I’m so happy to be able to finally share the video of my Tedx PSU Berks talk from last November. It really was such an honour to be up there on stage in the company of all the other great speakers.
At this event I talked about harnessing our own power to overcome the stresses that we all suffer each and every day. As leaders in business we have to juggle so many different things and we are often trying to troubleshoot so many problems that it can be overwhelming. Adding to that trying to maintain and happy home life and social life then it’s no wonder that we can be left feeling exhausted mentally and physically.
The problem that most don’t realise is that it doesn’t matter how strong we think we are and it doesn’t matter how much we think we can cope with it all because stress is stronger and will eventually make us sick physically, and for sure, not be able to be at our best mentally.
That’s why stress management is so important for the leaders of today, for your workforce and just about everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a woman or a man and it doesn’t matter if you’re running a small business alone or the head of an international company because stress doesn’t discriminate.
We can’t run away from stress either or think we can get rid of it because we need it!
We just need to manage it so that we can work at our best at all times and live a happier and more relaxed life.
After suffering the effects of stress myself and seeing many patients become sicker and sicker through stress in my time as a medical doctor, I have made it my passion to help and educate leaders in the business world and beyond to help people lead a better life and become more successful in their work.
If you have a chance to support a Tedx event in your own town, I really do urge you to go. Not just to support the people who work so hard to put it together but to absorb the great knowledge and experience.
Here are a few pictures from the event….
This is not the end of my Tedx journey as I will be speaking at the TedxSanJuanIsland in June 2019 and I will update you of the schedule as soon as it’s released.
If you enjoyed this talk and think that this is something that could help you personally and/or in your workplace then please get in touch via the contact form or click here to book a free call with me.
Welcome back to the Ask Dr Annika Blog where I bring you my knowledge and experience as a leader in business and as an MD to help you manage your daily stress levels, become healthier and be a better and more successful leader.
Today I want to talk to you about the most important thing to get in order to be less stressed, to get good energy and to do all that good work that you want to do. I am not talking about time management or about meeting management or about how to take care of your staff or any other thing that may be on your list. It’s not about taking care of the to do list. It’s about taking care of your sleep!
Yes, sleep is really the basis of a healthy life, of a good life and the way you get to reach your full potential.
So why is that?
Well because when we sleep we do some housekeeping in the brain so to speak. That’s the time when all those waste products are supposed to be flushed out when you are in the deep sleep and all those impressions that you had during the day you kind of reworked them in the back of your head.
You don’t know about it most of the time but that’s how it works and science is clear about this; Sleep is groundbreakingly important to good health.
If we don’t sleep for a very long time in the end you actually could die from it so it’s extremely important.
The first thing is that everything your body wants is in regularity. It wants a regular sleep, every night. The same hours. That may seem a bit boring because you might want to do things on the weekend but your brain does not know about the weekends when this system was set up. I’m talking about way back then when this system was set up they didn’t have weekends, all they had was work days.
They said maybe they had a lot of food one day and they could take a day off but it was not the two days a week that we call weekends where you could sleep late or do something different to your “working week”.
So your brain actually feels the best if it does get the same over and over and over again and science says that you need seven to eight hours per night.
I know a lot of people telling me that they they don’t specifically need that but I’m telling you as a medical doctor that most people actually do need this sleep for a seven to eight hours a night.You might be able to cope on 4 or 5 hours sleep but you will thrive on 7 or 8!
If you haven’t done it before if you start doing it you will feel so much better. And as I said same time on weekdays as on the weekends. Yes, you can make exceptions of course if there is a cool party to go to something else you really want to do sometimes of course you can do it, just not on a regular basis.
Your brain wants to have the clean up session at the same time every 24 hours. That’s simply how we work.
What more can you do to get that good sleep?
Well, after regularity the second thing that is very important is to take all the electronics out of your bedroom at least one hour before you’re going to bed because, the light from your mobile phone or from your ipad etc. kind of tricks with your sleeping hormones and suppresses them so that you don’t get tired enough to go to sleep. It then takes longer and you will lay down and take some time just scrolling until your brain is set again so all electronic devices out of the bedroom for at least one hour before going to bed.
