Two words: Grief, and Memories. Two words with different meanings but will always be bound to be together as after the grief, comes the memories. The question is, are you willing to let the grief turn into beautiful recollections or let it eat you and lose yourself in the process?
MY STORY
May 27, 1987, when I was in Labor. My first child, our first child – was on her way out of me. The pregnancy had been really tough. I was very nauseated and I didn’t think that I was growing enough.
I was a medical student and the people around me told me that I was just reading too much and putting much into it, but I didn’t have any kids prior so I don’t really don’t know well. To be fair, I didn’t know of course, because it was my first pregnancy. But there was something that was kind of held off…
Anyway, back to the story – on May 12, 35 years ago… Our daughter was born and she came out tiny. Dave, my husband, ran out with her right to the intensive care just not telling us anything and after some hours I gotta see her in the breathing machine with all those needles and things all over her little body in this little glass box, and that’s where she was until when she was three weeks old.
That time was tough. I was staying in the maternity ward without a child with me so I got all the glances as if I wasn’t supposed to be there so I really had no support. It was like everybody expected me to know everything just because I was a medical student – forgetting that I was also just a new mother with a newborn who was very ill.
MY JOY AND MY GRIEF
Fast forward to when I got to bring her home – she was 3 weeks old and I was breastfeeding – everything seemed to work perfectly at the beginning. We were even able to bring her out with us for the first time in her 4th week after living her first few weeks in the hospital. Then comes the unexpected… Heart failure at seven weeks.
What in the world? I knew there was something off but I just couldn’t pinpoint what it was. I was a first-time mother but it is true after all, you get the maternal instincts immediately so you better listen to your feelings despite what others think.
Since the heart failure, it was then figured that she’s got a kidney problem caused by a genetic disorder – and the worst thing??? No treatment is available! So what were our options? Maybe a transplant, they said. But I was a medical student, and I know that the chance of that working is close to none and that we were just provided that option because everyone around me believed that everything was going to be okay.
INTO THE DEEP DARK HOLE
When she was nine weeks old, my brother who had schizophrenia for around 10 years committed suicide – my and my family’s world fell apart.
Another week went by, there were all these preparations for my brother’s funeral, and then exactly one week later on the Monday that my brother died, my baby daughter, all of a sudden died too.
What happened to me???? You’d never want to imagine. Just into a black hole – a very, very, very black hole. And that was the most stressful thing I could ever think that would happen. I was in bed for two days, and couldn’t even get out to go to my brother’s funeral.
THE GOOD SAMARITAN
Two days later, a neighbor of mine dragged me out just to go to the shop to buy some bread and share some moral lessons. Yes, that was a very tough time for me. When I was out on the streets, all the people I came across didn’t know how to treat me – like the moment they see me they’ll just go to the other side (I couldn’t blame them, maybe they did not know what to say), but of course, all I wanted was for them to say “Hi, I see you, I hear you, I am here” – but then maybe again, easier said than done.
MY FIRST STEP TO HEALING
I then grabbed one of my friends to come with me to a store – to buy my FIRST black dress. Yes, it was my first black dress as I have never in my life worn one – it just ain’t my color. So I put the black dress on, and for some reason, it felt good, like a relief.
Reason being? Grief process. As I’ve said, never in my life have I worn a black dress (blue, and shades near that are more of “me” than black is), so the feeling of wearing that black dress for the first time kind of put me in a bubble-like it was just a dream – but in reality, my first step of going through the “Grieving Process”.
My brother’s funeral… Then came the funeral of my little baby – it was beautiful. I wanted to take the casket home, but my husband reminded me to let go and keep her in a “good memory” for ourselves.
SLOWLY BUT SURELY…
We then went on a trip where I realized that it probably was the second step of my grieving process – just feeling it, but this time, beautifully and with acceptance. Do you know how soothing it feels to just be slow on the road, and be out in the wilderness? It was therapeutic: Nature, fresh air, and just getting out there to breathe.
Fast forward to a couple of months after everything – I finally was able to take my real (last) exam, got my medical license, got a job, and started working. Yay! Everything’s slowly, but surely getting better.
MY REALIZATIONS
Every day before going to sleep, I think and reflect on everything – and in the end, I decided to take care of myself, have a daily routine, eat good food, and exercise. While doing all these, I realized that “self-care” is actually my way of dealing with my stress, and can actually be considered “treatment”, or basically, a way to de-stress.
Then came the realization: If I who had all these what I could say were beyond worse experiences, was able to get out of that deep dark hole and get back up, what’s the reason others can’t?
Maybe they find it hard because they don’t know what to do, maybe they have no strong support system, or maybe, it’s just because they lack the awareness of what self-care can do.
SELF-CARE and ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Self-care doesn’t mean doing everything by yourself. Acknowledging that you need help from other people is also a form of self-care. As the famous John Donne says, “No Man Is an Island”.
So as someone who’s committed to self-care, I scheduled sessions with a psychologist, to further help me get better by providing the necessary support that I need. As someone working in healthcare to tend to other people, I must make sure that I myself am well-cared for.
