Work can be stressful. You could argue that it should be stressful at least some of the time, but only because those striving for a goal are passionate about achieving it. But of course, most workplaces also come with less wholesome clashes (at least some of the time). Things can get intense. How do you manage to keep your head during these situations? Not only ‘how do you stay calm and focused?’, but also, ‘how do you manage to de-escalate and direct proceedings to a positive outcome?’

Here are some mindfulness and meditation-based possibilities…

1.     Close Your Eyes and Breathe Deep

If all about me is noise, tension and chaos, I get overwhelmed and overstimulated very easily. However, I have a shortcut to taking myself away from the situation, even without actually physically removing myself. I close my eyes and take slow, deep breaths, focusing on just that, ‘the breath’. This activates your body’s relaxation response. I inhale for four seconds, hold for four, and exhale for four. I repeat this until my heart rate has slowed and clarity returns.

2.     Focus on the Solution

It’s easy to sling mud and focus on the negatives of a situation. So, focus on the potential positive, i.e. ‘the solution’. So, shift your focus from the stress or problem at hand to possible solutions. By concentrating on what you can control, you can prevent feelings of being overwhelmed and move towards a tangible solve.

3.      Smaller Steps

If things are going south because a problem is too complex, it works well to break everything down into smaller pieces. Although it might feel like a more laborious way in which to move towards a goal, making a large task bite-size and coming to a consensus for each part, will culminate in a much more thorough, thought-through and troubleshot solution.

4.     Take Short, Frequent Breaks

Similarly, going at something for hours and hours is usually counterproductive past a certain point. Although not a process involving other people, i often find the same issue occurs when writing. I’ll be able to type and create for a certain burst of time, but then I’ll come up against a wall. I could either stare at the gap where more words are meant to go and get frustrated or maybe pump out a few half-witted paragraphs. Or, I could go away, do something else (a chore, make tea, go for a walk, exercise), and come back with a refreshed brain and body.

5.     Take a Positive Angle

Intense situations often feel like threats. They feel negative by nature. Try to oppose this. Try to reframe the intense negotiation, disagreement, or problem in a positive light. See it as an opportunity for growth, teamwork, a challenge or a way to show off a skill you don’t normally get to show off. This shift in mindset can help you manage stress and remain more objective in your decision-making.

6.     Trust Yourself

Clashes at work and challenges to your way of doing things often result in self-doubt. I struggle with this often. Try not to let what you know about yourself and your abilities be overridden by what another person might have said thoughtlessly or in anger. You are in the room because you have the skills to be there. Trust that you now what you are doing.

7.     ‘No’.

Keep your boundaries. It’s OK to say ‘no’ (within reason, of course). Overcommitting can heighten stress, so prioritising tasks and limiting your workload will help you stay focused and in control. I have been known to fall foul of being an overambitious ‘yes man’ and ended up becoming very stressed because of it. Know your limits. Hold your boundaries.

By Chris Thomson

P.S. Whenever you are ready… here are 3 ways we can support your personal and professional Conscious Goals:

1. Learn To Meditate With Neil In Just 10 Days!

Zen in Ten, our flagship online course, is a ten-day mindfulness challenge for people who need to slow down.

2. Work With Neil One-To-One

See if a Coaching Partnership or Professional Wellbeing Appointment is right for you. Book a 15-minute discovery call with Neil Seligman here.

3. Bring The Conscious Professional To Your Business

See if The Conscious Professional training and coaching programmes are right for your team or workplace. Book a call here.

The Conscious Professional is dedicated to delivering inspiring corporate mindfulness and professional resilience training, conscious leadership coaching and workplace wellbeing services at the level of professional excellence. Thank you for following our blog.

The post Calm in the Storm: Managing Stress During Intense Work Situations appeared first on The Conscious Professional.

Stress can be exacerbated by the approach of the individual. Although there is not much we can do about stressful situations appearing in our lives, there is something we can do about the way we view and deal with stressful situations.

Stress can, of course, be reduced by eliminating stressful elements of your life were possible. But adopting a mindful, conscious and, although it sounds odd, positive approach to stress and resilience is essential to maintaining an ongoing sense of wellbeing that weathers times both good and not so good.

With a few moments’ reflection, and an adjustment in outlook, you may discover that it isn’t that you need to do less. Perhaps all you needed was to think in different way, or view things from a slightly different angle.

1. Is Your Work/Life Balance, Well, Balanced?

The feeling of being stressed can comes to us on occasions where there is, on closer observation, not much to be stressed about. This often happens when we are overstretched and have not carved out time for our brains to relax and recharge. If you are feeling overly tense or worried at any time, force yourself to stop for a few moments and evaluate. Ask yourself, ‘Am I stressing about things that are worth stressing about? Am I stressed simply because I am tired?’ and if you come to the conclusion that tiredness and burnout is making your stress worse, perhaps consider whether the ‘work’ side of the work/life scale may be a little heavier than it should be.

