1. A mind that would not stop thinking and seeing those thoughts as my reality, rather than recognising they were just thoughts.

2. Making judgements about situations and people and then wanting to cling on to the bits I liked and push away those bits I did not like.

3. Seeing situations and people as problems that I needed to solve which reinforced the gap between what was happening and what I wanted to happen.

4. A tendency to dredge up past regrets or to worry about the future.

5. Not being able to switch off my body’s response to pressures and challenges.

Once I saw the real cause of my stress I knew where I needed to focus my attention if I was to be able to manage the stress.  Next time you feel stressed you might want to try stopping and allowing yourself to experience what is happening to you there and then.

So what can you do about it?

1. Think about and plan for your retirement

2. Stay healthy.  Existing health issues become more frequent as you get older so it is important that you work at preventing problems. Protect your joints, eat a healthy diet, stop smoking and avoid consuming excess sugar, caffience and alcohol.

3. Maintain a social support network. Make the effort to make new friends, keep in touch will family members and join in community activities, becoming involved in the lives of others is good for you and it relieves stress.

4. Keep your finances in order. This means facing reality and learning to live within a budget. You may find living more simpley will reduce stress levels.

5. Spend time on developing your inner self.

6. Develop a daily routine.  Many people are surprised to find that they are busier than when you were working so a routine can prevent the stress of constant activity and will allow you to say no to demands that cause you anxiety.  A routine will also ease the stress of not knowing what comes next.

7. Adopt a more mindful approach to life and take the time to enjoy the pleasures of retirement. Retirement is about living the life you have now…in each moment.  It is also about living it as if it truly mattered.

It is that time of year when in the past I would purchase my new Filofax inserts and spend time making plans for the coming year….projecting my earnings and expenditure, organising how I would spend my time, planning how much weight I would lose on my new diet etc  etc.  My aim was to create the perfect life….and to feel in control.

From experience I know that my good intentions rarely lasted beyond early February and life did not go according to my plan.  And that this caused me a lot of unnecessary stress.

There will be no New Year Planning activity this year.   In May I made a decision to just let myself be carried along by the flow of life and to see what happened.   Instead of lots of SMART objectives I decided that may only goals were to live simply and to be kind to myself and other people.  Simple…but not easy!

It has meant letting go of the stuff that used to be so important to me. Most importantly it has meant letting go of the need to control, analyse and make judgements…..and instead learn to enjoy, and learn from whatever arises.  I no longer feel as if my life is mapped out, and backed up by an endless “to do” list.   And do you know what, its working out OK.

I came to understand that underpinning all this planning was a sense of needing to improve myself.  so my New Year Plans always included a lot of self-improvement activities….and then beating myself up when I failed to reach some unrealistic goal.  I have learned to be less self-critical and more relaxed.

By not planning I have created the space needed to listen to my gut feelings rather than the rational mind that does all the planning.  And as a result I have found that I am making better decisions and acting in ways that feel right for me.  I have also come to understand that in New Year Planning I wasted a lot of time and energy trying to control things. I have come to understand that none of us really knows what is going on and things are changing all the time.   I am far more effective in life when I acknowledge that I do not know what is happening, and curiously engage with things as they unfold .

May you be happy in 2012.

There are lots of examples of unfairness in the workplace and trying to maintain peace of mind can be challenging.  You need to
challenge injustice whilst at the same time keeping calm and avoid getting frustrated, angry or feeling despair. Start by analysing the situation you find yourself in from different perspectives and in doing so try to reshape your attitude and outlook by seeing if your current response is helping or not.   Remember similar situations you have dealt with in the past and what impact did it have on your physical or mental well-being.  It will be helpful if you can respond with a positive approach. No situation is 100% good or bad and gaining a wider perspective will help.
Do not hang on to the feelings of being miserable, let go of any grudges and dissatisfaction and instead try to understand other people’s situation.  This does not mean that you should be passive, if necessary take appropriate action to resolve the problem.

2. Then take a deep look at the other person and reflect upon how you are seeing that person.  Are you seeing things clearly?  To what extent are they a victim of your wrong perceptions?

3. Be aware of any tendency you have to pull away from the other person or the situation…or of trying to cover up your feelings.

4. Listen to yourself, take the time you need to be heard and to be understood by yourself.  If you cannot listen to yourself how are you going to be able to listen to other people?

5. Accept things just the way they are, this will help you to remain calm.

6. Forget about trying to impose your views on others, focus your attnyion on looking and listening deeply to the other person.

7. Focus your efforts on finding peace and happiness in that moment…it is the only moment you have.

I was at a loss to know how best to get my message across and as a result communication became more stressful, less satisfying and less effective.  I dealt with the problem by focusing my attention on the content of what I wanted to say as a way of trying to ensure that I was understood. It didn’t work!!

Since then I have learned a lot about how to handle difficult conversations in the workplace.   Here are some of the lessons I have learned along the way:

1. Before you speak to anyone spend time reflecting upon how you are feeling as this will enable you to express you feelings more accurately.

2. Taking time to reflect will also help you to identify more options available to you. It is very eary to think in terms of “me” versus “them” but I have found there are often other options available if you take the time to think things through.

3. Developing a greater awareness of how you communicate provides you with an opportunity to identify any unhelpful habits. For example you can identify under what circumstances you would react agressively or passively and then take the necessary steps to avoid this happening.

