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You are here: Home / Archives for wellbeing

wellbeing

March 20, 2015 by Christine

The Three Principles: A Different Kind of Approach to Wellbeing

Trees pictureThere’s a problem with much of the wellbeing advice.

It’s this: it’s based on a misunderstanding of how things work. It deals with the symptoms of being out of balance, rather than allowing you to see that emotional, physical and spiritual balance is your natural state.

The philosophy that wellness is our fundamental nature isn’t new. It’s intrinsic to ancient Chinese and other traditions. It’s the essence of homeopathic medicine. But it’s being refreshed as a concept right now by a group of people I’ll call Three Principles Practitioners.

3Ps has an unusual history. A Scottish welder by the name of Syd Banks who emigrated to Canada had a series of powerful insights that caused him to quit welding and start teaching.

The story goes that he himself had felt far from psychologically well. He’d gone in search – as I guess so many of us do – for solutions that would help him feel better. But something a colleague said to him served as a kind of awakening. What he began to see that he was looking in the wrong places for answers.

Inside-Out

One of the first things he understood was that he’d been holding a completely wrong understanding of how things work.

He’d been working on the basis – as I guess we all do – that the world happens outside-in. That things outside us affect how we feel and what we think. But he saw that, instead, we ourselves are the creators of our experience.Which is not to say that shit doesn’t happen in our lives, but it’s what we then make of it that affects our wellbeing.

Let’s look at some examples:

An important client gives notice on their contract with you. The markets crash. Your son has a tantrum. You might respond with panic, depression, or anger; in part because that’s how you’ve been programed to respond by the outside world.

Traditional wellbeing or stress management advice will tend to focus on the event that’s “causing” your stress. It might offer you a mantra like “success lives in the land of failure” to help you get through. It might advise you to meditate to try to alleviate your depression. It might teach you relationship tactics for dealing with teenagers.

There’s nothing in essence wrong with any of this. It may even have a temporary feel-good effect.

But 3Ps thinking looks in a somewhat different direction.

See, clients sometimes quit. The market can be volatile at times. Children can behave as they will.

But the stress is not in the situation unless you choose to see it there. I know that it looks and feels as if it’s outside you. But it’s not.

We’ve just all been spoofed by an illusion of how things are for centuries.

3 Principles

Beyond this, Banks began to see that, underneath all the outcome-oriented psychology, all the personality theories, all the philosophies and religions are three fundamental principles.

What’s a principle?

Before we go on, let’s look at what we mean by the word “principle” in this context.

For Banks, a principle is a rule that always applies. We’ve come, through the years, and via the genius of certain key people, to understand other principles about life.

For a long time, for example, it was believed that the world was flat; that it had a finite boundary; and that if anyone was to go near that boundary, they’d fall off. You can imagine, back in the day, that if folks were moving around a lot, they may be a little preoccupied to make sure that they didn’t accidentally throw themselves into oblivion.

Greek philosophers in the 6th and 5th Centuries BC proposed otherwise. But it took Aristotle in 330BC to prove by observation that the earth was spherical. Now we take the globe for granted. That’s a principle.

Gravity is another example. The legend goes that Isaac Newton was sitting under a tree one day when an apple fell to the ground while he was reflecting on the forces of nature. This led him to explore that there’s a force required to change the speed or direction of a moving object. Today we accept that gravity is the principle that keeps us firmly on the ground; is one of the factors that allows planes to fly; and is what enables our planet to stay in orbit around the sun. Another principle.

I guess you get the point.

The world is not sometimes spherical and sometimes not.

Gravity isn’t sometimes in play and sometimes not.

And Banks introduced the three principles in this context.

Three Principles

So what are they?

Thought is a human principle. It’s always working through us taking form, often on the basis of what’s going on moment to moment in our lives.

We’ll most commonly recognize it as the mental chatter that goes on in our heads 24/7. But it’s also what’s behind the conclusions we come to about this or that.