2. Do You Let Work Worries Seep Into your Leisure Time?

One of the hardest things about the work culture of some of our industries, and the fact that we now have access to emails, messages and phone calls 24 hours a day, is that it can be tricky to draw a solid line under your workday. As someone from works from home and sets my own hours, I know how easy it is to extend that workday, or to be thinking about work once I am supposed to have stopped.

In the last few months, I have installed a new rule. I completely sign off from any work-related contact past a certain time of day, and I always take the weekend off. I have advised clients of this as well. Therefore, if I am contacted by a client out of hours, I do not feel obliged to reply to them until my ‘workday’ begins again. This has had a huge positive impact on my stress levels across the board.

3. Is Comparing Yourself to Others Helping You?

It will be no news to anybody that the age of social media has bought with it an age of comparison. During lockdown I have seen friends and colleagues talk about amazing things that they have achieved both in their personal lives and their work lives. It is so easy to convince yourself that you are not doing as well as others.

First of all, comparison is the enemy of self-worth. Be mindful that you are your own person. Your barometer of success should be set only against yourself, what your goals are, and what you know makes you happy. Secondly, any time you feel like this, take a look at what you’ve achieved yourself. For me, when I feel like I am ‘not achieving much during this global pandemic’ (which sounds pretty silly) I remind myself that I have sustained a freelance career throughout this turbulent year and managed to help raise a baby. If you think about what you have achieved recently, you are bound to recognise that you are getting along just fine!

4. What Does Your Job Actually Mean To You?

What is the function of your work? Is it your passion? Is it a means to an end? How much does it actually matter to you? I’ll use myself and my wife as an example. I love my job. And when I get stressed about my job, I know it is because I deeply care about it. However, my wife does not feel strongly about her work. It is means to an end, in order to support the other things in life that she does love. She used to bring stress home with her until she asked herself ‘why am I bringing this pressure home with me?’. Once she realised that the stress she was allowing herself to feel was not worth it for a job she didn’t love, she found it much easier to leave her tension and worry at the door.

By Chris Thomson

Check out this great post from our archives, written by Neil, all about the relationship between resilience, mindfulness and stress… The Zen of Stress

P.S. Whenever you are ready… here are 4 ways we can support your personal and professional Conscious Goals:

1. Access Free Live Meditations & Energy Transmissions

Inside our private Facebook Group, The Conscious Professional Mindful Community where Neil leads live weekly community events. Join now for free.

2. Learn To Meditate With Neil Seligman In Just 10 Days!

Zen in Ten, our flagship online course, is a ten-day mindfulness challenge for people who need to slow down.  

3. Work With Neil One-To-One

See if a Conscious Coaching Partnership is right for you. Book a 15-minute discovery call with Neil here.

4. Bring The Conscious Professional To Your Business

See if The Conscious Professional training and coaching programmes are right for your team or workplace. Book a call here.

The Conscious Professional is dedicated to delivering inspiring corporate mindfulness and professional resilience training, conscious leadership coaching and workplace wellbeing services at the level of professional excellence. Thank you for following our blog.

The post Changing Your Thinking to Reduce Stress appeared first on The Conscious Professional.

Look, we all feel stressed from time to time. It’s OK to feel stressed from time to time. Its normal. However, high stress is not something that should become a constant. Although a little of it can help at times, in order to reach a deadline, or achieve a goal that is important to you, it is not healthy for it to be a daily occurrence.

The odd thing about stress is that we often don’t see it. Sometimes, it is only when we are on the other side of a stressful time that we can look back and say, ‘Wow. I was really stressed just then, wasn’t I?’

In order to look after our wellbeing, and become resilient individuals, it is important to be conscious of how we are feeling. Spending time reflecting on the self and searching your mind and body for stress is valuable conscious practice. To prevent yourself from getting over stressed, here are some of the questions you might want to ask yourself on a regular basis.

1. How Are You Sleeping?

One of the tell-tale signs of over stress is regularly experiencing a bad night’s sleep. We’ve all been there. Everyone has experienced nigh time tossing and turning, trying desperately to switch off the noise in their heads. If you can’t put your unrestful rest down to anything (late night coffee, sleepless children or bedtime screen time), then perhaps you need to look at how to take your stress levels down a bit.

