Feeling overcommitted, stretched too thin, anxious, overloaded or burnt out? You are not alone or imagining it. Increasingly there is more and more evidence indicating just how widespread this sense of overload has become. Everywhere I look I’m finding more and more confirmation of this.
Not only are you likely to be experiencing overwhelm and overload yourself, with 7 in 10 people struggling (as reported by Gallap) the impact won’t stop with you alone. The chances are you also will be encountering others who are struggling, and this is likely to have a compounding effect. How can we turn this around and actively start to cultivate more balance in our everyday lives? These reports and others like them are clear red flags that we need to do something different. Whist it can feel hopeless in the moment, there is in fact a great deal of evidence from research and literature on this topic about what works. I was reminded of this at a recent Six Seconds Connect and Learn for the Asia Pacific Region. This one-hour catch up consisted of a series of mini conversations where we shared in groups of three or four our answers to the following questions in a series of breakout groups:
We compiled lists of our answers. It was surprising the wisdom that existed in the room, it was a potent reminder that: Our emotions are telling us something. “Emotions are wired into us by eons of evolution. Their purpose is not to scare us and overwhelm us and make us lose control. Emotions are wired into our brains and bodies and nervous systems to help us cope with our environments and thus enhance our adaption.“ - Hillary Jacobs Hendel “It’s not always depression.” Many of us ignore these messages, hoping to avoid the pain or thinking there is something wrong with us for feeling this way. “Treasure the richness of emotions and what powerful guides they can be, pointing us toward doing what we need to do to heal old wounds and feel more effective and happy in our lives.” - Hillary Jacobs Hendel “It’s not always depression.” Just validating the emotion you are feeling can help bring you back into balance. “Similar to breathing a sigh of relief, when a crooked picture is righted, when we finally feel the emotions that are true to our situation, it feels right. And we feel good.” - Hillary Jacobs Hendel “It’s not always depression.” That hills feel less steep and pain less intense when someone is with us and that: “Our brains are designed to be social. When we connect and engage with others through conversations, we build new capacity for innovation and change.” - Judith E. Glaser – Conversational Intelligence. It’s all about making intentional choices and your emotions will give you clues as to whether you are on the right track and how to course correct for: “When people are feeling safe, when their very nerves have a sense that the world is a good place to be (Porges calls this a “neuroception of safety”) their systems are set for growth and restoration.” – Sarah Peyton – Your Resonate Self. There is no need to be perfect, we just need to start, as Simon Sinek says: It doesn’t matter when we start. It doesn’t matter where we start. All that matters is that we start. Perhaps most importantly I was reminded in this one-hour session that simply pausing for a few minutes and intentionally turning towards yourself and towards each other, whilst surprisingly simple, its positive impact can be profound. If you are interested in attending a Six Seconds webinar yourself, you can check out the incredible range of offerings and free webinars, including signing up for one a: 6sec.org/webinars.
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You’re not alone, as many as “7 in 10 people report they are struggling” according to Gallap. Statistics like this also tell us that if you’re feeling over committed and struggling, the chances are that your team and the people you encounter and work are also more than likely feeling overwhelmed and perhaps burnt out. Given how prevalent this sense of struggle is I find myself looking for inspiration and insights for how to work with this and how to support others. Recently I participated in the Six Seconds Coaching Connections webinar devoted to this topic. I left the webinar feeling uplifted and hopeful. It reminded me of the importance of honouring the wisdom that lives within all of us and the power of community and of learning together. It reminded me that: “Something profound happens when we stand back and look at ourselves, rather than just being reactive without self-reflection.” - Sarah Peyton – Your Resonate Self. Six Seconds offers an incredible range of free webinars like this on a range of topics related to emotional intelligence. You can check out their offerings and sign up for the upcoming webinars you are interested in here: 6sec.org/webinars. And if, like me, you need to support the wellbeing in groups, or perhaps you lead a team, and are looking for practical and effective tools to support them to reclaim a sense of agency with their wellbeing, a deeper dive into the webinar and how it unfolded step by step might be useful. With that in mind I have included an outline of the process as I experienced it for you to adapt for yourself, your team or for a group you’re working with. Process Outline:Introduce the topic. Step One: We started with the invitation to evaluate ourselves on three domains of well-being. These domains emerged from research undertaken by Josh Freedman for a course currently being developed for educators. The three domains are: Self-care – As you think about self-care, think about it more broadly than