Emotional Wellness

We’re wising up to social media fake news. What about mental fake news?   Mental fake news like "I’m not good with numbers”; “I’m an introvert, so cannot be assertive in meetings," can - like social media fake news - gain traction, impact our reputations and image, and become our false reality. Formed in the mind by imprint experiences, we unconsciously find evidence to validate these limiting beliefs. “See! I couldn't speak up in the meeting today…”. It’s not so much the content of the experience that shapes us, but the impression or belief...

Leaders, do you see what lies beneath the sea? “She’s not doing what I asked her to do.” “He’s not listening to me.” “They don’t respect me.” These are assumptions based on the behaviours you see. Like the iceberg, you see what’s visible to the eye. But, our behaviours are a consequence of our thoughts, how we process the world, how we feel about people and things, and the baggage we carry. Invisible to the eye. Below the sea. They drive the iceberg. If you want to understand and change behaviour, take the plunge....

How often do you take the time to check in with your team? I don’t mean checking in on their work and deliverables; I mean asking how they’re doing and feeling.  “How are you feeling after the changes we made on the project management?” “What support do you need to succeed in what you are doing?” “I noticed you seem different today. Is everything okay with you?” In his brilliant speech on Empathy, Simon Sinek notes the difference between managers and leaders. A manager takes care of the day-to-day and people’s output. A leader...

A Dutch teenager had a dream to clean up the world's oceans.  A Japanese doctor shook and inspired his troubled company to become leaders in global health issues. A stressed executive inspired her company to implement mindfulness at work programs. Being passionate about a cause is like having a ? burning inside you. You feel compelled to create awareness and the courage to create change. Communicating with your words and actions, carving out solutions, and creating meaningful movement becomes your mission.  Your flame will not and cannot be extinguished. Quite the contrary. When you use...

You’ve low on energy. You’re feeling a sense of despair. You can’t see there’s light at the end of the tunnel. You’ve hit rock bottom, and now it’s so much more difficult to explore possibilities, seek alternatives and have hope. Deceptively simple rituals can help you regularly replenish your energy to strengthen your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual resilience. Rituals to help you sleep better, diffuse negative emotions and prioritise tasks, for example. Sometimes you need more. Feelings of overwhelmedness, irritability and low tolerance, insomnia and signs of depression – these are...

Are you living with emotional inflammation? I’m not talking about the inflammation comes from eating inflammatory foods like gluten, dairy and sugar. We already know these can cause long-term inflammation linked to chronic disease. I’m talking about the daily inflammation that causes anxiety, despair and depression. The unhealthy state coined ‘emotional inflammation’ by psychiatrist Dr. Lise Van Susteren and writer Stacey Colino that stems from living in today’s overwhelming, tumultuous world. It's time to change up the menu. Catching up on overnight messages for breakfast; consuming excess social media for lunch and...

Are you losing your personal power? Your daily marathons with long to-do lists and limited resources can give you a sense of power. Leading teams/business units through crisis can add to your power range. But, dealing with a difficult person can diminish your personal power. Why? Dealing with difficult people taps into what David Rock defines as 'Relatedness' in his brain-based SCARF model. Relatedness is one of five social domains that are either primary rewards or threats to your brain, so you open up or shut down to people and situations. Relatedness is about...

“Do I really want to be doing this for the rest of my life?”, “Is this really worth all the personal sacrifices I’m making?” When you’re in your 30's and maybe 40's, there's a lot to keep you going - maybe it’s working for a specific company, or getting a promotion or a pay increase. But as you get older, you may question your way of living and working; your personal values call for attention, and you realise the clock is ticking. This post is dedicated to the late Sir Ken Robinson...

Do you remember Groundhog Day? The movie in which every day starts and ends the same way. Our lives have been impacted since February; it's now August. Do you feel like every day is the same? Is it really, though? As with any coaching engagement, you have two main journeys that happen in parallel but not necessarily simultaneously. ?The practical achieving goals journey - the skills you’ve developed and the actions you’ve taken to reach your goals. Achieving goals is rewarding and pays off for all the hard work you've put in. ?The personal growth...

2020 is a year of learning new ways of working, parenting, recharging… and communicating. Pre-Covid, we relied on verbal and non-verbal forms of communication to determine someone's meaning. A warm smile, compressed lips…  these were once powerful ways to make sense of what a person really thought or felt. But, in our masked-faced reality, we are now more dependent on the eyes - ‘the visual gateway to the world around us’, according to Joe Navarro, a former FBI agent and body language expert. Our eyes show love and compassion as well as fear...