2. Are You Feeling Overwhelmed?

Knowing that you are feeling overwhelmed is sometimes hard to see. This is due to the fact that feeling overwhelmed comes from you having to many thoughts, concerns, and pressures swimming round in your head, all fighting for priority. Adding to that the clarity and brain space to required work out if you are overwhelmed or not can sometimes seem impossible. So, if you are stressing out over the amount of unchecked boxes on your to-do list, perhaps its time to take a thing or two off your plate.

3. How Is your Focus?

Over stress often leads to a lack of focus and motivation. Its not that you don’t want to focus or feel motivated, its that you neither have the emotional or physical energy to care as much as you would like. Fatigue is a common symptom of over stress and can seep into all areas of your life.

4. How Is Your Fuse?

If you are feeling irrationally angry or are noticing that you are being a little short with other people than usual, then perhaps you should examine your overall stress levels. Again, this is something that we don’t always see. Often only become aware of when somebody else brings it up. This is another reason that regular self-observation is of huge benefit.

5. Are You Feeling Down?

Anxiety and depression come to us for a variety of reasons, and stress is certainly one of them. Therefore, if you are feeling down and can’t quite work out why, it may help to focus your energy on destressing your life.

6. Are You Doing Your Job Properly?

I once found, at a time of extreme stress, that my anxiety and lack of focus eventually led to me not doing my job very well. I thought that I was doing fine, and that I was still doing a passable job despite how down I was feeling. However, my bad performance was brought up by a superior, and it turned out that I had been falling short. This led to me ultimately dealing with my stress. But I could have avoided this situation had I recognised and tackled it much earlier.

7. Are You Worried?

Uncontrollable worry. Are you always worried? Are you worrying about things that are not under your control? Perhaps you are worrying about hypothetical situations? Take a step back and a deep breath. Is it stress?

What is common when answering all of these questions, is that they are only answerable when we take a moment to reflect on the self. Stress will always be part of life, but over stress can more easily be avoided when we take time to listen to our emotions.

By Chris Thomson

Emotional resilience is part of what helps us to deal with stress. So, you’re in luck? Because last year taught many of us how to be more emotionally resilient! What 2020 Has Taught Us About Emotional Resilience

P.S. Whenever you are ready… here are 4 ways we can support your personal and professional Conscious Goals:

1. Access Free Live Meditations & Energy Transmissions

Inside our private Facebook Group, The Conscious Professional Mindful Community where Neil leads live weekly community events. Join now for free.

2. Learn To Meditate With Neil Seligman In Just 10 Days!

Zen in Ten, our flagship online course, is a ten-day mindfulness challenge for people who need to slow down.  

3. Work With Neil One-To-One

See if a Conscious Coaching Partnership is right for you. Book a 15-minute discovery call with Neil here.

4. Bring The Conscious Professional To Your Business

See if The Conscious Professional training and coaching programmes are right for your team or workplace. Book a call here.

The Conscious Professional is dedicated to delivering inspiring corporate mindfulness and professional resilience training, conscious leadership coaching and workplace wellbeing services at the level of professional excellence. Thank you for following our blog.

The post Over Stressed: Listening to Your Emotions appeared first on The Conscious Professional.

How are you doing amongst the stresses of the day?

As I am writing this we are all travelling through a global pandemic, less than a week away from a pivotal US election and bumbling towards Brexit – not to mention that we are hurtling through the void of space on a massive rock at 1.3 million mph and we’re not quite sure why…

Yet we have all sorts of ways of coping with the stress. If you are anything like me, some of them are more healthy than others. I notice I am getting stressed when my thoughts turn darker, when I pick an argument with my partner Jack or when I devour all the biscuits in the house… I have come to treat these symptoms as something of an Early Warning System. If I notice I am heading in that direction, I try to pause and ask myself a few questions – What do I need? What am I missing? I then remind myself that I can ask for help, and try to name what is happening.

Sometimes I realise that my wellbeing practices have slipped in some way. I know that meditation, exercise, good sleep, healthy foods, spending time in nature, and keeping my days varied supports my mental and emotional balance yet those habits sometimes fall by the way particularly when stress piles up. I have learned to forgive myself immediately for letting things slide and this helps me get back to the gym, the mat, or the forest.

Over the years, I have also noticed that when I am able to be open and vulnerable about the things that are troubling me (ideally before the biscuit-binge) the better it is for me and for those around me. It has taken a lot to overcome the pattern of bottling things up, putting a brave face on things, and holding the struggle within.

Mindfulness has taught me that stress is not bigger than I am…

My emotions are not bigger than me and that the challenges of the day will pass. I now recognise overwhelm as a call for space, stillness, and increased skilfulness in the cultivation of clarity.