IMPORTANCE OF HONESTY
One important thing in all these is for you to remember the importance of being honest and out in the open with someone you trust who in my case was my back the psychologist.
Being honest and open just makes everything better. An unexpected strong support system comes in, and you’ll be surprised how big of a help they’re going to partake in your journey.
UNTIL ONE DAY…
You’ll just be shocked how the grief has turned into wonderful memories and beautiful stories with a lot of lessons you’re going to take with you for the rest of your life. That everything may not be back to where it’s supposed to be, but at least you know that now, it’s better.
As for me, it was a time that I could freely talk about her, and every time I mention her I imagined her photo attached to the wall together with ours – and who would have known that after that, I got three more beautiful girls.
THE LESSON
Grieving can be good, as it is the first step in the process of healing. We grieve for a lot of different things or reasons, and it may keep us from moving forward – but we must remember that nobody heals without going through its tormenting process.
Allow yourself to grieve, until you can one day accept the way things are, and then you can live with it in peace, knowing that what caused your grief once, has now turned into a beautiful recollection of the past.
YOU ARE NOT ON YOUR OWN
Whatever it is, always remember you’re not on your own and that people are just waiting for you to ask. Plus, there is no harm in asking.
If you have ever wondered if quick fixes work better than long-term changes in life or vice versa, you might want to consider working from both ends for a good life.
Why?
Stress is and will always be part of our lives.
We can’t get rid of it basically as it’s a biological reaction that we can’t just lock it out. It always comes knocking when our ability doesn’t meet the current demands. We just have to find ways to put our stress system at its normal level. When you are challenged, you don’t want to be irritated. When you are challenged, you’d still want to remain calm.
From my own experience of stress in life, tragic deaths, too much work, overload in life in general… I was lost and wanted to know what to do.
In searching for an answer on what and how I did it, I found you need 2 different sets of skills to beat stress.
I call them:
HERE AND NOW AND LONG TERM
The Here and Now
This skill is to use “at the very moment” the stress comes, and helps you avoid ending up in anxiety or getting a panic attack. This skill set is your natural-born tool or your internal toolkit so to speak.
It is like if you need to present to a crowd but have stage fright, you have to get yourself in control, and what usually works is: taking deep breaths, wiggling your hands, or just walking around.
There also comes mini-meditation to lift up your spirits or pull your strength. We all have these different ways, and to me, it’s closing my eyes and repeating the word “release”.
2. The Long term
This is very important as this means getting to the root cause of your stress and making changes in your life.
Real changes that will prevent you from constantly getting into overwhelm and anxious. The main purpose of these is to make the knocking of stress on your shoulders come less often. They still will knock from time to time – just because as I said stress is part of life.
And it was in this part of my work with stress, I saw a pattern: 3 things that matter in your Long Term toolkit, and you need to keep this as long as you live..
THE 2 PATTERNS
1. Mindset
Are you prepared to make changes? Because YOU HAVE TO. You won’t if you don’t.
2. Energy
You can’t buy energy or get it from someone else, you have to generate that energy yourself by living healthy. Because you need to first care for those basic things to stay healthy and strong to resist the stress attacks.
3. EXTERNAL PLATFORM
Your world outside your body is what matters in the long term.
It is all about RAISING YOUR POTENTIAL CAPACITY
Raising your potential capacity means doing what you can to increase your energy. With more energy, you will be able to do more, and as I’ve said – stress comes when you cannot handle the number of demands.
DELEGATE SOME TASKS
If there’s too much ongoing – literally too much than what you can take even after doing the sorting of things, then you might want to consider delegating or outsourcing.
Outsourcing is a good way to take some tasks off your plate. Just choose the tasks that don’t really need to be done by you personally, and you can focus on the bigger things.
Take the time to ponder, , raise your potential capacity, and delegate some tasks. Combine these all together and you’ll have less stress from too many tasks!
WHERE TO GET ENOUGH ENERGY
You can easily achieve “real energy” by doing ONLY three simple things…And to make it easier to remember and not make it more complicated, just remember the acronym “SEE”.
SEE, as in:
S-leep
E-at
E-xercise
It all sounds so easy, doesn’t it? But then why is it hard to do it consistently? These three things are the inner engines that help us stay alive and do things we wanna do.
The problem is some people are just good at doing it from the beginning, but it doesn’t work like that. It needs to be done consistently to get the abundance of energy that will help us go from chaos to calm.
BONUS
For the bonus, it’s what I call “friendship”.
Meeting people decreases stress and increases calm in life.
Honestly, possibilities are almost endless and all might seem overwhelmingly much to do but we just need to start with small changes….
One at a time, maybe start by changing your diet, or stretching a little, or sleeping an extra hour.
Whatever it is, just remember that all those small positive changes, when added up together become BIG.
WHAT YOU NEED TODAY
It is only when you have the mindset for change and the energy to do it is when you can start looking at everything in life around you.
