PCOA
Are you living on the dregs ?
Engaging our hearts and minds to raise resilience is necessary when dealing with 21 st century life , writes Robbi Mack .
There aren ’ t many people I know who do not struggle with living in the 21 st century ; everything is fast and furious , we ’ re managing our global workplace right alongside our life events . We have high demands on our time and energy , and the pressures of doing more with less resources ; plus we struggle with family , relationships and work life balance .
Using our hearts and minds to raise resilience is absolutely necessary to help us deal with the challenges and change that inevitably come our way .
The President of the World Bank Group is quoted as saying that ; “ Mental health is not just a public health issue , it ’ s a development issue . We need to act now because the lost productivity is something the global economy simply cannot afford ”.
But I would like to suggest it ’ s not just something the global economy cannot afford , it ’ s something we personally cannot afford . Raising our resilience is imperative to our mental and emotional wellbeing , whether in the workplace or within our personal lives .
Resilience is the quality within that allows us to recover readily from challenges and adversity . The bottom line is ‘ resilience is recovery ’. One way to build resilience is through self-care , but I ’ m not talking about the odd yoga class , I ’ m referring to mindful , extreme self-care that starts with the awareness of what you ’ ve got going on , the pressures that are overloading you underneath , and having enough self-value to take action to put yourself first with some extreme nurturing in order to get the job done and keep all the balls in the air .
I am of the belief that if we don ’ t take time to connect with ourselves , then we have nothing left to give to connect with others . Too often we get spread thin across all the ‘ things to do ’ on our lists , we ’ re being asked to do more at work with less resources , pressure builds up , bodies run down , and you end up either snapping at a loved one , or getting sick .
But what if you valued yourself enough that you committed some time to connect with yourself first in order then to have the energy and the desire to connect with others in our industry of choice .
When I experienced prolonged postnatal depression after the birth of my son Levi , I went to an eight week course for PND depressed women run through the hospital . I remember clearly this one day where the facilitator drew a picture of a coffee urn on the whiteboard . The analogy was to think of ourselves as coffee urns , but a coffee urn that needs constant refilling every time you give away a ‘ cup of coffee ’, in other words , when you give away a piece of yourself .
If you don ’ t re-fill it as you go along you eventually end up down at the bottom of the coffee pot ‘ running on the dregs ’. I ask you , are you running on the dregs ? Are you taking time to connect with yourself regularly ? Are you implementing routines of self-care that raise your resilience ? Our extreme-care choices help bring us into balance so we can go back , and do what we do , again and again .
What are the mindful activities or small rituals that you could do in order that you can continue to connect with others , with your work , your family , friends , your colleagues and industry ?
Robbi Mack is a PCOA18 Plenary Speaker . Heartbeatz for Resilience – Courage to Change the Things We Can
www . cimmagazine . com Convention & Incentive Marketing , Issue 3 , 2018 31