You can look at what appears to be an impossibly busy day and interpret that as meaning you’re going to be stressed out. Or you can look at it as just a day with a lot to do. In the first scenario you may go through that day finding everything difficult and feeling unable to give anything your full attention. In the second you may choose to give your attention to one thing at a time. In the latter case, you may be surprised at what you get through and how you feel about it. In the former you may reach the end of the day feeling wrecked.

The day’s demands are no different, it’s how you thought, and hence felt about them that creates the differing experiences.

On that point, thinking and feeling are two sides of the same coin. If your feeling is off somewhere, the genesis of your upset will always be some off thinking.

Feel anxious? You’ve got some anxious thinking somewhere. Not that there’s anything wrong with feeling anxious, by the way. Anxiety is part of the human condition. But sometimes it’s just worth asking yourself where in your thinking your creating it.

Consciousness is another principle. It’s that moment by moment by moment quality of our lives that gives us the experience of being alive.

But most of us don’t spend our lives in the present moment. Far from it, we live thinking of things in the past: aching back to times that felt happier; replaying conversations to wonder what would have happened had we said something smarter; looking at how things played out on a particular occasion to gain some indication of how they’ll play out this time.

Or we’re way out there in the future: the ambitious goals we want for ourselves; upcoming events and how we’ll be at them; holidays and retirement and how different life will be then.

People often paralyze themselves with anxiety about what might or might not happen in the future.

“What if I do this and it doesn’t work out?” is a common thing I hear from clients. I tell them they’re getting ahead of themselves. They’re not in that future moment yet. They’re here now. If they stay present and pay attention to their own wisdom, they’ll know what to do in the moment. Won’t automatically mean that future-stress goes away. But it does help just to know that if you trust the flow of life, things have an uncanny way of taking care of themselves.

Speaking of which…

Mind is the third and the universal principle. It’s the principle that knows that there’s a greater intelligence than us at work in our world. Some people call it God, others Spirit, or just the Universe. It’s the force behind today’s solar eclipse, for example. The force behind the existence of life. The force behind the unfolding of everything from flowers to the shape of our lives.

In all the noise and through all the chatter, it can be difficult to listen to and to hear mind. But it’s there working in any case.

Why share all of this?

I’m sharing all of this with you because sometimes the wellbeing advice becomes just another part of the noise. It can become another set of things to do when you’re already busy enough. From a 3Ps perspective there’s nothing you need to do. Our systems, it turns out, are self-correcting. All you need is bring your awareness to how things are working and you’ll have whatever insights or discoveries you need to realign. That alone is a refreshing thought.

Like we said last week, wellbeing is a place to come from. Not a place to get to. Like our creed says, wellbeing is our natural default position.

And I wonder, what changes, and what become possible for you as you hear that?

Photo attribution: Copyright: / 123RF Stock Photo

Filed Under: Wellbeing Tagged With: overwhelm, stress, wellbeing

March 13, 2015 by Christine

Wellbeing: What Is It and Why Should You Care?

16529683_mStress levels are on the up.

Recent surveys show that 54% of Brits have rising stress levels, and that 8 in 10 US workers are feeling under increasing pressure at work. Many of us, it seems, are so consumed by what we’re doing that it’s affecting our health and happiness.

Not surprising, then, that talk about wellbeing is also in vogue. At a macro level ill health and less than great productivity affects the economy at a time when it’s still getting back to pre-recession performance.

And while all the high-level, organization level stuff is interesting to me, I’m more interested here in what you, as an individual leader, entrepreneur or creative can do to support your own personal wellbeing. Because, the way we look at it, it’s fundamental to your ability to innovate, compete and perform at your best out there in the world.

If you don’t nurture it, I’d argue, you’re under-performing. Indeed you’re doing yourself a huge disservice.

Wellbeing

But what is wellbeing? So, the Oxford Dictionary puts it this way:

Screen Shot 2015-03-13 at 09.00.36The state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy.

I’d go a little further than that.

Way I see it, wellbeing is a measure of how you feel about your life. It’s a holistic thing that has deep roots in all areas of your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health.

