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Promoting Wellbeing for Individuals and OrganisationsJuly 2010
Greetings!
Welcome to our latest Newsletter. I hope you're having a good summer. Since our last Newsletter, I've been delivering training in various parts of the country - Stress Awareness for Individuals and Managing Stress as a Manager - and planning training in Resilience.
(Please note that we're offering a 15% discount on the normal cost of our in-house training to Newsletter readers, for any courses booked in August 2010. Click here for further details). I've also been involved in some one-to-one stress coaching, and a couple of mediations, between staff whose working relationships had broken down. I'm pleased to say that we have a guest contributor this month: osteopath Jonathan Rohll with some helpful guidance on posture. 
I do hope that you find something of interest in the Newsletter that you'll be able to use personally and/or for your organisation. Please let me know if you have any questions you'd like to ask about the enclosed, or indeed if there's something you'd like to see covered in future newsletters. I welcome your feedback.
Happy reading
 
Marc
Talking the talk and walking the walk
 

With reference to helpful and unhelpful thinking, what happens if you're thinking in helpful ways, but its not really doing the trick, and you're still feeling stressed or anxious or nervy or whatever? We've seen before how thinking in helpful ways will encourage helpful feelings, but sometimes its just not enough. The first thing to say is that if you get stressed sometimes and are looking for a way to deal with it, it helps if you're self-aware.  That way, you'll probably understand on an intellectual level how and why you're feeling like you do, e.g. something goes wrong for you/you 'fail' at something, and you give yourself a hard time, and feel bad, and your self-esteem suffers, and you beat yourself up about it. We can also often be aware, and again understand intellectually, what it is we need to do to do to improve things, e.g. accept it, tell myself that 'these things happen', 'I'm okay, I can get over this', 'Things will get better'. This is fine, but it's only part of the story, since we need to actually believe these things on a 'gut' level for them to properly take effect. Until that happens, we're unlikely to really internalise, absorb and accept these messages. When that happens, we can truly feel and experience the helpful emotions and feelings that 'positive' and helpful thinking can bring. If you like, this is where effective learning takes place. If we're feeling anxious, or our mood is low, learning that will help this situation is less likely to take place. We will maximise the chances of this happening, so that it becomes our default way of being and thinking if we act and behave in ways that reflect and support this view of ourselves, others and the world around us ("I'm okay"; "It's okay"; "I can cope" etc).

So if you're saying helpful things to yourself, but nothing's happening, let's try acting and behaving in ways that accord with that helpful way of thinking, and live it and believe it. It may be an effort initially, but with practice it will become easier and less of a struggle. Saying "I'm okay"; "I can do this" "I'm confident" needs to be combined with our acting in confident 'I'm okay' ways. Doing things that make us feel fulfilled and that we enjoy doing will also be helpful. To coin a phrase, we need to talk the talk, AND walk the walk. What we're aiming for is a situation where thinking and feeling and behaving in helpful ways come naturally.

If the above rings a bell with you, think about what you can do in terms of your behaviour, and try it out. Remember that you must keep at it, accept that it won't always go to plan, and that Rome was not built in a day. Small steps rather than massive bounds are the order of the day.      

Posture

We spend a lot of our working lives sitting down, working at desks and computers.  Bad posture over time may cause biomechanical problems, including pain and dysfunction.  Here are some suggestions for avoiding this.

Table and chair height - to find the correct chair height adjust it so that with your feet flat on the floor and about a 20-30 angle at the knee (i.e. not right angles) your arms make a comfortable right angle with the desk.  Ideally the forearms should be supported by the arms of the chair.

Screen

1) height -  this is correct when your eyes are on the same level as the menu bar at the top of the screen;

2) should be directly in front of you;Ryff model
3) should be no further away from you than an arm length.  At first you may feel that the screen is too close and you are leaning back and away from it however this is good because it deters craning of the neck forwards preventing various undesirable alterations to the lengths of the muscles in this area possibly leading to upper back, neck and shoulder problems and sometimes headache.

Keyboard - directly in front of you.

Mouse - keep the mouse close to your keyboard and avoid taking the weight of your arm on the wrist.   Think about using a mouse pad with a gel wrist rest.