You say “well I use my mobile phone for as an alarm” and then I suggest go and buy a simple my alarm clock that is just the alarm and use that instead. That’s going to help your brain. That’s how it is. Sorry if it seems a bit boring.
Third thing you can do is to take out all the work from your bedroom because the bedroom is for sleeping, it’s not for working and your brain kind of knows that you have the work right beside you so it can’t really let it go. You want to let it go because then you’re going to sleep so much better. So, you take the work out of your bedroom. Don’t work in your bedroom. That’s as simple as that.
I know that you do get bright thoughts or you get this big idea that you really want to save at night time so, of course, you can have a pen and paper right beside your bed and you just write it down and then the next morning it will be remembered. You don’t miss out on that but it hasn’t taken or stolen your energy during the night.
Another quick tip is to turn down the temperature a little bit in your bedroom because we sleep better when it’s a little bit cooler. I would say like 18 degrees Celsius which iss somewhere around the ideal temperature for a good sleeping so that the brain gets its best rest.
Also, one more thing you can do is to de-clutter your bedroom in a more general way and we already did take out the work things right, and now I want you to take out all of the other stuff that’s just lying around because it’s kind of takes up energy in your brain and you need that energy to go to sleep, to get new energy the next morning.
So a quick recap on these tips:.
Regular sleeping hours.
No electronic devices.
No work in your bedroom.
Cool it down a little bit.
Clean up the clutter.
This is not a quick fix. It’s going to take some time before you get that really good sleep every night but, this is a very good start. Just pick one thing and change it then move on to changing the second and then a third til you are doing all of the above.
If you did need help with this, feel free to click the link below and we can get connected so that I can help you on the way to your best leadership.
Happy Holidays to everyone! I hope you’re enjoying the season of good will and being good to yourselves?
Just in case you’re not being so good or getting caught up in the stressful side of the holidays here’s three tips to keep your energy levels up and stress levels down:
Today I am out on my early morning walk and it’s not that bright outside here in Sweden. We are now past midwinters day which is the shortest day of the year and I’m really looking forward to the days and especially mornings getting gradually lighter!
At this time of the year where I live it’s usually raining and really dark and I’m so looking forward to this changing but I want to discuss is that even though it is dark and kind of tough to get out of bed it doesn’t serve you to stay in bed and quit the morning walk because the morning walk is your way to get the energy. For those of you who do that.
Also the the exercise you get from it and the moving of your body has so many other good benefits because your brain is made for walking and movement so don’t quit the morning walk or the lunch walk or the afternoon or evening walk., whatever you do even though it’s dark and raining outside like it is here right now.
The second thing that is for this time of the year, because the holiday season is coming up, is the food . We tend to overeat in the holidays because there is food everywhere. Lots of good food with a lot of fat in it and sugar and that tastes so much better. But that is cheating your energy levels..
Be careful of how much you eat. You can eat whatever you want but be careful out of the amount.
There are actually studies showing that the people who grow very old they eat less. I’ve heard so many of them being interviewed and they say they eat just below the level where they feel full.
When you do get over full from food you get tired because all your blood is going to your guts to digest it and you’ll get so tired in your head that it’s hard to do anything and that’s why we take a nap after lunch, right?
It’s ok to do it once or twice but if you do it all the time you’re cheating on your own energy.
The third thing that I always talk about this is the sleep, and I guess sleep is not the big problem at this time of the year, in this part of the world, because when it’s dark outside it’s easier to sleep a lot.
So for that reason I don’t think I need to discuss a lot about sleep today from this perspective.
It’s good to remember that things work the same way at any time of the year and so it is the same in the holiday season as it is the rest of the time. Your body wants to have regularity. That goes for both physical activity, food and sleep. So if you do change your sleeping pattern a lot during the holiday season you have to redo the work to set it in the right mode afterwards.