Your world outside your body, despite being your internal platform, s still internal work, inside your brain, using your built-in tools to manage the outside world around you.
WHAT ARE THE EXTERNAL THINGS
The external things that matter may be: your Job – including that overloaded to-do list, Money, your Network, and people around you – are they good for you, or do they steal your energy, Family/intimacy? Yes, even where you live matters – these are a few of the things you may want to change.
WRITE THINGS DOWN
However, there is no one size fits all solution. Problems are different from one another, so solutions can also look totally different.
In times like this, the best thing to do is ponder about it and WRITE IT ALL DOWN.
YOU CAN NEVER GO WRONG WITH WRITING THINGS DOWN.
Here are questions to answer that can help.
1. “Where do I get stressed the most?” What stresses me out the most?
2. Where do you want to be? What are your goals?
3. Take a look at how it currently is in your life – not someone else’s life or what others think.
4. What’s the next best step to take?
PILLS AND TRANQUILIZERS TO EASE STRESS
To break it to you this early…
Pills or tranquilizers won’t solve your problem as they might just make you end up being an addict.
If you are someone who panics on problems and relies on pills to calm down, you might want to start changing that.
TRANQUILIZERS DO NOT SOLVE THE CAUSE OF STRESS
Tranquilizers make you feel calm, but they DO NOT SOLVE ANYTHING.
And they can make you think slow, CALM but SLOW THINKING.
Let’s get into its effects.
THE EFFECTS OF TRANQUILIZERS
Alcohol is a natural tranquilizer. It is a day of help, and only good for the benefit of the moment.
I also guess that most of you know what it looks like for someone on constant alcohol use – or rather abuse.
Just like alcohol, pill tranquilizers also offer only temporary relief, unless you want to be tranquilizer dependent which also does no good because What happens after it wears off, or after you decide that you’re done being dependent on it? You will have a terrible time getting out of the habit and the urge for it.
You are just back to square one and in a worse physical state.
Additionally, tranquilizers just turn your brains off, and when you’re stressed out, you actually need more of your brain as you need to gather all your thoughts to help you get out of that stressful situation and find a good solution.
So really, does it solve any of your problems at all?
Na-da. Because what it gives you is a temporary relief of bad quality. Nothing more.
REAL STRESS MANAGEMENT
Real stress management is not trying to push the stress away, it is fixing and working on your life so the stress does not come often.
It’s not about how often they come, but about how you handle yourself and tackle them when they come.
I’ll let you in on a little secret…
Stress can either take lives or save lives. It’s part of basic biology and its real purpose is to WARN us when our body can’t take any longer – it tells us to REST. Treat it as a warning system and it can save you. Abuse your body and ignore your warning system and it can kill you.
YOU JUST HAVE TO LEARN TO LISTEN TO IT AND LET IT SERVE ITS PURPOSE.
STRESS AS A WARNING SYSTEM
Stress is in fact a WARNING SYSTEM. It warns us when our minds and bodies can’t take more anymore.
It warns us WHEN TO PAUSE, RELAX, and BREATHE that if we don’t do it we know we’ll end up being vulnerable.
WE JUST HAVE TO LEARN TO USE IT RIGHT.
Because this WARNING SYSTEM, if USED CORRECTLY, CAN SAVE LIVES – your life.
WHAT ARE THE SIGNALS TO LOOK FOR
The first signal from your body when stress hormones start to rise above the “good for you” limit can differ massively from person to person. YOU need to learn your stress pattern.
It can be anxiety, shaking, memory loss, concentration problems, stomach ache, headache, making faults repeatedly, getting angry for no reason, being grumpy, taking on every infection that passes by, sleep problems, overeating, under-eating, getting speeded, getting slow (this is me in a nutshell – everything is in slow motion in my head when I get stressed out).
Figure your early signs, and associate them with things you recently thought of as those are the possible triggers.
Once you’re able to identify them you can easily avoid them.
ASK FOR HELP TOO
When you already know your signals, ask someone you trust to be sort of your accountability buddy, or a person who knows you well and can spot your signs, so if you miss it, you still can be reminded.
If you have no one in mind, remember that getting a mentor is another option too, plus, you can reap more benefits. See HERE how I can help.
Some people ask why they need to change if the societal changes are temporary, and that all will be back to normal once this is all over?
Who said that the changes are temporary?
I guess it’s clear to most of us that we’re currently in the middle of a new “Industrial Revolution”, and that we go from today’s industrial society to the future IT society.
Honestly, because everybody has seen that all the changes and the setup work, why’d we think that they’re still going to revert back to the past ways?
The world is evolving, we are evolving.
If we think we’re going to be the future of IT society, let me tell you that we’re actually already there in many ways. Today’s young people have nothing to compare with – since most of them have not experienced the “Industrial Society”. This transformation surely will request a lot of new knowledge and skills from everybody.
FROM A HEALTH PERSPECTIVE
Is a transition from one system to another good or bad from a health perspective?
