Sarah O'Flaherty's Blog, page 4

Are You Suffering From Burnout?

Are you finding that constant stress has left you feeling disillusioned, helpless, and exhausted? If so, you may be suffering from burnout. When you’re burned out, things look bleak, problems seem impossible to overcome, and it’s difficult to muster up the energy to do anything about your situation.

The unhappiness that burnout causes can threaten your job, your relationships, and your health. But burnout can be overcome. There are lots of things that can be done to get you back on track, rebalanced, and feeling happy and energised again. 

What is burnout?

Burnout is a term that has become commonplace in today's hectic world, but is often not well defined. Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. When you are burnt out you will feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet the demands of daily life. As the stress continues, things can get progressively worse as it impacts on your physical health, your motivation, and your ability to function effectively. 

Burnout should be a major concern of both employers and employees as it reduces productivity and impacts interpersonal relationships.

Are you suffering from burnout?

If you can relate to any of the following you may be heading towards burnout:

exhausted, and fatigue cannot be relieved by sleep
losing weight
not sleeping well
increasingly depressed
increased errors and bungling
feelings of hopelessness and loneliness
resignation and boredom
working more and more but accomplishing less and less
sensitive and touchy about feedback
feeling like nothing you do makes a difference or is appreciated


What can I do to prevent burnout?

Exercise
Eat well
Get enough sleep
Connect with others
Reframe the way you look at work
Get a pet
Learn to say no
Spend time in nature
Learn to meditate
Find a way to give - volunteer, donate, help a friend
Be grateful - notice what you have, what you can be grateful for?
Foster fun
Stop being a workaholic

Keep an eye out for future posts on the difference between stress and burnout, more detail on burnout prevention, and why we suffer from burnout. 

 

Beginning Meditation Guidelines

When starting our meditation practice there are few things to be aware of:

Place

Your meditation space should be a place where you feel at peace, where you’ll be free from distractions.  Ideally you’ll find a space where you are not going to get too hot or too cold. It’s important to be comfortable.

Try to use the same space each time you meditate. Meditating in the same place each time creates a good energy and helps you to establish a routine. If you can, try to establish a little shrine in that area – reminders that life is rich – like flowers, rocks, feathers, reminders that people are good and wise – teachers, pictures of people you admire, reminders that your life is good – pictures of your family, special gifts. This is a great opportunity to be a little bit creative.

You’ll need a timer to make sure there is no temptation to check the time.  If you don’t have a timer or some sort of stopwatch, then I would suggest downloading the insight timer app. It is easy to use, has appropriate meditation bell sounds to get you started, and it will let you know when your time is up.

Posture

Your meditation posture is important.  While the typical cross-legged lotus pose is deemed to be the ideal, it’s tough to achieve. You can start by sitting in a chair, or try sitting cross-legged on the floor.  What is most important is that the spine is straight.  A straight spine can be achieved with a solid foundation and the pelvis tipped forward.  Sitting on a meditation cushion facilitates a forward tilt of the pelvic area.

When I finally managed to get into a solid cross-legged position (it took me a long time and it’s not full lotus), I realized that it really was worth all the effort.  The cross-legged position provides a very stable platform for meditating and makes it easier to maintain a state of alertness. However, what is most important to start with, is that you are comfortable, and that you can forget about your body for a while.

Some things to consider:

The place you choose to sit, whether it is a meditation cushion, stool or chair, should be comfortable.  But not so comfortable that you end up slouching or falling asleep.
Keep you body relaxed with your spine straight.  Imagine that there is a string attached to the top of your head and that a puppeteer above you is pulling you straight up.  Then take a deep breath and relax into position.
It is okay to change your meditation posture or move if you need to.  Do not put your body through pain that may cause long-term damage. It is important to be careful here, some pain is bearable. You can watch it and it will go away. However, some pain is doing damage and you need to move to stop this pain.  Use your own wisdom.  This is not meant to be a torturous exercise.

Eyes

Your eyes can be open or closed.  It is often easier to start meditating with your eyes closed as it feels like there are fewer distractions.  However, if you can keep your eyes open, then feel free to try this option.  If you keep your eyes open your view should be spacious, not focusing on anything in particular.

Breath

To start with take two or three deep breaths.  This will help you to relax. Then try to keep your breathing as natural as possible.  The breath is a good object to pay attention to, as it is simple and easy to follow. Choose the place where you notice the breath most clearly. It may be the rising and falling of the abdomen, or the air going in and out of the nostrils, or elsewhere.

Mind

To begin with you will notice that your mind is easily distracted and that it easily drifts away in thought.  Don’t let this bother you, the mind has been a free agent for a long time and it will take some time to train it to focus on one thing. You will find that one thought leads to another and another, so you can easily get distracted for a few minutes before you notice that your attention is no longer on the breath.  When you do notice, then take your attention back to the breath.  Keep bringing the mind back to the breath again and again as it wanders away. Once you have focused attention on the breath then try to notice the start, middle and end of each breath.  And very soon you will notice the gaps between the breaths.  These gaps are helpful – they are moments of spaciousness.