If you Google the word “Wellbeing”, you’ll come up with about 52 million results. Look at a lot of the key articles and they’ll talk to you about the tools you can use to help you in your quest for wellness. Of course, so many of us are so keen to improve our wellbeing that we’ll try all kinds of things. A lot of them are not sustainable. Here’s why:

So much of the advice is written on the assumption that wellbeing as a place to achieve; something you can work towards if only you follow this or that anti-stress tactic.

But what if that was wrong?

What if wellbeing is something we already have? A place to come from. Our natural preset position. A state you can nurture and enhance.

Regardless of your current health or happiness, just notice how it feels to consider that you’re already okay. That there’s nothing you need to do or to fix in order to be well. Take the pressure off yourself to try to be well, and just be well already!

That framing kind of changes everything.

Nurturing Wellbeing

From that place, then, we believe there are 4 ways in which you can enable and support your wellbeing. They are:

  1. Develop a few core practices that enable wellness. These could be as simple as limiting the amount of coffee or alcohol you drink each day; observing routine bedtime and waking up time; drinking a couple of litres of water a day; avoiding sugar.
  2. Develop your consciousness about the quality of your thinking. Thought, as we’ll find out, is one of the fundamental principles of life. It’s a never-ending stream that flows through our brains. That’s a given and, at core, it’s not the problem. The problem is then what we think about our thinking, and the affect that has on us at a feeling level.
  3. Create some basic habits and rituals to keep your wellbeing a priority for you. This moves wellbeing-supportive behaviors from the realm of chore, to the realm of routine and therefore makes them things you do automatically.
  4. Reframe what it means to you to be successful. Many professionals have big ambitions. No harm it that. But sometimes we attach conditions to our ambitions that make these once laudable goals toxic and therefore stressful to achieve.

If there’s one of these that weighs more heavily than the others, it’s the point about thinking. We’ll be digging into this, and saying why in the weeks to come. So make sure you don’t miss the subsequent articles by getting your name on our VIP email list here!

Photo attribution: Copyright: / 123RF Stock Photo

Filed Under: Wellbeing Tagged With: overwhelm, wellbeing, work life balance

March 6, 2015 by Christine

Wellbeing: Without It Nothing Works

19834522_mlThere’s a lot of buzz around the business community these days about wellbeing, thanks in particular to some high profile names like Arianna Huffington, whose recent book “Thrive” invites us all to “redefine what success means in today’s world”.

Which is fine. Except that many of the senior people I speak to find it challenging, to say the least, to have the kind of calm happiness that Huffington seems to suggest is possible and be successful in their jobs, or in their businesses.

Ask people what’s going on, and you may hear about the pressure people are under, now that the global economy seems to be in upturn, and businesses are striving for growth again.

But while there’s no doubt that the overwhelm monster is bigger than it ever appears to have been (at least in my lifetime), I think if we’re honest with ourselves, that whole success vs wellbeing conundrum has always been an integral part of being a professional in whatever capacity.

So, what’s the solution?

Well, that’s what we’re going to be discussing over the coming weeks.

In particular, we’re going to be exploring:

  • What is wellbeing?
  • “Thrive” aside, why is it really getting press right now and why should you care?
  • What are the ways in which people attempt to create wellbeing? What works, what doesn’t and why?
  • What new thought, if any, exists about how to create it.

Health warning!

You should know that this is one area that particularly excites us here at Livingston Towers. We’re both keen gym goers and exercisers, and are very mindful of what we eat. Our personal philosophy is, like the title of this post says: without wellbeing, nothing works. At least, nothing works well. Not for us. It’s that simple.

We know too that this runs counter to how many business people think. For so many, work comes before absolutely everything else. And most folks have good intentions around wellbeing, but for the most part the real action on it is relegated to some short-lived New Year’s resolutions, or to a  couple of weeks pre-holiday exercise blast to get in shape for either the ski slopes or the beach.

Last year I took my own interest to a whole new level, doing what I called at the time The Wellbeing Experiment. In fact, I wrote about it over the course of several months on my old and now defunct blog. The experiment sought to answer this question:

What becomes possible in my work and life if I upturn the apple cart and put my wellbeing first, rather than – as we all tend to do – marginalize it to some after work, or when I have the time to think about it concern?

