Over the past 10 years, I have learned, researched, and tried many techniques of personal and professional development. I selected the 10 most effective ones in the long run and brought them in this article. If you practice long enough, you will increase your quality of life, work performance, and work-life balance. I hope it helps many people grow and find their own path! Enjoy the read, enjoy your ride.
The closure of many offices this year forced many people from the professional and business community to work from home. While working remotely can have a lot of positive opportunities, it can also bring a lot of challenges. One major challenge is the blur of the boundaries between work and personal time aggravated by the dissolution of the office space.
When you work from home, you can work, have family time, watch a movie, call a friend, shop, order food, eat and jump on a meeting, from the comfort of your couch. You use one device. You do not move more than your fingers and mouth. The fun aspect of accessing everything from your fingertip wears out extremely fast. It is not healthy for the body, the mind, the moral, and the overall wellbeing. It is so easy to fall into that model though. We need to put energy into fighting back the pull of comfort and laziness to avoid letting ourselves becoming one of the characters of WALL-E.
The solution is simple yet not easy to implement. Creation of spaces and times in which we can be fully present and focused. This is an art that takes practice to be mastered. The tips I am presenting here are taken from mindfulness practices, such as meditation, yoga, or mindful eating.
The mindfulness practice stems from its roots in the belief that our minds are immensely powerful and can create anything. The practice is meant to train the mind to reach a higher potential to help you chose where to direct your attention and energy. With the proper training, you will hold space and be fully present to your meeting, your family, your food, and everything you set your mind on to do. This will help you reach moments of peak performance throughout the day and improve the quality of your work, as well as your leisure time. It will help you stay on the right side of the Skill vs Challenge level chart.
The chart is self-explanatory. We cannot avoid going through all the ranges. This is human nature, but we want to train to spend as much time as possible on the right side of the chart. This will assure you do your job better and faster. Your relaxation is really rejuvenating. The quality of your presence and time is improved in every aspect of your life. It is ok to be bored sometimes but do not stay there too long. Pulling up your phone to not confront your boredom is not the solution. Having a practice that allows you to face your boredom and chose to move to relaxation is way more beneficial than scrolling your social media feed for example!
Peak performance or flow is what athletes are trained to achieve. How good the game would be if Stephen Curry were answering his phone between two quarters? Would he really recuperate on a break if he were answering emails? How many touchdowns would Tom Brady score if he were talking to his wife while waiting for the ball? It sounds ridiculous. Obviously, in order to have moments of peak performance and play their best game every game, they need focus and full attention on the game. Ideally, they reach a state of constant alertness ready to peak when they need it. Full presence is required! Everyone gets that. Their entire support system trains them for years to achieve that goal.
We also need to reach peak performance multiple times during our workday. But we do not have an entire system to train and help us. Moreover, our work is often accomplished with powerful and charming devices that feed on our attention. Self-discipline and self-training are our main supporting systems; therefore, we need to use appropriate tools. Mindfulness is one of them.
In the presentation of the tips, for clarity's sake, I do not get into details or definitions. Therefore, I do encourage you to reach out and ask me any questions you may have. If you are not familiar with one of the words, or concepts; if you are not sure what is meant, or how to implement some of the tips, please just send me a message. I have a lot of resources and I will be happy to share. I am passionate about this topic and for years I have been attending seminars, meet-ups, and retreats about mindfulness. I have been following organizations specialized in mindfulness for the workplace, read many books, and watched hours of videos. I even organized my own meetings and retreats! I would be happy to chat with you.
10 tips to get started or continue the path toward becoming your best self at home and at work especially if these are the same places.
1. Meditate 2 min before meetings.
To be at your maximum capacity during a meeting, you need to be fully present, alert, and aware. We have already established that. How many meetings that could have been done in 20 mins linger for at least an hour ?
You cannot just jump into it and be ready to go. Transitions take time. One extremely efficient way to accelerate this process is to close your eyes for 2 min and just breathe. Bring your attention to your breath and let your mind do his mind thing. Lots of thoughts, ideas will pop up, honor them but do not cling on to them. Let them pass. Practice this simple technique as often as you can. I suggest doing it before anything that requires more than 20 min of focused attention. After just a week you will start to feel huge differences in your ability to concentrate on anything.
2. Leave all your devices outside of the meeting space.
Obviously, if your meeting is an online video call, you do need at least one device. Make sure to bring into your space only the required device and to close all the browsers, chats, or apps that are not relevant to the meeting. Remember the athletes from above, they do not come to the game with their phones or computers. Do not bring them in either! Be present. I strongly suggest training yourself to leave your phone away out of sight any time you need to focus, meet with someone, or relax. The devices and their constant buzzing are a major hindrance to presence and growth. It is addictive by nature, and it sucks an immense amount of energy. Billion of dollars are spent on research to make our devices always more addictive; your attention and energy are taken away from you constantly. Do not let it happen, reclaim yourself! You can use the devices to help yourself. Do not let them use you. Why would you help companies make money off of your own self. Keep your self for you self, don’t let it be stolen. The more time you spend using a service the more valuable that service become to advertisers who can them target you again. Their interest is to make you addicted to their products. It is hard to remove that addiction, but the most rewarding things are waiting for you on the other side of it. #DigitalDetox, it is a real thing!
