What You Value can Bring Balance

I meet very few people who say that they have a balanced life and wouldn't change a thing. For most, there is the ongoing struggle between work and home where one seems to overpower the other. A lot of this struggle has to do with the unfair demands that we place on ourselves.

Finding what you value can help with this dilemma. Company values are different but work on a similar process, they determine what the company holds as important which underpins their operations. Company values are described in many variations of the same general theme - one team moving in one direction to reach a common goal, respectfully. Your personal values can be seen in a similar vein.

There is a difference between what you value and your core values, what you value is simply what is important to you whereas your core values are much deeper. Think of your core values as being ingrained into your brain and what underpins your operations just as business values do.

To truly bring balance to your life, you need to establish your core values and act within those. Identifying your core values can be achieved by undertaking an exercise with a reputable psychotherapist/psychologist or through one of the many online questionnaires.

However, to start the process of bringing balance back to your life, identifying 'what you value' and is a great start. So how do we find what we value and bring a bit of balance back to our busy life? Here is a simple exercise that may work for you;

  1. Write a list of what you value the most - family, partner, work, a sport, a hobby, money, church, spirituality, recreation, career, your pets, tramping, etc. Get as specific as you can. For example, name your hobby, name your sport.

  2. Between 5 and 8 is a good number for this list of what you value - any more than that and you have way too much going on. Cut your list down and focus on the new list of just 5 to 8.

  3. Examine each item of what you value - beside each value, write a number between 1 and 10. 1 means you are not achieving everything that you want to achieve, you feel you should be doing more on that value, you struggle thinking about it all of the time. 10 means you are achieving everything that you want to, you are happy with it and content that everything is going well for that value.

  4. Examine the value with the highest number - then make a list of the tangible factors as to why you believe that you are achieving everything for this one value. It could be factors such as time, money, travel, friendship, reaching goals, etc.

  5. Select one of the values with the lowest score - the value that you most want to strengthen, the one that is very important for you to add value to.

  6. Select one factor from your strongest value - now introduce that single factor into your weakest value. For most of us, that factor is 'time'. Regardless of what the factor is, the way to get the greatest change for the longest period is by selecting the smallest introduction of that factor. How was Mt Everest conquered, not one step at a time, one SMALL step at a time.

  7. Assuming 'time' is your selected factor, what small thing can you do continuously that does not affect what else you value? If you want to spend more time with your partner for example, look at what you are doing at home - can you help them in a regular task, sit with them for 5 minutes, make them a tea or coffee - every day. Perhaps you can combine your strongest value with your weakest, walk your dog with your partner if pets was your strongest value.

Small things done consistently make a massive difference in our lives. Why, because most of our concerns around not achieving in areas that we value is based on our perception. It's in our mind. We are most often doing better than we think we are, we just don't know it.

Making a practical, tangible change in your life WILL change your perception and bring that much needed balance back into your life.

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Feeling Overwhelmed, Join the Club.

It is very common today to feel overwhelmed, there's just so much going on in or world. Some say that it is too simplistic to suggest that technology is to blame, but that is squarely where it sits. Depression, anxiety and suicide rates began to significantly increase worldwide 40 years ago, coincidentally (or not) this was when mobile phones became commercially available.

It's not just the fault of the mobile phone, other technological advances over the last 40 years include the development of - GPS, fax machines, pagers, computers, VCRs, gaming, wireless networks, digitsation, smartphones - all designed to make our lives much easier through efficiency.

With each of these advances comes not just a more efficient way of doing things, we now have to battle with a completely new way of doing the same thing each time. As new models of the same item are produced comes a new way of doing the same thing in a different way. Instruction booklets that were once a few pages long are now doubled or trebled in size. Worse still, they are online which means we have to introduce another piece of technology to access the manual on how to use that new device.

What we know now through advances in imaging of the brain such as MRI, PET, and HFMRI scans, is that our world has advanced exponentially but our brains haven't, we still have that brain from thousands of years ago, albeit we are learning more about the way our brains work. Our brain is flooded with information, information overload.

