Tag: resilience

The Right to Disconnect – how to set boundaries today

Posted LisaPosted in Business Coaching, Coaching, Resilience

This week there was a call by the FSU in Ireland for the ‘Right to Disconnect’ to be introduced as legislation.  The Right to Disconnect would mean that workers are not obliged to answer calls, reply to emails or engage in work-related activities outside of paid working hours. It followed a survey of 2,000 workers which found that a quarter of them reported that their employer expected them to answer calls or emails outside of work hours. It made the news on Mental Health Day, but was also flagged in August when Ireland’s Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys announced that an interdepartmental group had been set up to explore the issue and make recommendations before the end of the year. You don’t have to wait for the end of the year, or for Ireland to follow France and introduce legislation, to put some boundaries in place if this […]

Do you trust your own wings?

Posted LisaPosted in Awakening, Coaching, Online Training, Resilience

We often think that other people are more resilient than us.  We look at people around us, well-known people, role models of resilience throughout history and we assume we would not be able to handle their challenges as well as they did, or still do. Resilience is not a trait that people either have or don’t have. It involves behaviours, thoughts, and actions that can be learned and developed in everyone. Resilience is about being adaptable. It’s about being flexible. It’s about recognizing that we’ve got strengths that perhaps we never knew we had until we have to use them. And like many things in life – the more we practise, the more we learn. You already have EVERYTHING you need within you to be resilient, you just need to be aware of it, work on it a little bit and keep doing that even when you think you aren’t […]

Brainwaves – have you had one recently?!

Posted LisaPosted in Coaching, Resilience

Your brain is an electrochemical organ that uses electromagnetic energy to function. Electrical activity in the brain is displayed in the form of brainwaves – Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta. Quick explanation: Beta is when we are fully awake and alert and working.  Alpha waves occur during relaxation or hypnosis. Delta is when we are deeply asleep and not dreaming.  Theta waves occur when we are day-dreaming or engrossed in a manual task and unaware of time passing. This week I would like you to think back or keep a record for a couple of days, of how often you think your brain has had those different types of brainwaves, and how often you have stopped yourself from entering a Theta period.  In today’s busy world we often feel guilty if we allow ourselves to daydream, like it’s time wasted or unproductive time.  But it’s really not!  You need to allow […]

Flying trapeze – for brain health!

Posted LisaPosted in Awakening, Business Coaching, Coaching, Online Training, Resilience

If you regularly feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained and unable to meet constant demands, you might be burned out. Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It has become so prevalent that the World Health Organization (WHO) added burnout to its International Classification of Diseases, IDC-11,  describing it as a syndrome “resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed…” There are many ways to avoid or manage burnout, one proven tactic is to have a hobby that’s purely for leisure.  Nowadays we let hobbies fall out of our lives because we are too busy, but when you’re really engaged in a hobby you love, you lose a sense of time and enter what’s called a flow state. When your brain is in a flow state, neurotransmitters in your brain — endorphins, norepinephrine and dopamine – are activated and these regulate your mood […]

Actively listening to enrich your life

Posted LisaPosted in Awakening, Business Coaching, Clinical Leadership, Coaching, exams, Online Training, Resilience

I often speak about the difference between ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’, usually in relation to conversations in a leadership context, but this week I am focusing on how to listen, really listen, (and what to listen to!) as a simple form of mindfulness to help relieve stress. Listening is sometimes called an art and a science.  (In fact, I counted once – coaches are trained to listen in 11 different ways!). It is really important for our mental health to actively listen sometimes because it encourages our brain to work the way it’s supposed to.  Listening tunes our brain to the patterns of our environment faster than any other sense, and paying special attention to sounds, the non-visual parts of our world, feeds everything from our intellectual performance to our motor skills and coordination. Listening to the sounds around us, particularly sounds of nature, soothes an overactive mind and can alleviate […]