I like to think of thoughts as similar to clouds in the sky, and your mind is the sky.  The clouds are there, but they come and they go.  In meditation you will notice the thoughts (clouds) drifting across your mind, just watch them and they will drift away. Don’t try to hold onto them and don’t try to push them away, this is impossible, just as it would be to try to shift the clouds in the sky.

Non Judgment

And finally, it is important to practice non-judgment. Meditation is about accepting everything as it is.  Nothing is good, and nothing is bad.  Don’t judge your thoughts.  They are not you, they are just thoughts.  One of the teachers I follow, Adyashanti, recommends asking throughout the meditation, ‘Am I allowing everything to be as it is?’  Remember, anything you resist persists.  So allow everything to just ‘be’.

You Are Not Your Mind

This may seem like a really obvious statement. But, for many, it's not so obvious at all. Many of us think we are our mind - we think we are the same as the thoughts our minds create - but this is not true. Although we can't hide from our thoughts, we can seperate ourselves from them and see them for what they are, just thoughts and not our identity. 

Once you realise that you are not your mind, life becomes decidedly better, and considerably easier.  I’m constantly preaching to people that they are not their mind. However, often it just doesn’t really sink in.  It’s something you just don’t really get until you get it as a clear insight – when you have one of those AH-HUH moments!

I hope this more visual representation from Zen Pencils may help you to really understand that you are not your mind, and that you can take charge of your mind.  In this wonderfully inspiring cartoon Gavin (the cartoon artist) has taken words from Chris Hardwick stand-up comedian, podcaster, television host, actor and geek icon. The quote is taken from Hardwick’s book The Nerdist Way: How to Reach The Next Level (in Real Life). In this book, Hardwick shares how he gained control of his own mind.

You Are Not Your Mind

And don’t forget it!

Check out the cartoon here. 

 

 

How To Feel More Powerful

How are you feeling today? Are you feeling your strong authentic self? Or, today, are you feeling powerless? Are you trapped in a victim mindset?

These are some very short and sweet tips that can help you bring yourself into your full power:
 
1. Stop giving away your power - understand and establish your boundaries. 

2. Examine why you might be enjoying "playing" the victim. How is it benefitting you?

3. Develop your core self - understand your values. 

4. Align yourself with the flow of evolution, or personal growth. 

5. Trust in a power that transcends everyday reality. 

 

 

Being Grateful Can Improve Your Health

How Does Gratitude Boost Happiness?

According to Dr. Lyubomirsky, gratitude:

Promotes savoring of positive life experiences
Bolsters self-worth and self-esteem
Helps people cope with stress and trauma
Encourages caring acts and moral behavior
Helps build social bonds, strengthen existing relationships, and nurture new relationships (and we know lonely people have twice the rate of heart disease as those with strong social connections)
Inhibits harmful comparisons
Diminishes or deters negative feelings such as anger, bitterness, and greed
Thwarts hedonistic adaptation (the ability to adjust your set point to positive new circumstances so that we don’t appreciate the new circumstance and it has little affect on our overall health or happiness)
Our mind has a tendency toward the negative and practicing being grateful can help us shift that mental habit. I practice gratitude everyday in my daily journaling and have found it hugely beneficial to my overall mindset. 

 

 

How Becoming A Writer May Be Good For You

So you want to become a writer? Why not? It’s a great career – you can work from anywhere in the world, you decide when you write, and you could even, one day, become rich and famous.

Being a writer myself, I can confirm the benefits – it’s cathartic, it’s a great way to communicate, and it loosens up your brain a little as your creative juices start flowing.

However, scientific studies have also shown that there are many benefits to writing:

No matter the quality of your prose, the act of writing itself leads to strong physical and mental health benefits, like long-term improvements in mood, stress levels and depressive symptoms. In a 2005 study on the emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing, researchers found that just 15 to 20 minutes of writing three to five times over the course of the four-month study was enough to make a difference.

Writing has been shown to improve your health and can even boost your immune function.

For more read; Science Shows Something Surprising About People Who Love To Write.

The Man Who Planted Trees

If you’re looking for inspiration on what can be done when you think long term, then check out this narrated video of the Man Who Planted Trees.

 Winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and Short Film Palme d’Or in 1987. This is a charming animated masterpiece about a man who devotes his life to planting trees.

The Man Who Planted Tress is directed by Frederick Back and edited by Norbert Pickering. This is the full English language version translated by Jean Roberts and narrated by Christopher Plummer (the orginal version is in French language narrated by Philippe Noiret).

Jean Giono, the author of the short story upon which the movie is based, wrote the story after American editors in 1953 asked him to write a few pages about an unforgettable character. They intended him to write about a real unforgettable character, but he created the fictional Elezeard Bouffier. When the editors objected that no Bouffier had died in Banon, he donated the story to all humanity. It was soon after published by Vogue in 1954. Many people have assumed that Bouffier is a real person.