You can make that decision for yourself depending on how much hard work you want afterwards – that’s how much you can cheat on yourself. For me in the long run and in the end it’s always about having good energy, to live a full life every day and not just sit there and be tired because I’ve done too much of things that I really don’t enjoy that much or enough to make me feel drained so to speak.
When it comes to work at this time of year now that we are heading rapidly towards the holiday season it’s important to remember that you only need to do what’s really important.
Take a look at what you have on your to do list and figure out what’s really important and put things that can be postponed on another list. I call this list my list “parking lot” for things to happen and to do later. By doing this you won’t forget it but you don’t have to do everything before Christmas or the new year if you don’t really have to do it because now it’s also time to take care of your loved ones, all your family and your friends and whoever else you care for.
With that I just want to wish you a very happy holiday season and a Happy New Year.
As I record this video I’m here on my last day in the States for this time and the snow is pouring down. I have had a fascinating time here and I just want to tell you a few thoughts about my trip around this TEDx talk that I did the other day.
When I found out that I was going to be able to do TEDx talk I was so happy. It’s been one of my dreams and it came true.
I started to work on the talk and make preparations for the trip with only six weeks to go!
There was a whole lot of preparations to do actually which was on times a little overwhelming but also exciting at the same time.
The closer I got to my trip and the real test of the whole thing – the actual talk, the more nervous I got. Of course we all get nervous when we do a big thing like this.
So, I wasn’t just preparing for the talk by writing it and rehearsing it daily, I was also more careful about getting good sleep every night and going to bed at the right time so I would not just have good sleep but enough sleep.
I was also making sure to eat regular and to do my exercise so that I would keep fit and stay strong and have the energy I needed when I finally got here.
I met with all these beautiful people at the event. Most of the other speakers and with all the people organising it all, just lovely people.
Luckily it was so well organized but I was still getting more and more nervous.
In cases like that, I tend to decide to have some free time for myself to rejuvenate because that’s how I do it. Some other people they might go into the crowd because that’s where they get new energy and those are mostly more the extroverts. I’m more of an introvert so I tend to like to have some time for myself.
The day of the event was fantastic and being on stage was such a marvellous experience. It’s hard to describe.
You stand there and you have all the lights in your face and it’s pitch dark in the audience. You have no idea what they think or what they do because you can’t see them, so you just do your talk and try to speak to someone afterwards.
I got so many good reviews and everyone said it was very interesting and that they related to it and that they learned something from it. Which is of course exactly what I wanted.
Now, I’m just hoping to be able to spread that word all over the world when the actual video is edited and it can be released.
As I record this video I’m on my way home reflecting on what has been such a great experience. I would never have wanted to be without it but it was testing my limits compared to what I have done before, but that’s the way you grow so I encourage you to also test your limits because that’s how you too will grow.
We’re hoping for the video to be released at the beginning of 2019 so until then if you want to dive into some stress related knowledge then please go to this link and get my free book or browse through my blog where you can find lots of free information.
If you feel you need help right now for yourself or for your workforce, please don’t hesitate to connect with me through my website or social media.
In this blog, I am going to talk about work-life balance. I’m just actually going to say that there is no such thing as a perfect work-life balance.
When you think about it you’ll probably agree because everyone is trying to figure out how to do it the best way and it’s supposed to be perfect and there is no perfect work-life balance. Work-life balance or balance in life is always up and down, and up and down and if you’re always striving to get it perfect you are going to miss life because it’s going to happen on the side of you while you are trying to get the perfect part of it.
Like I said there is no perfect part of it so what should you do instead?
What I hear from so many of my clients is that they talk about missing out on this work-life balance and they’re trying to figure out how to get it perfect.
Today I’m out on my daily walk. I’ve done daily walks since so many years back and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever started doing. It’s not a routine it’s a ritual because I can’t live without it any longer.
So today I wanted to talk to you a little about why am I doing this and why would this stress management benefit lady leaders too.
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