Health doesn’t care what we call the society out there, and neither does it care about pandemics being around.
Stone age, bronze age, renaissance, agricultural, industrial, or IT – it doesn’t matter for the body and soul as long as they get their basic needs satisfied.
BIOLOGY IS SLOWER THAN SOCIETY
Biology changes much slower than society as societal changes are extremely fast today. Meanwhile, biology hasn’t changed since man evolved around 200,000 ish years ago.
Our bodies and minds’ basic needs are the same now as they were then: Regular sleep, nutritional food, and physical activity for the body and psychological and physical closeness (to be seen and touched) for the mind. PLUS, time to rest.
That is all that is needed to keep us feeling well and sane. These are the basic needs.
IN REALITY
What does it mean in reality? That we should take care of our bodies and souls as we always have done, or should have done.
Stress, in a simple way, is the physiological process within the body that gives increased levels of stress hormones when outside pressure and when our internal needs don’t go in line.
Stress ain’t about the number of things we do, but about our feelings about it. This in return, may cause concentration difficulty, memory difficulties, headache, stomach ache, and in the long run – risk for organic diseases.
But what can we do to avoid it all from happening? Take periods of rejuvenation.
DO THE SOCIETAL CHANGES CREATE MORE STRESS
Going back, do the leaders get more stressed with this new digitalized era?
We know that changes in workplaces generally create new difficulties that we, at least initially, perceive as more stressful.
It’s even more important to get frequent time for rejuvenation and take good care of the body between peaks of stress like this.
GOING BACK TO THE BASICS
To summarize, this is like going back to the basics. The more stressful the situation you’re in, the more important the basics are regular sleep, nutritious food, and regular physical activity.
That’s how easy… and maybe hard??? It is!
And for the Corona pandemic? It will pass!
Some of the changes done to cope will stay because they worked better, but the end result for that will not be seen until years from now.
And new challenges will show up…
Life is exciting, isn’t it?
To be witty you can say – there is one thing that will never change – and that is that change is inevitable!
FUTURE LEADERSHIP AND WORKPLACE HEALTH
Today’s businesses were forced to go virtual by the pandemic. Jobs were broken down into new areas to be adapted and all these changes led work to be more flexible. New solutions emerged out of necessity, and they were brilliant.
But, the job specification for a health and safety manager is one, in particular, that may change dramatically.
How on earth do you begin to look after the physical and mental well-being of employees while they are working from home? It feels inevitable that health and safety will increasingly overlap with more traditional HR priorities and become even more central to employers meeting their duty of care.
HOW WILL YOU NOTICE WHO’S WHO
How will you notice who’s burnt out, who’s not taking enough breaks, or who’s having a tough time at home?
Employers will need new services to bridge the gap between small talk and social interactions, such as access to an employee helpline or private healthcare provision.
But why should you have to care for those things – small talk and social interactions? Because those actions are crucial to our well-being – and our well-being is a must for doing a good job. We are herd animals, we need those interactions to thrive.
BIG SOCIETAL CHANGE: NOW WORKING ALONE AT HOME
You may think that being by yourself, being able to work undisturbed is less stressful, and you will be very effective.
Well as long as you KNOW there is someone caring for you and getting back to you now and then – that is okay – and you can stay very effective.
But if you don’t feel that trust, you don’t feel seen and have a feeling that nobody cares – they (the employer) might even think you are cheating since no one sees what you do when you sit at home and work – and even if you love what you do – then your sympathetic nervous system kicks in meaning you are constantly alert with your 3 automatic stress tools – the ability to fight, run away or play dead.
AS SEEN FROM AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
We don’t know why this is so but seen from an evolutionary perspective we have 99,9% of our time here as human beings being dependent on each other to survive.
Staying together was the only way to survive.
That means that the brain rewards the community.
BEING ALONE AND BEING LONELY
With this knowledge, it is easier to understand why loneliness, feeling alone by your work desk at home, is connected to fight or flight – because evolution meant you had to watch out all the time if you were alone. Your stress system was always active.
This constant state of stress, with increased levels of stress hormones in the body, meant high blood pressure, inflammation, and therefore a higher risk for cardiovascular disease. And eventually premature death.
Therefore this part with community and possibilities to meet are so crucial to workplace health – to avoid mental illness.
A NEW DEFINITION OF WORK
Away from health and safety, there will need to be reconsiderations regarding the design of the new workplace – when we now slowly are getting back to our old routines.
Or are we? – old routines need to be new routines.
We need to make room for all the good homework experiences we have.
Maybe we need to bring a whole new way of thinking – but doing it carefully so we can keep what is good from both worlds – the office and the home-based.
After all, if work from home has been seen as effective, an option must be provided, and as everyone has said – “Welcome to the New Normal”.
If you need more self-hep books, here’s a copy of my free e-book!
We, humans, are more alike than we think, more than we can imagine.
Surprising, isn’t it?
While we all think we’re so different, we’ll be surprised with the info that we’re not.
But how’s that even possible?