Close the Gate

Posted LisaPosted in Awakening, Business Coaching, Coaching, exams, Online Training, Resilience

If you live in or visit a rural area, you will be aware of the need to always close a gate. It’s to keep livestock safe and to keep humans safe from the livestock that like to escape and explore the world! ‘Closing the barn door after the horse has bolted’ is a common expression to describe the futility of closing the gate too late. Did you know that there is a way to ‘close the gate’ of your mind – to be more focused, less distracted, better able to concentrate, and happier, every day? The latest video I’ve uploaded to The Resilience Hub explains in detail how to do it with a demo and the neuroscience behind it so that you will have a better understanding of how it works. If you haven’t yet signed up to The Resilience Hub you can do so for FREE here. Until next […]

How to prime a conversation

Posted LisaPosted in Business Coaching, Coaching, Online Training, Resilience

For a long time now psychologists have noted the importance of warm physical contact between children and their caregivers. Researchers at Yale discovered something really interesting about the importance of temperatures in adults – and specifically how holding a hot or cold drink can affect behaviour and attitude. This is backed up by neuroscience and brain imagery, so it’s based on solid evidence. There is a new video this week in the ‘You Have What You Need‘ section of The Resilience Hub that explains this and how you can use this to your advantage to prepare for a difficult conversation at home or at work. If you haven’t yet signed up for the Hub you can do so via the links in this post.  Why not?  It’s FREE! Until next week, take care, Lisa.       Image credit:  Alexandru Stavrica via Unsplash

Your brain’s super-highway

Posted LisaPosted in Awakening, Business Coaching, Coaching, Online Training, Resilience

In this post I am going to introduce you to your Corpus Callosum. This is the bridge network that connects the two hemispheres of your brain – the right creative side – and the left analytical side.  It integrates the motor, sensory and cognitive functions of your brain. Corpus Callosum is Latin for ‘Tough Body’ and that’s appropriate because it’s the largest connective pathway of our brain.  It’s even shaped like a letter ‘C’ – C for Corpus Callosum. It starts forming in the brain about 12 weeks after conception, although its development can be disrupted as early as 6 weeks into the pregnancy by things like rubella, if the mother consumes a lot of alcohol or a gene that sometimes causes malformation. It is mostly developed by the time we are 12 years old.  It was only discovered by scientists as recently as the 1950s. It plays an important […]

You have what you need

Posted LisaPosted in Awakening, Business Coaching, Coaching, Online Training, Resilience

Readers who have subscribed to The Resilience Hub will find a brand new section in there today, called ‘You Have What You Need‘ This will be a collection of short videos explaining some aspect of your human physiology that’s in place already, that you may not know is there, that you can harness to build resilience and manage stress, and that you can use to your advantage. The beauty of this is that you don’t need to have a certain level of education or IQ.  You don’t need to be any particular personality type.  You don’t even need money in your pocket.  You have all of these, built in since you were born. The first video in this series has been posted today so if you haven’t yet signed up to The Resilience Hub yet you can do so via this link. (It’s in the free section for the moment). […]

Switch!

Posted LisaPosted in Awakening, Business Coaching, Clinical Leadership, Coaching, exams, Nurse Leadership, Nurses, Online Training, Parenting, Resilience

One of the biggest challenges we face in building our confidence and resilience is… ourselves! Our negative self-talk is possibly the most disempowering aspect of our mind.  It’s an extension of our survival instinct, honed over millions of years of evolution. Our mind is always watching out for danger.  In today’s world actual life and death situations thankfully rarely occur, so when it can’t identify a danger easily, it looks harder. When it still can’t find anything to be properly scared of, it makes stuff up, exaggerates small things and remains on high alert because it doesn’t like having nothing to focus on. The part of the brain that does this is the amygdala.  It serves us sometimes (like when we jump out of the way of an oncoming car before we consciously realise what’s happening).  But it needs to be trained and reassured. With practice we can teach our highly […]