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You are here: Home / Archives for stress

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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 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

November 26, 2013 by Christine

The Secret to Stress Free Work (It’s Not What You Think!)

2555332_mlOverwhelm.

It seems to come with the territory these days.

No matter what kind of work you do, there’s the propensity to feel beyond stressed about it.

What’s stressing you out?

Here are 3 examples I’ve heard recently:

  • My boss is a control freak. She’s micro-managing everything. It’s stressing me out.
  • I get more emails a day than I can handle, and I have to spend most of my time in meetings. I don’t feel like I’m getting to my real work and it’s driving me crazy.
  • I’ve hit a brick wall in my small business, and am not making the money I want to make. I’ve no idea what to do to turn the situation around and I’m drowning in panic and despair.

Does any of this sound familiar?

And, if so, what’s the secret to solving it?

It’s not what you’re thinking

Chances are you came to this page looking for a quick fix. Some reframes and clever “how to’s” to get you back on track.

I have no magic bullet to offer.

Instead, I’m going to invite you to step back and consider how your experience of life is created. Because it’s having this level of understanding that’s going to make the lasting difference.

Inside Out

Until now, pretty much everyone, including me, has worked on the assumption that the world works outside-in:

You affect me.

If you’re nice and treat me well, I’m happy.

If you’re nasty and behave badly, I’m not.

Our circumstances dictate our moods.

When everything is fine on the outside, we feel good.

When things are difficult, we feel bad.

Turns out that it doesn’t actually work this way.

Instead our ability to experience anything starts inside-out.

It’s through our powers of perception, and our brain, that we experience anything at all. In terms of pure cognition, everything out there is neutral. But in our minds, and thanks to thought, that we give things meaning. Good and bad.

Our feelings come from our thinking.

If we’re stressed or anxious, it’s because we’re having stressed or anxious thoughts. I know that it looks like your overwhelm is coming from your circumstances. But it isn’t.

It’s coming from whatever you are making of them.

Let’s look at this in the context of the three earlier examples.

The guy with the control freak boss?

Well, it looks like the boss’s micro-managing is causing the stress. But, ask a few more questions and you’ll understand that the source of the uncomfortable feelings is the guy’s own thinking. Which runs a bit like this: my boss is controlling me, therefore I can’t do things the way I want to do them. I’m looking stupid to my people and my colleagues. And because she’s my boss there’s little I can do to change the situation. Besides I don’t want to piss her off. So I feel totally helpless.

What would happen if this guy could see that his helpless feelings were coming from his helpless thinking?

The person overwhelmed by the sheer volume of his work?

In her case too it looks as if the workload is the cause of the problem. Dig further and you’ll hear: I could just ignore some of these emails but I hate people to think bad of me. And I could decline the invitation to a lot of the meetings but my colleagues will think it’s odd if I’m not there.

I know what my priorities are. But if I go after them in a real focused way, I’m afraid of being judged too single-minded. So I feel out of control.

What would happen to this woman if she could see that feeling out of control was coming from out of control thinking?

The small business owner who has hit a brick wall?

In this case it looks as if a downturn in the economy, or some loss of business may be to blame for the guy’s stress. Keep listening to what he says, however, and you’ll hear: I thought I had such a good idea for the business, but it’s just not catching on. And I’m feeling less enthused about it than I was in the beginning. I’m worried that I’ll never get past this and people will think that I’m a failure. Or that, if I change tack, they’ll think I’m flaky. I’m really feeling uncertain about things.

What would happen to this guy if he could see that feeling uncertain was coming from uncertain thinking?

Grasp the relationship between thinking and feeling, and you’re on your way to de-stressing.

Understand that you’ve not got a stress problem, you’ve got a thought problem, and you can begin to let it go. As I said in my habits post, our minds have a built in orientation to health. So you don’t need to overlay your stressful thought with anything else. You just need to notice you’re having it.

Your mind and your wisdom will then do the rest.

Insecurity

But it’s worth understanding why our minds generate such superstitious thinking.

In large part it comes from insecurity.

We’re so accustomed to believing that our happiness comes from outside of us, that that’s where we continue to look for it. The boss’s approval; our colleagues’ endorsement; the market’s backing.

We’ve forgotten that happiness is our innate nature. Just look at children.

However, as I once heard Syd Banks say, “Insecurity is the biggest game in life.” And I really think that’s true.

But what if you chose not to play it?

What if you chose to see that who you are, and your well-being aren’t dependent on anything outside of you? No matter what that is?

Sure, it doesn’t necessarily mean that anything on the outside changes.

But you change.

The less you’re thinking about anything, the calmer you’re able to be.

The more calm you are, the more resourceful.

And the more resourceful, the better and easier your results.

Results

Talking of results, let’s go back again to our three examples and see how these people fare when they realize the role their own psychology is playing in their experience of stress.

So, the person with the control freak boss understands that it’s his own helpless thinking that stressing him out. When he lets go of thinking, hence feeling, helpless, he sees ways he can work within the situation. He even develops some compassion for his boss which allows him to interact with her with less tension.

The girl overwhelmed with stuff has no less stuff to deal with. But because she’s understood how much her own mind is making up stories about what’s going on, she’s neutralized a lot of it. Allowing her to become far more attentive to what really matters.

The small business owner grounds himself in the understanding that, succeed or fail, his happiness is never in doubt. Then has an insight about a creative direction in which to move next. And the energy and confidence to run with it.

It’s not what you’re thinking?

Okay, maybe the title really was a play on words. Turns out stress is entirely about what you’re thinking.

Mastering that possibility, however, holds the key to you having a completely different experience of work.

And indeed of life.

I’d love to know what insights you have as you read this.

How it strikes you.

What is opens up for you.

Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Filed Under: Inner work, Thriving @ work Tagged With: habits, stress, superstitious thinking

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