Is it any wonder that we feel overwhelmed today? We have the same age-old brain that once worked methodically across our day to now asking it to undertake numerous tasks instantly. This has caused something termed 'inattentional blindness', the brain only sees what is an immediate priority, what is directly in front of it. How often have you watched someone walk in front of traffic while looking at their phone, oblivious to the danger around them?

So, how do we slow down this hamster wheel that we are all on? The simple answer is to get off social media, do one thing at a time, take up meditation and learn to breathe properly. But who has got time to do these things right? You have is the answer, if you want to leave the 'I am feeling overwhelmed' club.

Here are 10 simple things, in no set order, to start taking control of your 'life' again to reduce stress and anxiety;

  1. Take a break - walk away from all technology for 10 minutes every 50 minutes. Get off all smart technology at least two hours before bedtime.

  2. Remove all distractions - when working on an urgent task, turn off all possible distractions or go to a quiet place until you have completed what you need to complete.

  3. One task at a time - multitasking is a myth. Our brain can hold up to three tasks in our frontal lobe and we jump from one to the other so fast that we believe that we are doing three things at once.

  4. Practice mindfulness - an easy trick is to fully focus your thoughts on the task at hand.

  5. Breathe - take a single long slow deep breath every 30 minutes. Think to yourself (to slow your mind) "cold air in, hot air out" as you take that breath.

  6. Clean and tidy - tidy your work space, putting things in some semblance of order allows us to see where things are. A cluttered desk equals a cluttered mind.

  7. Look forward - every so often focus on good things that are coming up, in an hour, at the end of the day, in the weekend, in a month... The bonus, you'll also get a shot of the short-term feel good chemical, dopamine.

  8. Find the truth - our brains are designed to look for danger then exaggerate it, known as catastrophisation, to bring clarity to our problems. Don't allow your brain to exaggerate things, find out what is actually going on before you jump to conclusions.

  9. Remember the 3's - the three most important things that you can do for yourself are; socialisation (talk face-to-face with real people), exercise (30 minutes at the end of every work day) and sleep (7 to 8 hours each night).

  10. Write things down - our memory, regardless of our age, only holds on to what it believes that we need to know. Additionally, when we forget things, (and we always do), we incorrectly believe that our memory isn't as good as it once was.

I am not a technophobe, quite the opposite in fact, I believe technology is fantastic. We just need to use it wisely until our brains learn to adapt, which shouldn't take longer than a few more generations.

Next week I will follow this post with how to deal with that single major issue that is playing on our mind, the one that is vexing us, the one that we can't find a solution for, the one that is taking us down.

Being a member of the overwhelmed club is not the club that you want to be in, leave it now so that it becomes obsolete.

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Why Don't They Just Ask For Help?

In every day life, asking others if they would like a hand is relatively easy. In every day life, saying "Yes" when someone asks us if we would like a hand can be a little harder. In the not-so-everyday life, when life is getting on top of us, asking for help can be terribly difficult.

Why? In a single word, fear.

I am not talking here about when we are our usual happy selves, because we often ask for help when we need a ride somewhere, or when we need a lift with a heavy object, or perhaps to help recover from an event. I'm talking about when we become so unwell that we are considering drastic action, such as in depression or considering committing suicide.

I hear it said a lot - "If you are struggling, please just ask someone for help". The sentiment is well-meaning and will work if the person is in a lucid period or in the early stages of the mire. However, it will most often fall on deaf ears if the person is deep in the mire or completely overwhelmed with 'life'.

Why deaf ears, because when people are all consumed with life, the only voice they hear is their own and that voice is telling them to ignore the world. That voice, the one that comforted us as a child whenever we were struggling or afraid, has now become our enemy into our teens and adulthood.

So why don't we ask for help, and why does that voice try in vain to comfort us as it did when we were a child, fear is the answer for most of us.