simply how you take care of yourself physically or whether or not you provide yourself with rewards or treats like massages or weekends away. Self-care includes self-compassion and the way you relate to yourself. Supportive relationships – As you think about the relationships in your life, consider how nourishing they are? Perhaps they need some work to be more sustaining? Be really honest. Thriving community – As you think of this domain think about the systems and environments you are part of and consider: How these contexts impact you and your ability to be in equilibrium? How do they affect your ability to restore balance when you get out of kilter? Step Two: If you are using the domains with another person or with your team and you’ve asked people to rate themselves, you could then have people share their ratings as we did in the webinar. This will give a sense of the overall ratings of the group. Interestingly, in the Coaching Connections webinar, the self-care and thriving community domains were where most of us felt we could focus more attention. (We shared and collated the group ratings in the webinar on Mentimeter). Step Three: We than practiced coaching conversations with each other. This consisted of conversations where we invited the people we were paired up with to share where they were in the three domains and what might be pushing them out of balance. And was that thing that was pushing them out of balance something that was inside their control or outside their control? Step Four: Then as a whole group, we talked about the power of the stories we tell ourselves and how sometimes just a small shift in the story can create a surprising (and sometimes big) emotional shift in how we relate to what is going on. It’s important to state here that this is not about denying anything. Instead, it’s about acknowledging and honouring the difficulty we’re experiencing. And then being curious about the story where telling ourselves. Is it possible to make a small shift in that story? A possibility of seeing it through a different lens or perspective. A small shift that could create a little more breathing space, more options or a different way of relating to what is going on and what is within your control. Step Five: We then shared our stories and the small shifts we could make with each other in pairs and trios. Step Six. Then with the whole group back together, final comments, thoughts or insights were sought before closing the session. The impact of the webinar: I left this webinar with a sense of my feet being more firmly planted on the earth. It was in many ways just a simple conversation about wellbeing and yet its impact was profound. I left feeling hopeful and reminded in a very tangible way of: The power of:
Perhaps most importantly, this webinar process is a reminder that improving our wellbeing and resilience is not something that happens out there. Our wellbeing and the wellbeing of the groups we support comes from consistently taking small practical steps forward. Wellbeing is not something we have, or we don’t have, it’s something we build, cultivate and nurture over time. “What starts with our struggles and frustrations and ends with us accessing our deepest gifts.” Hillary Jacobs Hendel -“It’s not always depression.” If you’re feeling over committed and struggling, the chances are the people around you likely feeling overwhelmed too.
Feeling overcommitted, stretched too thin, anxious, overloaded or maybe even burnt out? You’re not alone as many as “7 in 10 people report they are struggling” according to Gallap. Three domains of well-being provide a good starting point to consider this question. The domains come from research undertaken by Josh Freedman, the Chief Executive Officer of Six Seconds, for a course currently being developed for educators. So, looking at these three domains - consider where you are on the scale of 1 to 5 for each of the domains. With one being unhealthy and 5 being heathy. Taking these domains one at time. Self-care – Think about self-care more broadly than simply how you take care of yourself physically or whether or not you provide yourself with rewards or treats like massages or weekends away. Self-care includes things like self-compassion and the way you relate to yourself. Supportive relationships – When thinking about the relationships in your life, consider how nourishing they are? How satisfying and supportive are they? Do they need some work to be more sustaining? Thriving community – As you think about this domain think about the systems and environments you are part of and weigh up; How these contexts impact you and your ability to be in equilibrium? How do they affect your ability to restore balance when you get out of kilter? Now that you have reflected on each of these elements and given yourself a score:
A possibility of seeing it from another perspective. You see, even a small shift in perspective can create a little more breathing space, more options or a different way of relating to what is going on. The three domains of wellbeing and the questions explored here come from a recent Six Seconds Coaching Connections webinar. Six Seconds offers an incredible range of free webinars. If they are of interest, you can check them out and sign up for the upcoming webinars: 6sec.org/webinars. It is one of many ways you can support and strengthen your wellbeing with inspiration, insights and practical tools. As Simon Sinek says:
It doesn’t matter when we start. It doesn’t matter where we start. All that matters is that we start. |
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