The ultimate form of self-care is in fact knowing how to look after your mind through routine, self-development and growth, says Cate Murden
For most companies, remote working wasn’t meant to be a long-term thing: more of an interim solution that would help us ride out the 2,934 days between March and June, after which we’d be able to wave goodbye to both the virus and our Zoom login details. To be honest I’d really hoped that by now, thinking back on Spring 2020 would be like trying to recall a dream… It would evoke a faint whiff of banana bread, but I wouldn’t be sure why.
But of course, that’s not exactly how it panned out. Lockdown marched on and reluctantly, so did we, resilient and resourceful despite our professional and personal lives being upended!
The announcement of a third lockdown in the UK was far from ideal, but it has presented companies with an amazing opportunity to look back on the year and see where we all could have done better.
With earlier lockdowns, most of us were running on adrenaline, never really quite sure how we were doing due to continually oscillating emotions: we were overjoyed when loungewear replaced workwear, overworked as our professional life bled into personal, and overwhelmed as we became increasingly addicted to the act of doom scrolling.
But this time round, we have an opportunity to help our teams create something more sustainable; to craft different ways of working that will enable them to live and work better, to bring their whole selves to work, whilst being productive and engaged.
Let’s be honest, looking back pre-Covid-19, were they really the halcyon days? Or were people run ragged…continually in demand and bellied up to their desks at the behest of inflexible working…?
It’s really as a response to Covid-19 that many organisations are (finally) acknowledging that their employees’ wellbeing needs to be enshrined as a key priority, and even more so when they’re remote.
So, with this in mind, how can your people find both balance and brilliance while working remotely?
I’m passionate about helping leaders nurture ‘work-life brilliance’ in their teams. It’s never been more important, so below I’ve picked out my top five techniques that will work wonders for your employees’ wellbeing, helping them to manage their minds, and reach their potential:
1The healthy mind platter
Just as we need to consume different food groups to feel healthy and nourished, so we need to feed our brain with different activities and stimuli. Unfortunately for many of us, life has become significantly more 2D, and it shows up in how we’re feeling; because without stimulation and variety we don’t feel fulfilled, instead we feel exhausted and stressed. So what tools can we present to our employees that will address their human thirst for variety?
The ‘healthy mind platter’ is a system that Dan Siegel, a renowned psychiatrist, invented on his quest to find the ingredients for a shipshape mind. He says that the following are required in order to maintain positive mental health:
- Physical activity
- Focus
- Connection
- Playing
- Relaxed – (real down time, no goals)
- Reflection – (being very present in the moment)
- Sleep
Of
course, what keeps us nourished is personal to every one of us, some of your
people will need more sleep, others more physical activity, but a good way of
working with this is suggesting that they rate each ‘ingredient’ out of 10, so
they can see where they currently sit.
They can then aim to improve upon their weaker areas by setting targets for
their day, or even their week, and by balancing their platter can expect
invigorated energy levels and vitality!
2Prioritisation
‘But how am I going to fit any more into my day?’ you might hear your
colleagues cry…’
You’re not alone if you feel like you’re constantly busy, with weighty
deadlines and urgent requests coming out of your ears. But as we’ve seen, it’s
vital that your employees make time for themselves so that they can safeguard
their wellbeing, and the way they do that, is through prioritisation.
Why is prioritising important?
If you don’t prioritise effectively, you’ll waste time, energy, and attention on tasks that aren’t super important, and which negatively impact productivity because they’re so draining.
So how can you help your teams to prioritise? I suggest implementing this list with them:
- Use The Eisenhower Matrix – this one never gets old. Helping you to identify the difference between urgent and important items, it saves me on a daily basis.
- Understand your energy flow – Be uber conscious with how you work and line up tasks with that. If you’re a morning person, smash those daunting tasks first thing.
- Avoid multitasking
- Turn off notifications. Yes, they’re addictive, our brains literally love them because they momentarily heighten our self-worth. But really, they’re just a distraction that’s stopping us from getting things done!