To begin with, the differences are just really minor differences such as the countries we come from, the languages we talk, or our physical features.
But boil it down to beliefs, and cultures, dig deep down and we’re still more alike than different.
WHAT’S INSIDE US
We all have the same basic biology, regardless of color or gender, we’re all exactly the same inside.
The stress hormone systems that we have are all exactly the same and work the same. So really, we could all look so differently outside but looking deeper, we’re not.
HUMANS ARE HERD ANIMALS
Do you know that a person can change so much in an instant?
It’s true. Observe someone you know, and focus on how that person interacts with different types of groups, does that person act all the same?
I know a lot of people, who have different groups of people, and in one group they are quiet and more preserved because that’s the way their group works, and in the other, they’d be super energetic, doing whatever.
It’s like seeing a person with different versions, and the version depends on the crowd they are with.
Why? Because we all have our basic parrot padding and we mimic the ones we have around us. We are herd animals and we want to be like the rest of the group because that is how we are trained, how we’re taught.
Remember your childhood? You were taught to act like the adults around you.
Well, we still do that now, unconsciously, we tend to act like those who are around us.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND HUMANS
Biology is universal by logic. We were only brought up differently from childhood but in reality, we haven’t changed in 200,000 years, why would we change in a lifetime that we don’t?
“No, we are all still different, my belief is different from theirs, from yours.”
I know, that’s how it is and I’ve nothing against that. To each his own, right?
What I’m only saying is…
A belief is a choice, and at any second of the day, we can choose something different, we can change what we believe in.
If you choose to believe in something negative in the morning, you can just quickly change that and choose to believe in something positive in the afternoon.
WE HAD NO CHOICE when we were kids – that is the time in our lives when we are shaped in so many ways
TAKE LANGUAGE FOR EXAMPLE
I have always been amazed by the fact that children in other countries speak THEIR language fluently when I know how hard it is to learn a second language.
Of course, they did not speak Swedish but I did not reflect on it that way when I was younger.
Today I know that a healthy child just HAS TO learn the language spoken around them when they are babies.
That is how our biology works – they just do learn in the first couple of years – they have no stop mechanism for that.
Imagine what that means! What if I in Sweden gave birth to 5 babies – and they stayed with me they would all speak Swedish when they grew up? If the father in my family would be native English speaking, the children would be bi-lingual – not by choice but by rule. And they would have adopted the Swedish English traditions that we feed them with.
AND if we had sent those 5 babies away right after birth to 5 different continents, with totally different languages and traditions they would have no knowledge of Swedish or English and they would have totally different basic traditions in their way of living.
And if these 5 persons met in later years – they would look alike but have no common language.
Get the idea?
WE WEREN’T GIVEN MANY CHOICES, WE WERE MOLDED
What did I want to say with this: We weren’t really given much choice and we were raised and molded instead by people around us when we were kids.
But now, WE CAN CHOOSE WHO WE WANT TO BE, WE CAN EVEN CHOOSE WHO WE SURROUND OURSELVES WITH.
YOU YESTERDAY, OR YOU TODAY?
Do you want to be that person from yesterday or start finding the real you today?
No matter what, remember that despite the tiny differences we have, WE ARE MUCH MORE ALIKE.
So, be kind to one another and treat everyone with respect.
HUMANS ALIKE, THE SAME STRESS SYSTEM
Regardless of the minor differences…We all have the same stress system that steers our basic behavior.
Biology needs us to be like herd animals to survive – that makes us look for people who are alike – because with similar people we feel safer. And when we are alike we reassure each other with what we do and we do the same.
This ends up in groups that will do good and also in groups that will do bad.
Since we encourage each other in a group to do the same – by those biological laws – a group that is hostile towards others can do a lot of harm – to be accepted in the group.
WHAT WE LONG FOR
As individuals we long for appreciation, to be seen – it is a basic need to survive. First of all, appreciation of who we are, just as that.
If we don’t get that appreciation, we search for appreciation for what we do – good things, hard work, good grades, work, etc. because we want and need to be seen.
If that doesn’t work either – then we start doing bad things – just to be seen. And if necessary we do really bad things to reach the goal. Or it might end up in suicide – that is how strong this drive is.
And this basic personal need is then put into the group mechanism and we have all these tragic things going on and all the hatred towards others – just because it works this way
And all we wanted was to be seen…
WHAT HAPPENS TO OUR BRAIN WHEN STRESSED
One can say we have 3 layers in our brain system: The Reptile Brain, the Limbic System, and the Logical Brain.
The Reptile Brain stands for our automatically regulated functions – like keeping blood sugar levels right, temperature, hunger, and that heart beating – all basic functions that we cannot control with our will. It works on instinct – and when it is in charge we don’t think clearly or reflect – we just do.
The Limbic System is where our center for feelings is (aka the mammal brain). This is where our behavior is steered by feelings – like if you feel sad you feel an urge for comfort food and think of going to get some sweets or so. You do things to lessen the bad or sad feelings and it can make you do dumb things just to silence your feelings.
