Tag Archives: Mindfulness

Stress, The Red Line and Trail Running Part 2

Through your leadership career, the time may come where you start to feel the effects of stress, unchecked it can lead to burnout. Signs of burnout can include digestion problems, high blood pressure, immunity, sleep issues, concentration issues, depressed mood, feeling worthless, loss of interest and fatigue to name a few. We concentrate on work, the challenge to succeed and forget the coping mechanisms we had when we were younger. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a piece of equipment that would let us know when we were approaching burnout?

When trail running, it is common to keep your eye on your heartrate using a fitness watch. Your heartrate will pass through five zones from Zone 1 (Moderate Activity) to Zone 5 (VO2 Max) as you increase your pace of running. Maintaining your heart rate in Zone 3 (Aerobix) will allow you to run for extended periods with relative ease and complete your 5K , 10K, 15k or more. Moving into Zone 4 (Anaerobic) becomes increasingly difficult and if you get into Zone 5 (Maximum Effort), you will not be able to continue for a long distance. You may want to walk to recover from Zone 5, but as soon as you start running again your heart rate will go right back into Zone 5. You have passed the red line of recovery and only extended rest will help.

It is the same with burnout at work. Everyone has a different red line when it comes to life. Your personal red line is a combination of life stress and work stress which varies at any time based on specific conditions. Like trail running, if you pass the red line of stress, the recovery is much more challenging. The secret – do your best to maintain and continue to develop your coping mechanisms – exercise, spending time with family and friends, meditation, yoga, reading or hobbies. Be aware of your personal red line and look for symptoms like those above.

Habits, My Daily Jay and Friction

I know that we all have positive habits, negative habits, habits we want to start and habits we want to stop. One of my daily habits is to spend time in mindfulness meditation. I am proud say that I am approaching 1000 days in a row spending some quiet time each day. Part of my morning routine is to sit quietly and listen to a daily meditation. I use the Calm app and quite often listen to Jay Shetty’s Daily Jay.

This week one of the meditations was centred around habits and what Jay Shetty refers to as “decreasing friction”. For me, a way to decrease friction for mindfulness meditation is to use the Calm app which provides me with multiple meditations queued up and ready to go. Another example of decreasing friction is my goal of having a healthy breakfast. Making a batch of overnight oats or overnight chia that lasts two or three mornings makes it simple – get up, the food is ready and all I need to do is scoop it into a bowl and eat it – no thought required and no friction.

The opposite is also true. If there is a habit you want to stop, consider adding friction. Snacking after meals, add some friction by removing the snacks from the cupboards. Worried about too many calories, use an app like MyFitnessPal to track your calorie intake.

Remove friction or add friction, and focus on where you want to improve.

Taken from the Calm App and the Daily Jay

Daily Reminders

Do you have a daily reminder? It can be a famous quote, bible verse, meditation or a yellow sticky note. There is so much outside of our control, try to find a reminder close to your heart that is something within your control. A set of questions I like to start my day with:

  • How do I want to feel today?
  • Who do I want to be today?
  • What do I want to receive today?
  • What do I want to give today?

Four simple questions to ask yourself every morning while having your morning cup of coffee, during exercise, meditation or during your commute to work.

Two Dimensions of Life

Robert Frost said it best when he said “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length”. As much as we can focus on health and longevity, the time we will be in our mortal bodies is not within our control. What is within our control is the ability to maximize the present moment – that is the second dimension. Arguably, there is a third dimension (the multiverse), but we will leave that to Spiderman for now. If you aspire to be a great leader, you need to be present for your team. Being present allows you to provide encouragement, support, and positive energy. If you aren’t present, it can be discouraging to the team.

How to remain present:

  • Maintain eye contact
  • Listen as if you will need to repeat everything back
  • Ask curious questions
  • Don’t take notes
  • Breathe slowly
  • Resist the need to analyze or solve
  • Embrace the opportunity to learn

Abraham Lincoln – And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

The Gap Between Stimulus and Response

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” – Epictetus

We hear it over and over again – we can only control our response to things outside of our control. My journey has included a focus on extending the zone between stimulus and response. Rarely do we need to react immediately – typically life saving moments only – and in these cases the time between stimulus and response shrinks and becomes an impulsive reaction. Impulsive reactions can happen out of anger, anxiety or habits – good and bad.

I remember walking to a parent/teacher interview one evening with my wife. It was about a 15 minute walk and when we sat down with the teacher he went on to tell us how disruptive our son was in class and that he needed to bring more focus each day. Sounded strange but he did use my son’s first name when giving us an example of a situation. That 15 minute walk home went by pretty fast. When we arrived home, we started lecturing our son only to find out it was another student by the same name in his class causing the disturbances. We turned a 15 minute gap into a impulsive situation.

At work I make it a point with my teams to never worry about bringing bad news. I tell them it is neither good or bad, it is just news and we will react accordingly. Earlier in my career when confronted with issues I was very impulsive with my reaction. I was known for swiftly fixing problems but learned one day when one of team members challenged me – Give me a chance to deal with this! I did and a better solution resulted.

What do we do? A number of years ago I had a friend recommend a local Mindfulness class. It was one of the best decisions I made and practice Mindfulness Meditation to this day. The time between stimulus and response is my time and I am in full control of how I will react. Use the time between stimulus and response, think over solutions, get advice, investigate and respond when you’re ready.

Ticking the Boxes

I have developed a strong track record in business of solving problems, cleaning up messes, driving improvement and building strong teams. I can accomplish more in my waking hours than others and some of this comes from my skill to plan, breakdown the tactics and knock them off one by one – I call it ticking the boxes. I was so successful that I brought this same philosophy to my home life. After years of ticking the boxes at home I realized that I wasn’t enjoying the moments in life. Buy a house – tick, start a family – tick, we all get caught up in ticking the boxes. I was introduced to Mindfulness by a friend about 20 years ago and it has become a part of my life. Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

A few years ago I became interested in trail running. Nothing extreme but around 100 km to 150 km a month. You see, trail running is my opportunity to unwind, find time to meditate and pray and to get away from all life’s distractions. The last few months I started to set goals for myself – 150 km a month, 200 km a month. This past weekend as I was finishing my monthly challenge, it was my last 5 km and I realized that I had started to tick the boxes in my personal life again.

Stop from time to time and make sure you aren’t ticking the boxes. Enjoy the journey.

Ticking Boxes