Wellness

Reflection: At this time of ‘let’s be jolly’ pot-luck dinners, concerts and parties, it’s pretty easy to separate the extroverts from the introverts.

The extroverts sport big grins and boundless enthusiasm for the events of the season. A party tonight? Excellent! Another gathering tomorrow? Awesome! Three more events on the weekend? It doesn’t get any better than that!

Introverts, on the other hand, struggle to keep pace. It’s not that they’re anti-social. Introverts enjoy their friends and family just as much as their more extroverted siblings, co-workers, cousins, and partners.

It’s just that large gatherings of people are exhausting for introverts. Being out and about and socializing exacts a huge toll on the introvert’s psychic and physical energy.

Action: If there was ever a time or a season for introverts to be attending to energy, this is it. (more…)

Reflection: One of life’s great frustrations and stressors is that feeling that you’re not getting anywhere. Or, if you are in motion, that you’re just spinning your wheels or going in circles.

I’ve written before about Amabile and Kramer’s work on the Progress Principle, and how motivating it can be to see evidence of moving things forward in your work and your life – to deliver on an action promise made to yourself or someone else.

With the end of the year clearly in sight, you may be asking, “Where did those last eleven months go, and why am I not further ahead with X, Y or Z?”

Part of the challenge is that life tosses a lot of distractions our way. We can easily be pulled off course responding to the new and shiny or engaging in the quick and easy. In the meantime, the high level work – the big ideas – the important pursuits – languish for want of attention.

It’s still not too late to make progress before the end of the year on something that matters to you.

Action: Here are eight actions that can help you make space for and gain traction on the high level work in your world. (I’m particularly partial to number six.) (more…)

Reflection & Action:  How much is enough? How much is too much? Negotiating reasonable loads is challenging. In fact, concerns about ‘unreasonable work expectations’ continue to top the list of complaints in my surveys on ‘frustrations with time’.

It’s not always someone else who creates overload situations. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies! However, those expectations imposed by others are also tough to handle. You may find yourself reluctant to say no and negotiate limits – especially when it involves those in authority.

It could well be legitimate that you have been asked or told to tackle a giant load of tasks. They may all be within your job description, assuming that you have one. However, not every team leader is skilled at determining workloads, and the expectation that anyone can accomplish anything and everything all at once is unreasonable. (more…)

Reflection: Have you ever walked alongside someone whose stride was much longer or shorter than yours? Have you ever partnered on a project with someone whose pace was entirely mismatched to yours? They moved, spoke and concluded everything in a flash – or they ambled, pondered, and decided waaaay toooo sloooowly for your comfort?

If you have, chances are that you know first hand the frustration of trying to keep up or the irritation of needing to slow down.

Our set points vary one from another; and they may shift over time. Life experiences can temper our choices along the way. If we’re paying attention, through trial and error, we learn when we need to give a person or an issue more room, and when the time is ripe to urge to action.

In any given situation or relationship, the ‘right’ pace energizes, while the ‘wrong’ pace exhausts. And, of course, it’s all terribly subjective and situation specific.

When lives are on the line (think fire or medical emergency), a fast paced response is essential. But not everything we face falls in that urgent category – even though much is presented that way.

There’s a leadership style known as ‘Pacesetting’ that invigorates some and frustrates others. Pacesetters are notorious for setting very high performance standards and modeling them for others. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – except that pacesetters tend to be obsessively high on expectations and perilously low on empathy. Without empathy, this kind of leadership may not even register – much less respond to –  the stress that others experience along the way.

Action: So, how do you put these ideas about pace to work? (more…)

Reflection: Comedienne, Phyllis Diller, once remarked, “My idea of exercise is a good brisk sit.” Funny as she was, Phyllis had it wrong. Sitting is not necessarily better for your health. Sure, if you’re on your feet a lot during the day, taking a load off serves to…well, take a load off. It brings a welcome relief to weary feet, knees and back.

But a whole lot of us are not standing. We’re sitting, sitting, sitting. At the computer, behind the wheel, in front of the TV, on bleachers watching others play sports, and around the table at community meetings.

According to recent research cited by the Mayo Clinic, sitting for long periods of time is directly associated with obesity and a set of conditions known as metabolic syndrome – something that leads to higher blood pressure, skewed blood sugar, and abnormal cholesterol levels.

Too much sitting is also associated with upper back and neck pain, and a higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Don’t like the sounds of that? Neither do I!

Why does getting a move on matter so much? Apparently the muscle activity used in standing and other kinds of movement helps trigger the breakdown of fats and sugars in the body. Every time you stand or move, you set those processes in motion; and those processes help keep you healthy.

Action: What’s better than sitting? Sitter-itus Interruptus! It looks like this. (more…)