Take short breaks - every 45-60 minutes walk around and stretch your neck and back for a minute or so. This uses muscles that may have been inactive and restores blood flow to and from muscles that have been contracted while sitting.

Keep hydrated - under the influence of gravity the height of the intervertebral discs (IVD's) that sit between the vertebrae of the spine is decreased due to loss of fluid, leading in the long-term to reduced mobility of the spine and potentially increasing the chance of injury. Maintaining good hydration prevents this to a certain extent thereby helping to keep the IVD's able to perform their vital role in spinal motion.

 
(Article contributed by osteopath Jonathan Rohll. If you wish to learn more about posture/osteopathy, visit www.osteopathy.me.uk).
What do you enjoy doing? Do more of it!

How much of your life is made up of things you

 have to do because it's a responsibility; you're a parent; you're a professional; you've always done them, and things you

 choose to do because you enjoy them, you like doing them/they make you feel good?

Why not make a list of

THINGS I HAVE TO DO                           THINGS I CHOOSE TO DO

Go to work                                             Watch television

Walk the dog                                          Socialise

Care for my children                                Play sport         

Do household chores                                Etc??

Go food and supplies shopping

Etc

There is a good reason why you do the things you have to do, and sometimes they'll be a pain, but you just have to do them. What we're focussing on here are the things that you like doing, that you enjoy and that make you feel fulfilled as a human being. Because of our busy lifestyles, the pace of life, maybe the expectations we have etc etc, we can sometimes neglect or even stop doing those fulfilling activities. This could be something that we used to do before, but we've stopped doing because we now have responsibilities,  don't have time and can't fit it in.

This is not about telling you how to live your life, but its worth asking ourselves whether we do do enough of those 'choose to do' things. If you are in deficit on the right-hand side, think about putting in a few more. We are more likely to be psychologically well if we do things that make us feel good about ourselves, and bring us satisfaction and joy and a sense of fulfillment.  

 
That's all for this month. Please get in touch if you'd like a word about any of the above, or to discuss how we can support you/your organisation.
 
Best wishes,
 

Marc Kirby
Stress Management Plus
In This Issue
Talking the talk and walking the walk
Posture
What Do You Enjoy Doing? Do More Of It!
Top Stress Tips
Photo Marc Kirby
Marc Kirby
Director
Stress Management Plus
  
Top Stress Tips 
ROLE MODELLING
This is a technique that can be helpful if we're getting stressed, and don't think we're handling ourselves or the situation very well. It involves asking ourselves the question "How would someone I admire be handling things?" We need to choose someone whom we know or think would be dealing with the situation well. This can be someone famous - someone in the public eye or a religious leader for example - or not so famous, like an acquaintance, family member or colleague. We can ask ourselves "How would they be reacting?"; "What would they be doing?"; "What would they be thinking?" and then try and emulate them in a way that makes things easier for us. 

Something we've touched on in previous newsletters is the issue of expectations, and how the further they are from what's realistic, reasonable and achievable, the more

disappointed we're likely to be. I'm not advocating a philosophy of 'aim low', but what I am recommending is that we take a flexible, adaptable approach in which we hope for the best, but are not insistent that things go our way. We are thus better able to deal with it and accept it when things don't go perfectly.

Expecting ourselves, or others, to be perfect is an example of unrealistic expectations. Accepting that things will go wrong sometimes, and that we won't always get what we want, when we want it, and that we are only human, and therefore fallible - these are all examples of reasonable expectations. It's likely that this attitude to situations and life in general will lead to a more comfortable and less-stressed environment for us.

Given the above, which category do your expectations fall into?

 

 Find out more about our Stress Training

 
 RECOMMENDED READING
'Zero to Hero', by Stephen Palmer and Christine Wilding
 'Manage Your Mind' by Gillian Butler and Tony Hope
(click on the link for book details on the Amazon website)
 
STRESS AND WELLBEING IN THE NEWS 
We have a 'Newsbox' on our website listing the latest news items about stress and wellbeing for the individual and organisation. Click here to take a look. 
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