The Logical Brain is the one we use for all thinking, with a will, cognition, memory, processing of sensory input, and abstractions, but what’s interesting is the logical brain can quickly throw us into our mammal or reptile brains.
For example, if we read a scary part in that book it might throw us back into the mammal brain to seek comfort, go eat something for example, or it might throw us all the way into the reptile brain where we have the feeling of fear.
It is within these layers of our brain that we live and the more insecure you are the more likely it is that you are in the inner two layers – bouncing between feelings and instinct action – and this is not the place where we feel happiness or health or wealth.
Our logical brain requires a lot of energy and when we are stressed it’s the first part to shut down, which means that it turns into the mammal brain by automation and that deprives us of making conscious decisions and makes us more prone to follow old set biological programs that were installed in us in our childhood as I talked about earlier.
If we go on with the stress, we will go into the brain fog and it stops working – we then just work on instinct – we have hit the stress wall.
So, now that you can see how simple our basic biology is and still how extremely hard it is to navigate all these laws to stay healthy, less stressed, and be able to look at all other creatures = people whatever different they look like – and accept them as equal.
I’ll repeat again –
Be kind to one another and treat everyone with respect. And since all we want is to be seen… show appreciation to everyone around you.
Here’s access to a more step-by-step guide on self-development: Access Here!
You may be asking, is there a way that you can stay efficient both at work and at home, without compromising either?
You are tired, you feel worn out.
These days, you’re also fed up with all the “what’s happening in our world” talks as it’s ruling everybody else’s life, including ours.
Like you, I had my hands full before and just did not need any other extra burden. It was a never-ending story with tasks waiting to get done.
You still have many hours left at work, and a pile of tasks but you just want to sleep and be able to forget everything. And stress? It’s already taking a strict grip on your brain.
HOW WILL YOU SURVIVE? Recognize.
Everything that’s happening in our world today makes us a little more uncertain, and uncertainty’s naturally a threat to our brains so stress creeps up on us without us noticing until everything just becomes so heavy and hopeless.
WILL UNCERTAINTY HURT YOU
Not really if you take the time to rest and rejuvenate from time to time, or prevent yourself from constantly ending up n that situation by acting at first signs.
To help you, I’ll give 5 proven EASY tips that give you calm, energy, better structure in work, and in the end when all combined, better life or revenue business-wise.
1. The Breathing Anchor
What other BESt here and NOW tool than your ability to take deep breaths??
Admittedly, others see breathing as just breathing – but believe me when I tell you, and as a Doctor, that IT IS NOT. It’s the basic source of life. No breathing, no oxygen = no life!
In a workshop with a group of businesspeople, I was teaching them this tool. One man went almost crazy stating that he was absolutely not doing any breathing exercise – it was just all wo-wo.
I had to calm him down. He even told me not to play games with him. I said, well then by normally breathing he was halfway there – he just needed to start seeing it as a tool.
We showed the whole group how to do the breathing in a good way and off they went for 4 weeks. The guy did not look happy when we parted.
4 weeks later at the next workshop session, this man comes up to me – apologizing for his behavior the last time.
He had – behind closed doors – tested the exercise and noticed that he did feel better – less stress and got better flow in his work and realized it was a good thing!
So, if you start to use breathing as a tool, you will have a friend for life.
Make it your first automatic thing to do when you feel the stress come creeping up your back.
Just stop and breathe..
I heard someone call it your 10-second vacation – and that is a very good way to see it – that is just what it is. 10 seconds of peace of mind – and that can make all the difference.
Someone else calls it your airbag – to release when stress hits you.
Whichever of these analogies you use – don’t forget to utilize this free, effective, and readily available tool.
2. PHYSICAL MOVEMENT
Stand up, jump, stretch, walk around! Movement generates energy in both body and mind by improving cell connections in the brain.
Angry, upset, or stressed out? Walk around the block and you’ll be surprised you’ll feel calm.
Notice how when people fight and someone who doesn’t like talking much when full of emotions just walks out, and then comes back ready to talk calmly? That’s what I’m talking about.
Wayback 200,000 ish years ago we were equipped with 3 main ways to react to threats: flight, fight or freeze – combined with a 4th tool – the ability to move.
Moving plus thinking has a connection. Lost a thought? Move and you’ll remember it easier.
Physical movement gives us clarity, and when we’re thinking straight, we can do great unexpected things.
3. A BREAK.
Our brains don’t like being active for too long. They need to rest and reorganize every now and then.
Sprint 20-50 minutes of work, then squeeze in a 5-15 minute break. Get a coffee, breathe, exercise, stretch, jump, sing, dance… Do crochet, sew – whatever makes your heart happy!
4. Delegate!
Have someone else do the work! Repetitive or routinary tasks that can be taught one time? A task that follows a specific process you can teach? Boring easy tasks?
True enough, not everyone has somebody else to delegate to, but buying a service from someone who in no time can do what takes you ages is always an option! In return, you’ll get more time at your hands and focus on things you do the best.