4. Be flexible, avoid being locked into rigid ways of thinking. You need to be aware of your thoughts, feelings and what you are saying whilst at the same time being aware of the situation as a whole.  This is all about being flexible enough to focus on key issues whiclt at the same time seeing the big picture.

5. Be awake to the possibility of different ways of looking at an issue, listen to what the other person wants and how they see things without reacting or resisting.  It is all about having an open mind.

6. Always act with integrity and balance.  In my experience this is often easier said than done. It requires that you meet each moment with calmness and acceptance. This is definitely where mindfulness helps!

Dealing with difficult conversations is all about choosing to respond rather than react to the other person or situation and this involves taking responsibility for your contribition i.e. your perceptions, thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

Finding balance is about dealing more mindfully with the changes that are occurring, including the pressures and challenges.  This means stopping and  taking the time needed to find out how work in impacting on your thoughts, your emotions and your physical health.

How out of balance is your life?  Sometimes it has to get really bad before we do anything about it.

For me the answer is to get in touch with my relationship with work here and now, not remembering “the good old days” ( which if I am honest were not always that good!) or thinking about how it might be if only I worked harder, came to the end of my “to do” list.  This is all about being more mindful.   Becoming  mindful is simple but it is not easy. …it takes commitment and patience to reassess our roles and the way we behave in the workplace.  But it is only when we know the REAL cause of our imbalance that we get the clarity we need to take action.

It may surprise you to know that the pressures and demands we face in the workplace are not the source of our stress.  The real cause is that we are too afraid to make the changes needed to be really in touch with best selves ourselves.

So how do we do this?

Step 1: Take an honest look at yourself and your situation and ask yourself how true to yourself are you being when at work.

Step 2: Ask yourself ” What is my best self like?”

Step 3: Develop a blueprint for being your best self

Step 4: Be your best self more often by taking small steps and then evaluating the impact. Don’;t try to do it all at onbce.

Step 5: Learn to trust your instinct more

Step 6: Look after your physical well-being, and more specifically listen to your body when it tells you it is unwell or in pain

And finally…slow down!

What role does ambition play in your life?

These are both questions I have been asking myself recently as a prelude to making some tough decisions about the direction in which my life will take me.

I have also been exploring my thoughts and feelings around ambition and how ambition affects my behaviour. There have defintely been times when ambition has dictated different aspects of my life, including my relationships with other people.

Ambition has defintely prevented me from enjoying life as I stressed about and planned the future.

I have goals in my life and  I know from experience that achieving these goals depends upon the condition and quality of my mind.  I now know that if my mind is calm and clear then I see things more clearly and I perform better.

I am also aware that I am not as ambitious now and that I am more content.  I know that in order for me to be happy I need faith in myself and what I am doing.  I need to work hard and to be able to  focus on what is important to me, I also need to be mindful in order to gain fresh insights.

But I am left wondering….Can you be ambitious and content?

So how do we avoid getting swayed so much by external circumstances?

I have found the following 4 approaches really helpful:

1. Avoiding retaliating with either words or actions so as not to reinforce existing negative habits or encourage further retaliation by others. Now each time I am “attacked” I see it as an opportunity to try out a different response and to see what impact it has.

2. When I feel angry or impatient I make a conscious effort to stop and connect with any more positive feelings I may have lurking around e.g. I may feel some empathy with the other person. At the same time I try hard not to provoke the situation and instead engage mindfully with my feelings and in doing so I develop a greater awareness and understanding of what is happening and why. In my experience things are rarely as cut and dried as I thought.

3. I also find it helpful to try to see negative situations and difficult people as opportunities to learn qualities like patience and how to manage anger. Actually without these sifficult situations and people I would not have the opportunity to learn these qualities. Having said that it is sometimes easier said than done! Situations and people are able to help us develop a greater self awareness and understanding. They also provide us with an opportunity to learn how to engage with rather than suppress our feelings and finally how to remain relaxed and patient rather than tense and uptight when things do not go our way.

4. It can also be helpful to look at things from a different perspective. Try looking at the the person who is experiencing the emotion/problem i.e. yourself, the emotion that has been created, and the focus of the emotion as if it is a dream with yourself as the leading player and in that way detaching yourself from the situation as you analyse what is happening. I have found this really helpful in enabling me to see things more objectively.

But don’t take my word for it, try them out yourself and see what happens.

And what happens to you when you get impatient?

I know that when I get impatient I sometimes forget everything I have learned about not getting stressed.  I forget to breathe, the muscles in my neck and shoulders tense and I am not as couteous as I should be with the people around me.  This is because I have my own agenda and this involves sorting something out, getting something done or getting somewhere often within a self imposded deadline.  Yes there are defintely times when I find it hard to be mindful…and this is usually when I need it most.

So what can you do when these feelings or impatience arise?  How can we learn to appreciate who we are and what we have right now, rather than being impatient for things to be different?

The first step is to recognise your impatience for what it is and to be open to the feelings of irritation and discomfort.   There is a great deal of learning to be had from understanding the thoughts and feelings that arise when things do not go the way we want them to.

The next step is to learn to use these delays and setbacks as an opportunity for slowing down, for recognising and letting go of any anxiety, instead relaxing, fully alert and curious about what is happening in the present moment rather than stressing about how things “should” be.

The final step is to learn to appreciate the pace of everything we do…even when it is slower than we would like.

By adopting this approach we are able to develop a way of working more mindfully.  We are able to let go of the need to be in control of everything and to engage with the uncertain and messy nature of work.  We are also better able to balance the determination and effort we put into our work with a greater appreciation and respect for the way things are.