3Setting boundaries
Remote working means we need to spend time polishing our communication skills, and at the heart of brilliant communication (and relationships), are boundaries.
Typically, we aren’t great at setting boundaries – we think it makes us look aggressive or confrontational, but in short it’s going to save everyone a whole load of emotional energy; because on one hand, it stops people feeling taken advantage of, on the other, it stops people wondering what is and isn’t OK.
Here’s a framework you can suggest your team works with to help them implement boundaries, creating successful relationships that are an antidote to stress and burnout.
- I struggle setting boundaries with ‘X’
- I feel annoyed when [person] does X
- I struggle setting boundaries because
- Specifications I can take to set boundaries with them are… (e.g. blocking out time in your diary so that colleagues know that time is reserved for you).
4Managing minds and perspectives
Without the distracting humdrum of the office, remote working has become a real
case of Me, Myself and I. At the best of times our head can often be a
challenging place to be, but during times of uncertainty, paranoia and
self-doubt creep in, starting to chip away at our belief in our values and
abilities.
For example, it was recently reported that the increase in remote working has meant employees are increasingly stressing out about how they come off over Zoom – wondering whether unanswered Slack messages mean they’re getting fired. When these sorts of negative (and usually groundless) beliefs creep in, they can snowball, ultimately impacting performance and mental health.
So how can you help employees to silence their negative internal monologues?
Teach them to realise that all situations are fundamentally neutral:
We dedicated an entire chapter on how to accomplish this in PUSH’s new book High Potential Hacks – The Positive Behaviours of The Highest Performing People, because when you realise that all situations are actually neutral, it truly changes the game.
That’s because it’s only our perception (which as we’ve seen, likes to hang towards the negative) that views things as good or bad. But once your employees know how to interrogate those thoughts, they can start to shake off their limiting beliefs, at which point their personal and professional growth potential becomes immense.
This is a great toolkit that they can implement:
Interrogate their thoughts and beliefs with curiosity: When they experience a negative belief, write it down.
Then encourage them to ask themselves:
- ‘Is it really true?
- ‘How do I react when I experience that thought?’
- What would life be like without that thought?
- What could I think instead?
By going through these steps, they may end up thinking something very different that will ultimately have a massive impact on their thoughts and feelings, because remember – thoughts become feelings which become actions.
5Achieving your goals
One of the problems of lockdown is that we feel like we haven’t moved forward
with our lives, there can be an overwhelming feeling of stagnation.
However, as we’ve seen, we now have an opportunity to carve out how we want our
life to be. We are a product of our daily behaviours, so we really need to be
discerning about where we put our focus.
Having clearly defined goals will make your employees feel better about themselves in general, and it will help to trigger new positive behaviours.
Most of our goals can be categorised under the five Fs: fitness, finance, focus, family, and fun.
Encourage your employees to set a goal from one of the five Fs, breaking it down into achievable, accountable steps.
Of course, fitness goals are great to do as a team, increases a sense of belonging whilst you’re not all together (and also accountability, you don’t want to be the one to let everyone down!)
There you have it, my top five tips that will help your employees to nurture their wellbeing through ongoing lockdowns and remote-working: The healthy mind platter, prioritisation, setting boundaries, managing minds and perspectives, and goal setting.
I see these as the ultimate gift of self-care, because in all honesty, self-care isn’t about bubble baths and sending employees gift vouchers (although much appreciated). The ultimate form of self-care is in fact knowing how to look after your mind through routine, self-development and growth.
Cate Murden is the Founder of PUSH, a business consultancy grounded in human behaviour, answering business problems with people-focused solutions. Having been signed off with stress, Cate had a choice: go back to the safe corporate world that she had known, or take the chance to make a genuine difference. She made the first step to helping people, teams and companies work better… and has never looked back. Cate’s experience and determination is what she shares and inspires her audiences with.
PUSH’s new book High Potential Hacks – The Positive Behaviours of The Highest Performing People is available now.