5. MAKE A STRUCTURE.
Get your working routines in order. Get help from systems and structures that already exist. It may take a day or two to do these organizing changes to get a system that works. But you will soon get all that time back and lots more upfront when your work is much more effective in your daily routine.
Once you have a structure for everything, it can easily be taught and passed on, and implementing #4 above will be waaaay easier!
I know all this sounds too much to take but coming to think of it, they’re all easy, and once all set, make your lives so much easier!
I have received questions before about taking a pill instead to calm down… but, let me warn you on that: Yes, it is true that if you take it all will seem good because you’ll feel calm and better but NO, you’re not done with your “stress problems” and your problem is NOT SOLVED.
Just like alcohol… it helps in a day but certainly only offers temporary relief and solves no root cause of a problem. In fact, can even cause an additional one – alcohol addiction.
So no, I say do not succumb to these temporary solutions because quick fixes never work.
MANAGE TASKS TO BE EFFICIENT
Making a list of things to do or tasks at hand plays a crucial role in this journey, as well as prioritizing them in order.
When you don’t have anything that requires urgency, then that’s your excuse to just go pick random tasks because it’s obvious that the one that you pick is also the one that you like the most to do.
Although we tend to pick the easy ones first, I suggest doing it the other way around because ticking off the hard ones from the list can put your mind at ease.
Nobody for sure would like the hard ones getting piled up… or it becomes unmanageable.
CATEGORIZING YOUR TASKS
If you get confused about which task goes first while making your list, I advise you to break them down into these 4 categories:
1. Urgent and Important
Examples of tasks that fall under this category are those that you cannot always predict and require immediate action or attention to stop further harm if any. These tasks give you the feeling to drop other tasks and do only these tasks NOW.
Both things that include preventing conflicts or making you lose an important opportunity go here.
2. Not Urgent But Important
These tasks, since they are not urgent… sometimes mean that you need to have the time to ponder about them.
Sample tasks that fall here are the tasks that could be something big for your business and need plenty of time planning and doing.
“Why does it come second if it is not urgent”
Because if you don’t start doing them now, sooner or later THEY BECOME URGENT. They may be crucial to your business moving forward – but your mind puts them off – because they are time-consuming and often also energy draining.
Most often selling comes here and all the development of new products. It doesn’t have to be done today – but if never done your business will die.
3. Urgent But Not Important
These are the tasks that require urgency looking like they could be preventing you from achieving some of your goals or proceeding to the next step/s.
But since they are not important, ask yourself if they can be rescheduled or outsourced.
Often we also find all the things from OTHER people’s list here – we are asked for things that we don’t have to do – but since someone is asking for it we think we need to answer. But if we reflect we can see they are not important to us at all.
4. Not Urgent and Not Important
Yes, they do exist. Some examples that fall here are those that other people told you that you need to do or tasks you see other people have so you also thought you need to do the same but don’t probably have to do at all.
Avoid these tasks as much as possible as they only serve as a distraction. Reflect and ask if these tasks are really necessary or just a waste of time.
Transparency for me is the basis for trust in doing business with other people.
Going back, one of the ladies I had that talk with, asked me about my thoughts on the matter because I was very firm on it, making a statement that it’s really important. And today, I’ll share with you the things that I’ve shared with them – where after the end of the long discussion they got new perspectives.
I’ll begin by giving you a scenario.
“Let’s say, you lied to your friend John, but here comes Marie who knows the truth, and one day, you discovered that John and Marie are friends What are you gonna do? Will you tell the truth to John or pretend like nothing’s wrong at all?”
That’s entirely up to you – but to tell you something, regardless of the act that you take, you cannot reverse the damage that you’ve done with the lying, you’ve already tarnished your reputation, and with that reputation, how can people know if they can trust you?
The scenario may be simple, but we know how common it is.
Aside from reputation being tarnished, what can it do to you internally?
You’ll be anxious and you’ll always overthink it. You’ll have to be very extra cautious and you’re always scared of something, especially the truth spilling out.
All that are very stressful and we know what too much stress does to our bodies, so it’s not wise to lie from the very beginning.
THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY IT TAKES
All these things also take a lot of energy just to keep track of things.
One lie leads to more lies, and it will just never be over.
Let me share my personal experience about the matter.
When I was new with my business, I got help from various associations from the upstart and got into a co-op with a lady nurse.
Everything was great! Or at least, looked great on the surface as she had a great business model that we used – except that she had a hidden agenda.
She was never transparent in the beginning as my business partner. She put everything in her name and was just telling me that it was ours, but then I was too blue-eyed to question it.
People around me started questioning some of the things we were doing so I had a hunch that something more was happening. I then confronted her but all I got were additional lies I failed to notice as lies so we continued…
Until I asked the wrong question, or actually, the RIGHT ONE that made her shield crack and blew up on me, even uttered things like I do not know anything about healthcare.