Fear of burdening you with our issues, fear of what you might say to us, fear that you may scold or scorn us, fear that what you suggest may make things worse, fear of the repercussions of our actions, fear that you may view us as a failure, fear that we will never be seen the same way again, fear that we will never recover, fear of what the future holds if any future at all, fear of the unknown, fear of...... The list is endless.

Yes, these fears are irrational, illogical, and often unfounded. But we don't know that, because we aren't thinking rationally or logically like you.

When overwhelmed with life, we are unable to think like you, to rationalise like you, to bring clarity to what you are saying. We aren't like you so we can't work out why you don't you get it, why you can't see what we see, why you aren't listening to us, why you don't understand that we can't simply "snap out of it".

So what should you do to help us when we are overwhelmed? Take us to get some help if we readily want to go, encourage us to get some help if we won't go for help, listen to us without judging us or trying to fix us, ask us what we are thinking and feeling, or just be there for us.

A warm smile, a kind word, a gentle touch, every day is enough to keep us going. Remind us that we are loved, that we won't be scorned or scolded, that you don't care what we've done. Just be there for us when we need you.

Never judge us, because we are not judging you, we are merely trying to overcome our fear without being a burden on you. After all, you have your own 'life' issues without us adding more.

Let's talk!

Labels Are For Clothes.

I once thought that the word 'alternative' meant being outside of the norm. The 'norm' is apparently how the majority of us live and how we see things. As I get older, or perhaps become more informed, I begin to see that it is yet another bias I am questioning.

We have over 50 biases according to some researchers.

How this particular bias occurred, as do most biases, comes from who we meet and spend time with, where we live, where we went to school, essentially from our environment. Additionally, it is from the various forms of media we read or listen to. How often have you heard it said "They live an alternative lifestyle", or "They sought alternative treatment".

These statements led me, quite incorrectly, to believe that those who were involved in 'alternative' anything were kind of strange and sat outside of society. How wrong is that? So, replacing the word 'alternative' with 'alternate' worked for a while yet it still places a label on people. Labels are for inanimate objects, not for people.

Maybe I could use the word 'different', or maybe 'distinct' or maybe 'contrasting'. No, let's not use any such labels. Labels do nothing but alienate, divide, are unfair, and cause harm. Who has the right to say what is and isn't the 'norm', or the right to tell us what treatment is 'right' or 'wrong'.

We are who we are because we are who we are. Not alternative, not alternate, not different, we just are. And that works fine for me. Learning brings knowledge which brings understanding which brings an open-mindedness.

We are who we are, and that makes us all so special.

Let's talk!

Ignorance Is Not Bliss

Having recently read an article where, at a public meeting to discuss how land was to be used and one person was unfamiliar with protocol, I wondered if ignorance is in fact bliss. I am struggling to think of a scenario where this often used saying might be helpful.

I can only suggest that it might be useful to avoid worrying about something, although even this is unhelpful at best. Regardless of whether ignoring something helps to stop worrying, whatever it is that you are worrying about continues on unchecked.

I suggest the ignorance is not bliss, it is lazy, stupid, and possibly dangerous. What if you ignored a health issue, ignored a debt, ignored an emergency, ignored someone who was struggling?

The opposite of ignorance is knowledge, education, and intelligence. Learning about things has more advantages than does ignoring them;

  1. It stimulates your brain - research shows that learning something new opens up areas of the brain and can even reduce ageing of our brains.

  2. It opens your mind - being open-minded allows you to see things in different ways and assists problem solving.

  3. It generates conversation - knowing about a subject allows you to talk knowledgeably with others thus encouraging socialisation.

  4. It energises - the more you learn the greater the thirst for knowledge, dopamine is released into your brain when you learn something new.

  5. It brings an understanding - what might seem normal for one person may seem foreign to another, knowing more about the other person assists with an appreciation.

Understanding each other is the way to bring clarity, to nurture communities, to bring wisdom, to bring humility.

When someone suggests that ignorance is bliss, ask them why they think that is the case. I doubt that they will have a valid reason.

Let's talk!

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