based on 822 global online activities in 2019, It has been scheduled to be January 19th.
According to this analysis, most New Year’s resolutions will give way to reality by 19th of January, including the two most frequent resolutions of healthy eating and exercising. But what does that matter?
There are people follow through with their intentions for the coming year. And why should you not be one of them and turn your shoulder on January 19th.
I am as bad as anyone on following
We are one week into the new year. Happy 2020!
Are you still making more time for your friends and family?
Are you still showing up more fully as an inspiring leader at work?
Or have you, like me, given up on New Year’s resolutions altogether?
I gave up on
Peter Drucker, the well-known pioneer of management education, once said:
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Let’s leave aside whether that is true or not, and focus on the meaning of culture.
People don’t even think about those habits, but unconsciously perform them. When questioned, they are “the way things are done here”.
In stressful times and situations, emotions wash over us. We speak and act before we think, or we completely shut down and retreat into ourselves. Confronted with wild animals, this automatic fight, flight, or freeze response helped the hunter gatherer survive, but today most people rarely ever face life threatening danger.
Nevertheless, under stress, chemical processes in our limbic system – the older part of our brain where emotions reside – lead us to react automatically before going into reflection mode. We can, however, train ourselves to catch that moment before we react, and calm down by going into reflection. In coaching we help our clients to train that muscle.
To thrive in today’s world, we need to use …
Full disclosure: I cannot even remember when I have made my last New Year’s resolution.
Why? I look at New Year’s resolution a bit like I look at dieting. Like many a predictable teenage girl, I have dieted, possibly three or four times. Then I stopped, because I had watched myself one time too many not sticking to the actions needed to stay on track after the dieting. My own personal research was 100%, clear cut.
I reckon it must have been the same with my New Year’s resolutions. Why would I repeat something year after year, when I don’t even believe in it the minute I do it?
You, on the other hand…
Being reactive limits our ability to draw on the natural creativity and energy of ourselves and others. The goal of any organisation, therefore is to build the capacity of its leadership to creatively generate thinking, behavior and courses of action which arise not from a place of fear, but from a place of vision and possibility. But how?