Me? Who’s been a Doctor for decades???? Knows nothing about healthcare??? Pretty sure that’s her way to gaslight in her effort to escape the questions I asked.
Then the 3-month hell started, til I got help from my lawyers to put the company in bankruptcy. We both lost a lot of money and it took me a year of hard work as a Doctor to be able to recover.
THE LESSON
Be aware of what you sign up for, and ask the right questions. Transparency is a MUST.
TRANSPARENCY AND SUCCESS CORRELATION
How does transparency help in business success?
Well, aside from the fact that you’ll be closer to achieving success if you are less stressed…
Imagine running a business without transparency. You can be great at what you do, but the company’s success will never be long-term without it.
Remember, it only takes a single wronged person for a business to fall.
WHAT TO DO WHEN BEING TRANSPARENT IS NOT AN OPTION
Having worked in healthcare as a Doctor for many years… I know that there are just unexpected situations where being completely transparent is hard so I know that it’s not always easy.
It was always a thin line to walk for me. I mean, how do you easily tell your patients about things that you know could really hurt them and their families?
But of course, at the same time, I know better – than holding it off, covering it up, postponing it, or worse, lying about it would just make things worse.
“So you shrug it off, the possibility of hurting them?”
No. But I always search for the best words to tell them. I tell the truth and nothing but the complete truth, but I kind of wrap my words in a nice package so it doesn’t hit them so hard. If possible.
BUSINESS TRANSPARENCY
Transparency in business means offering a clear, honest assessment of what’s going on within one’s work and starts with a simple shift in communication: openness and honesty between everyone involved in the business relationship.
It is also the basis for trust between a firm and its investors, customers, partners, and employees, having its core objective to be always the same: establishing trust and goodwill.
Let’s look at Some examples of what transparency in business can include:
With Investors and Shareholders – Investors think about transparency in terms of how readily they can access financial information about a company, including its price levels and audited financial reports. Investors must be able to trust that your organization produces financial reports that are informative, accurate, and independently audited.
With Customers – Customers want to see transparency from the businesses where they choose to spend their money. To achieve transparency with its customers, businesses should respond to customer inquiries and feedback in an honest and timely fashion, and increase the accessibility of information about their products and services. Transparency also means admitting to mistakes instead of trying to cover them up, and working to make things right with customers. When executed well, transparency with customers results in elevated brand loyalty, increased sales, and stronger employee satisfaction.
In the Supply Chain – Transparency between an organization and its vendors and suppliers is essential for ensuring a productive ongoing relationship. An organization may cease doing business with a supplier who fails to honestly communicate about the sources of its materials or labor. Supply chains are increasingly being scrutinized by governments, consumers, and NGOs who are concerned about the ethical sourcing of labor and materials.
With Employees – Transparency with employees is centered around honest, two-way communications between employees of the business and their managers. This can include transparent discussions about business goals and objectives, challenges, employee performance, and other work-related issues.
In the end, the primary benefit of business transparency is that it produces trust and goodwill while safeguarding the firm’s reputation among investors, partners, employees, customers, and other stakeholders. In addition to all the above-mentioned, benefits also include:
Increasing employee morale
Boosting employee engagement and retention
Demonstrating stability and encouraging investment
Leveraging honest feedback to improve processes and drive results
Demonstrating integrity and ethical behavior
Studies show that approximately 9 in 10 individuals (85%) are expected to stick by the company during a brand crunch if it possesses a history of being fully transparent.
TRANSPARENCY AND INTERNAL INFORMATION
Transparency in business can also mean publicizing a company’s internal information externally which can include:
Financial performance
Pricing
Key processes
Hiring practices
Diversity and inclusion data
Sharing all of this information keeps companies accountable to their customers and, most importantly, pushes them to follow ethical business practices.
Nowadays, people don’t just buy your product or services — they also buy what you stand for. In Edelman’s 2019 Brand Trust Survey, 81% of survey respondents reported that they “must be able to trust the brand to do what is right” to justify their purchase of the brand’s products or services.
But how exactly do you gain people’s trust, especially when the majority of consumers are skeptical of a lot of brands’ true intentions? A crucial first step to take is to fully commit to transparency. People value transparency because we evolved to trust the people who are honest and despise those who are deceptive. The former could help us survive. The latter could do the very opposite.
In a nutshell, people buy brands — not just products — and practicing transparency helps build their trust and affinity for your company. But this begs the question — what does that actually look like?
As I started off today ALL of these angles – steps – viewpoints cause a lot of stress for everyone involved if we feel we are doing the wrong thing.
Sticking to the truth helps us to stay grounded and be sure we do our best and that will be the best guarantee for less stress in your business
And of course, all these facts and angles can be applied to your personal life too.
This discussion around transparency, around the truth or lying, can be hard to tackle. It is a sensitive subject that can stress you out a lot.
What is right and what is wrong?
If you do not know where to start or feel hard to do on your own, it’s okay! You can start with little things, such as mastering your stress management as a leader, and then with less stress, the rest will automatically follow.
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