The results for me were staggering. What I’ve realized in essence is that wellbeing is our natural default position. In other words, it’s what comes through when we take all the physical, emotional and spiritual blockers out of our way and allow nature to do its job. I’ll say more about all of this in the weeks to come.

Meantime, I’d love to get your take on the whole wellbeing thing. What does it mean to you? How do you help yourself achieve it? What gets in your way?

PS: Don’t miss this important series. Make sure you’re on our VIP mailing list for updates and invitations by signing up here!

Filed Under: Wellbeing Tagged With: overwhelm, stress, wellbeing

December 5, 2014 by Christine

How to Win in Business and Stay True to Yourself

20708828_mEver have that feeling that you’re never quite winning at anything?

You know, you went all out to create the conditions in your life that you believed would enable you to run a business, or do the corner office job on your terms. You thought that was the way to set yourself up for the happiness and freedom you craved.

Except, now you’re here you find it doesn’t quite work that way.

Maybe you’re feeling like you’ve just swapped one lot of pressures and expectations for another.

Or that you’re never quite achieving what you know in your heart of hearts you’re capable of.

Leaving you feeling constantly tired, disappointed, dissatisfied.

Like you’re somehow always failing.

That there’s always something more to do before you can allow yourself the luxury of working and living from your core. Because, let’s face it, who do you think you are to live life that way?

Winning

I get caught up in it all the time myself. Heck, it’s my story too. The stories I tell myself tend to go like this:

  • If I achieve the financial targets I’ve set for myself this year, I can cut myself some slack and focus more on what I want to do.
  • If this big client I’ve been talking to signs on to work with me, I’ll use the security of their income to work on creating more space for me.
  • When I work my way through this latest e-course and have all my technology set up in the way the marketing gurus tell me, then I can take the time to do the creative stuff that really lights my fire.

And, to that last point, let’s face it: there’s always some shiny new tool coming along that promises us The Answer. Whether it’s a self-development program, a business course, or a smart piece of technology, there’s always another compelling magnet in our Facebook or LinkedIn stream promising us success.

The kind of success that puts to rest any insecurities and enables happiness, freedom and peace.

Which is kind of how we’ve been schooled to understand things: if things feel “off” inside, find the solution outside that’ll solve the problem.

Except, of course, things don’t work that way.

Because happiness, freedom and peace are inside jobs. They’re things you already have. You don’t have to strive to create them. No amount of stuff on the outside will give you them.

It may look that way for a while.

But it doesn’t.

I had this exact conversation with a client this week. He’s the CEO of a medium sized organization and, after a great performance this year, had expected his remuneration committee to be generous in the way it was going to compensate him. When the pay out was less than he’d wanted, he became dejected.

“They don’t value me,” he told me.

“Why is that important to you?” I asked him.

“Well, I want to feel good about myself,” he said. “We’ve got some tough results to achieve again next year and, having felt free to play all out this year, I now feel constrained again. What do I have to do to prove myself?”

We got specific about numbers.

“So, if they paid you £X more, you’d be happy?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. He was gearing up for a conversation with the chairman and, as things stood, set to act on the basis of his unhappy feelings.

“But aren’t you already happy?” I said.

He looked at me.

“Surely no amount of money can affect your happiness or your sense of freedom to act,” I went on, “because you already have these.”

I wasn’t sure that he had heard this as we went on to talk about other things. But after his meeting with the chairman he emailed me:

“We had a good meeting. I decided there was nothing that needed to be done on my comp. I realized after we’d spoken that you were right: I’m already happy. When I acted from that place, I ended up having a more forward-looking and upbeat conversation.”

Staying True to Yourself

The take away message here seems simple:

Tons of books and blogs will give you tips and techniques on how you can set your working life up in order to feel that you’re being true to yourself while being successful.

But most of them – well meaning as they are – will just give you another series of things to occupy your mind with and struggle against.