3. Change your breaks habits.
We need breaks to recharge and recuperate. Make them really rejuvenating. Our bodies need to move, it helps the energy flow and keeps you balanced. Go out take a walk around the block, stretch, do some yoga. Five minutes of movement every hour will have so many benefits for your body and mind, you will keep a higher energy level than ever before throughout the day.
4. Carefully chose the food and drinks you put in your body.
Food and drinks are important sources of energy. We need them to replace the energy we burn during the day. Carefully choose the type of food and drinks you ingest. We often misinterpret the immediate release of energy that sugar or caffeine makes us feel. The best way to provide energy throughout the day from food and drinks is to have a steady slow supply of energy, not a massive boost. This will just lead you to chase feeling high. Start to eat healthier, drink more water, prepare your food as much as you can, put intention, pick the produce. You will feel energized in a steady way without the ups and downs that do not serve you.
5. Learn and practice the art of relaxation.
When you are not working, chose to do activities that really relax you. They need to involve movement, no digital devices, and people. You already spend most of your time in front of a screen while at work, watching a movie is not going to help you relax. You need to unwire yourself. Go outside breath, walk, go see nature, do some exercise, cook a healthy meal! It may be hard at first but start slowly. It takes time to get new habits. For example, if you really want to watch a movie, just go and walk 10 min before launching the movie. It is a great start!
6. Keep expanding yourself.
Get out of your comfort zone by doing new things, exploring new ways, meeting new people, learning new techniques… We are raised to grow and evolve within boundaries that were carefully prepared for us. It stems from the desire of our caretakers to protect and help us develop. If you keep growing, you will outgrow these boundaries. When that happens, you may feel discomfort. You can choose to stay within the limits and stop growing to avoid discomfort or push the limits and keep expanding. The former will lead to boredom, apathy, and anxiety. The latter will lead to arousal, flow, and relaxation, it is more fulfilling and will improve your overall wellbeing and performances. Expansion is difficult, you will create new boundaries, new limits you may have to push some people or structures from the past. In total respect keep doing your thing if people around you feel challenged, they can be inspired to expand as well or let you be. Either way, keep expanding.
7. Set proper boundaries for a safe space.
To expand and push your limits, you need to have limits and boundaries to push. It might be counter-intuitive but that is how it works. You need boundaries to direct and channel the energy in a focused way. The boundaries need to be flexible and well defined at the same time. It is a fine line; you do not want to be too rigid nor too soft.
Boundaries in that aspect mean to respect the time slots as much as you can. Being aware and mindful of your time and other’s time is a great step. Take buffer time so you do not rush from one thing to another. Work on your body posture. Do not take your call lying on your bed, it will affect your presence. The body sends signals to the brain, if you lie down your body will think you try to go to sleep, you will have to use energy to send contrary signals. And if you train yourself to work well lying down, guess what will happen when you try to go to bed? So, if you do not want to sleep at your table, sit up and work on the table!
8. Be like a baby. Learn to walk one step at a time, one fall at a time.
No matter where you are at. No matter how well you adjusted to this new reality, keep trying, do not give up. This is an amazing opportunity to shape a better life for yourself. One step at a time. Everything is connected even if you take away only one tip of that list, it is a start and that is huge! You already put some energy towards your personal development. Who knows where it will lead you!?
Each step is a win, acknowledge it, and celebrate it. Make the process fun and rewarding. Effort and progress are hard and can be painful, but it does not have to be sad and unpleasant. Look at the gyms if you want to be inspired, hard, painful but fun and rewarding!
Push yourself but do not be too harsh or judgmental when you fall. This is the way to grow. Learn from toddlers for they never stop trying to stand back up.
9. Be patient.
It takes time to grow and integrate learning. The path to mastery is long and full of surprises.
We live in a world that seems to be spinning at a high pace. We are lured to believe that success happens amazingly fast.
While travel of information, can be fast, understanding and integrating information takes time. You cannot acquire knowledge with a series of 1-minute videos, you can’t master a skill without thousands of hours of practice, you can’t build a business or a career in a few weeks. When you see an overnight success that makes you question your process, remembers this fabulous quote,” it takes 10 years to become an overnight success.” So be patient.
10. Trust the process.
We do not know what we do not know. When you start to make deep changes within yourself you cannot possibly see what the future holds for you. You cannot even imagine it. You may have hopes and dreams, but you have no idea what your path will be. Accept it. Let go of the desire to control and know. Instead, be excited to discover what comes. Be curious. Trust that when you start and do the work steadily, the process of change has been activated and it will lead you to new places beyond your highest hopes and dreams. You are your only limitation, so do yourself a favor, remove yourself and let the process happen.