The Man Who Planted Trees can be purchased on Amazon.

A Simple Exercise To Increase Wellbeing

Martin Seligman in his book Flourish – A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being, suggests a very simple exercise to increase your happiness. Give it a try.

Close your eyes. Call up the face of someone still alive who years ago did something or said something that changed your life for the better. Someone who you never properly thanked; someone you could meet face-to-face next week. Got a face?

Gratitude can make your life happier and more satisfying. When we feel gratitude, we benefit from the pleasant memory of a positive event in our life. Also, when we express our gratitude to others, we strengthen our relationship with them. But sometimes our thank you is said so casually or quickly that it is nearly meaningless. In this exercise … you will have the opportunity to experience what it is like to express your gratitude in a thoughtful, purposeful manner.

Your task is to write a letter of gratitude to this individual and deliver it in person. The letter should be concrete and about three hundred words: be specific about what she did for you and how it affected your life. Let her know what you are doing now, and mention how you often remember what she did. Make it sing! Once you have written the testimonial, call the person and tell her you’d like to visit her, but be vague about the purpose of the meeting; this exercise is much more fun when it is a surprise. When you meet her, take your time reading your letter.

Although this exercise may make you feel a little awkward, Seligman is sure it will make you happier.

The Innovation Of Loneliness

Ah, the joys of social media. Is it making our life better or worse? The discussion continues….

While our focus is shifting towards individual achievements over community, more and more people are feeling lonely. They feel vulnerable, opening up to others for warm, friendly, heart-to-heart conversations. Then, along comes social media.

As people share and chat from islands of isolation, filtering and massaging information, they are undermining the genuine credibility of conversation. Bits and pieces of tweets, posts, and chats aren’t allowing people either to open up or understand others. Social media connection is often about presenting our best self - not our true self. 

Are these online connections actually helping with loneliness, or they are making it worse? Could this social media activity be chipping away at your quiet time as well, when you could think and reflect?

Learn more in this thought provoking, animated video based on the work of Sherry Turkle and Dr. Yair Amichal-Hamburger. And don't forget to share your thoughts below. 

 

Are You Getting Enough Sleep?

I'm going to write a few articles over the next few weeks on sleep. I believe that relaxation, including sleep, is something that is very undervalued by many of us. Getting enough sleep can be the difference between being be able to deal with stress and anxiety with resilience and not coping at all. I am fairly certain that most of us do not get enough sleep. 

So, today we’ll focus on your body’s circadian rhythm.

The body has an internal clock called a circadian rhythm, helping you to sleep in the evening and wake in the morning. Your sleep health and overall wellbeing is dependent on your circadian rhythm working correctly; and remaining synchronized with night and day. The most important external indicator to help keep your body synchronized with this routine is light.

When the eye senses light, it sends a signal to your brain to be awake. When it becomes dark in the evening, your body produces melatonin, often called the sleepy hormone signaling your body to sleep at night. The combination of biological processes in response to light and darkness are crucial factors for your body to remain synchronized and able to sleep at the right time.

Artificial light is one of the biggest causes of sleep deprivation in modern humans, and, stay with me here, it’s all to do with blue and red light. In the morning you will find that light has a blue tone, and in the evenings, the light becomes more red.  If you pay close attention you will see it for yourself. Get up early and check out the colour of the light, then later in the day see how the light is. I have no doubt you’ll notice the difference.

“One of the best biological cues we have to what time of day it is is light. And it turns out that blue light in particular is very effective at basically predicting when morning is,” chemistry researcher Brian Zoltowski says in a video from the American Chemical Society.

Unfortunately, smartphones and tablets are really messing with our sleep cycle  – they are keeping us awake by making our bodies think that it is morning. They do this because they let off bright blue light.

In the evenings, there’s more red light than blue, which signals your body to prepare for bed. The red light does this by interacting with the protein melanopsin in cells deep inside your eyes — these cells are specifically made to regulate circadian rhythms and don’t play a role in how we see.

When the light hits this protein, it changes, and these cells send a signal to the “master clock” of the brain, which dictates when we wake and when we get sleepy. So when we check our smartphones at night, sending our brain a ‘blue light’ signal, it also sends a “wake up” signal and our body clock gets all screwed up.

So, now you understand how your body's circadian rhythm works, what can you do? 

Try not to use your phones, iPads, or computers in the evenings.
Try to go to bed around the same time each evening, and don't make it too late.
To help reset your body clock wake up early, and watch the sunrise with a session of Chi gong (similar to Tai Chi).

Once you get your body back on track, you find you sleep so much better and wake up more easily in the morning.

So, if you’re having problems with any of the following then try the tricks listed above and get back into your circadian rhythm:

Poor sleep quality

Insufficient sleep duration

Sleepiness and fatigue

Impaired overall well-being in family and social life

Decreased motor and cognitive performance