As if being you wasn’t already fundamentally guaranteed.

As if struggle needed to be part of the deal.

When all along the biggest win you can have is to see all of that for the illusion it is. And to understand that winning in business and being true to yourself were always one and the same thing.

Filed Under: Success Tagged With: wellbeing

March 6, 2014 by Christine

Stop Hacking Your Life and Start Living It Instead

8743274_mlIt was such a relief.

Even just scanning Rich Roll’s post I breathed deeply and knew I’d let go of something.

Why You Should Stop Lifehacking and Invest in the Journey spoke to something that has been rattling around in me for some time now. And I was so glad that he’d called it out.

Hacking

As Rich says, the whole idea of hacking is well intentioned.

“In truth, a properly implemented hack is nothing more than leveraging a good idea. A way to cut wasted time so that you can invest yourself more fully in what makes your heart truly beat — a passion and pursuit that can transform your life by catalyzing a new journey.”

But it has become so much more.

Just look around the internet. There are entire blogs dedicated to hacking. And many articles are by their nature hacks.

  • 5 Top Tips To Create More Time In Your Day.
  • Get Fit in Only 10 Minutes a Day
  • 7 Ways To Get on Top of Your Email Inbox

I get exhausted just reading the headlines!

And let me not pretend that I haven’t been there myself, writing hacking articles. Why? Because I bought in at one point to the belief that that was the way to go.

I remember in my early days of blogging, having a conversation with an internet marketer, who, for the record, didn’t hack it himself.

I’d wanted to write deep, insightful articles. Because I know for myself, and in the work I do, there are no shortcuts. And that change happens, not because of any brilliant advice, but from people seeing things for themselves.

“No-one will read them,” he told me. “You need to be punchy. Give people what they want.”

But that right there?

Looking back, that’s the biggest con for me.

Because more and more these days is seems that people want results without having to do anything fundamentally different. And that’s the issue.

If a hack comes from an expert, it looks like it should carry some weight. You might even go off and put these ideas into practice.

They may even seem to work for a while. But in the end most of it won’t stick. Or it won’t bring you lasting change.

The reasons are threefold:

Thought

I’m drawn to what Syd Banks has to say about the nature of thought. For him, thought is one of the core common denominators that make us human. Thought flows through us, day in, day out.

On the one hand, that’s an incredible gift. On the other, it’s a real curse. Because thinking and feeling are linked. And if I’m thinking, thinking, thinking all the time, it’s affecting how I’m feeling, which is in turn affecting my health and wellbeing.

Of course, in Banks view of the world, just realizing that your thinking is running away with you is by itself therapeutic. The mind, he says, has its own healing powers if you just let it be.

And otherwise meditation can be a really useful practice in quieting the mind and letting go of mental clutter. But either of these views need time for deep understanding and practice.

Hacks, however, pretend to help us take the stress out of things by offering quick solutions. But they actually end up only stoking the fire by giving us more or different to think about.

So we might start out with one problem, like the burgeoning email, and teach ourselves some hacks for that which last for a while until we lapse back into our checking it every six minutes a day pattern. Then, as if the email isn’t problem enough, we’ve now got a lack of discipline problem to go learn some hacks about.

Superficial

So, it’s all very superficial. You might as well go repaint your hamster wheel.

You know, you might be taking your supplements and health food shop smoothies. Great. It’s not that they won’t give you something. But if you’re imagining that that’s any substitute for creating a great, health supporting diet and lifestyle, or confronting the psychological challenges you’re putting in the way of them, think again.

Coping

Some of the hacking stuff too has an element of coping for me. And I think it’s from that mindset that some people reach to hacks.

How can I cope better with the circumstances in which I find myself?

But, back to Syd, it’s not your circumstances that are the core problem, it’s how you’re thinking about them.

Plus, who wants to cope when you can thrive?

So, stop tinkering with your circumstances, imagining that you’re doing yourself any good.

Wake up and start realizing, as Rich says, if you want deep change, you have to put the work in.

Filed Under: Self Development Tagged With: hacking, wellbeing

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