As Viktor Frankl says beautifully:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Easier said than done, yet mindfulness offers some practical tools that help here. When bringing stress into the focus of awareness we can explore using the Three Actions of Mindfulness:

1. Observe:become consciously aware of what is occurring without judging it as good or bad.
2. Describe: neutrally name all aspects of the experience that you are aware of. E.g. I am experiencing overwhelm. I feel exhausted. My breath is shallow.
3. Participate:consciously choose how you wish to respond, take action, speak your feelings, ask for help…

When stressed, mindfulness encourages us to meet the experience with acceptance, non-judgement and compassionate awareness. One of the outcomes of the mindful approach is that we might step into resourcefulness rather than victimhood. We acknowledge our experience and through not resisting, we allow it to normalise. Anxiety dissipates or we take action.

Mindfulness invites us back into a simpler, purer and more effective state of being and gives us the tools we need to bring excellence to our craft of consciousness. By developing and sustaining a consistent mindfulness practice, we discover new ways to be effective in all aspects of our lives.

We find stillness, even whilst hurtling into the unknown.

By Neil Seligman

P.S. Whenever you are ready… here are 4 ways we can support your personal and professional Conscious Goals:

1. Access Free Live Meditations & Energy Transmissions

Inside our private Facebook Group, The Conscious Professional Mindful Community where Neil leads live weekly community events. Join now for free.

2. Learn To Meditate With Neil Seligman In Just 10 Days!

Zen in Ten, our flagship online course, is a ten day mindfulness challenge for people who need to slow down.  

3. Work With Neil One-To-One

See if a Conscious Coaching Partnership is right for you. Book a 15-minute discovery call with Neil here.

4. Bring The Conscious Professional To Your Business

See if The Conscious Professional training and coaching programmes are right for your team or workplace. Book a call here.

The Conscious Professional is dedicated to delivering inspiring corporate mindfulness and professional resilience training, conscious leadership coaching and workplace wellbeing services at the level of professional excellence. Thank you for following our blog.

International Stress Awareness Week is run by the International Stress Management Association (ISMA) to raise awareness about stress prevention and the importance for individuals and organisations in order to ensure that those who are suffering from stress know where to go to seek advice. If you are looking for help you may wish to contact the below organisations:

Anxiety UK, Mind

The post The Zen of Stress appeared first on The Conscious Professional.

When we are anxious, mindfulness encourages us to meet the experience with acceptance, non-judgment and compassionate awareness. One of the outcomes of the mindful approach is that we step into resourcefulness rather than victimhood. We acknowledge our experience and through not resisting, we allow it to normalize. Anxiety dissipates or we take action.

2. Catastrophising

Have you ever noticed that when something small goes wrong, the mind starts listing a whole sequence of future problems that may arise as a result. This mindset is often dubbed catastrophising. Mindfulness allows us to come back to our actual experience, it returns us to the present moment and therefore brings us back to our senses (literally). It is far more useful to be fully present with what has actually happened then to live a life predicting the worst.

3. Vulnerability and Tragedy

No human life will go untouched by vulnerability and tragedy. Whilst mindfulness cannot protect you from the pain of either it can remind you that suffering is a choice.

4. Stress at work

The pressure of deadlines, difficult colleagues, the struggle for recognition and office politics all provide wonderful opportunities to put the lessons of mindfulness into practice. Noticing your growing ability to respond resourcefully, to create solutions and to meet each moment with curiosity are all signs that your mindfulness practice is paying dividends.

5. Family issues

If you think you are enlightened they say you should spend a week living 24/7 with your family! Some of our biggest challenges to remain mindful are found at home. It is so easy to repeat old patterns, to rehearse painful conversations, arguments, to re-draw familiar lines in the sand. Mindfulness invites us more deeply into the uniqueness of the moment and allows us to see beyond the drama and patterns that may have kept us stuck for so long.

P.S. Whenever you are ready… here are 4 ways we can support your personal and professional Conscious Goals:

1. Access Free Live Meditations & Energy Transmissions

Inside our private Facebook Group, The Conscious Professional Mindful Community where Neil leads live weekly community events. Join now for free.

2. Learn To Meditate With Neil Seligman In Just 10 Days!

Zen in Ten, our flagship online course, is a ten-day mindfulness challenge for people who need to slow down.  

3. Work With Neil One-To-One

See if a Conscious Coaching Partnership is right for you. Book a 15-minute discovery call with Neil here.

4. Bring The Conscious Professional To Your Business

See if The Conscious Professional training and coaching programmes are right for your team or workplace. Book a call here.

The Conscious Professional is dedicated to delivering inspiring corporate mindfulness and professional resilience training, conscious leadership coaching and workplace wellbeing services at the level of professional excellence. Thank you for following our blog.

The post 5 Difficult Moments That Mindfulness Can Transform appeared first on The Conscious Professional.