Tag: Work–life balance

Goal 2014: 3 Questions to help increase your well-being in the Year of the Male

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Plug In To Access Support

Plug In To Access Support

Have you heard the one about the man who asks his best mate for emotional support during a difficult period, and receives consistent, empathic care from his friend?  Chances are you haven’t.  Women may follow Sheryl Sandberg’s example at Facebook and ‘Lean In’ supporting each other, men don’t traditionally plug into their networks like that.

In fact British men may be spending nearly £1800 on making themselves look good outwardly according to 2012 research , but they aren’t making similar efforts to connect with their inner feelings and improve their emotional well-being.

Luckily there are new options men can adopt to tackle their well-being goals.  Those options are being explored by CALM , the mental health charity.

The charity is focusing on suicide prevention this year.  Here’s a sobering number CALM comments on , taken from a recent Office for National Statistics bulletin: suicide is the leading cause of death for British men under 50.  Such men are 3 times more likely to kill themselves than women.  That rate is comparable to the United States, where men are nearly 4 times more likely to take their own lives than women, according to the World Health Organisation .

Under the Year of the Male banner – that’s @yearofthemale on Twitter, or online at www.yearofthemale.com – the UK organisation is looking to challenge the range of influences which contribute to men’s less positive life experiences.  Perhaps we can all recognise that modern life has the potential to lead to high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression.

If you are a man and the experiences above ring bells, ask yourself how do your age, class, disability or employment status, ethnicity, family situation, religion, sexual orientation and upbringing affect your well-being?  What are you prepared to do change your well-being status this year?  Here are three more questions for you to reflect on.

  • What can you include in your health and well-being goal to make it more achievable?
  • In what ways will your goal help you live life with a greater degree of authenticity?
  • How will your goal add value to your dealings with the important people in your life?

Good luck with your actions.  Remember to check out the Archive section for more inspiration.  There are further ideas On Facebook and Google+ too

Goals 2014: Three Questions About The Health Of Your Relationship

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Chocolates Show You Care

Happy Valentine’s Day: It’s the one day you have a good reason to show you value your main relationship.  Have you opted for chocolates, flowers, or wine?

Speaking of your relationship, what’s your goal beyond today?  What else are you doing to keep improving the quality of that relationship, tomorrow and the next day?  In particular how will you:

  • Demonstrate your long-term commitment to the relationship?
  • Share your authentic self within it?
  • Deepen the element of trust the relationship depends upon?

It is worth having a action plan to maintain the health of this key part of your life.  In that way you remind yourself that you value the well-being of your every part of your life: from your main relationship, to your well-being at work, to the health of your finances.

Goals 2014: Six Actions To Help You Manage Your Stress Levels This Week

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Life is full of coincidences.  Fresh from posting about the impact of workplace stress, caused by poor management, I read a really useful article* by Lucy Dimbylow – @lucywriter on Twitter.

Lucy is responding to the question posed by the half a million UK workers whose stress and anxiety levels are too high: What actions can I can take to manage my levels of work stress?

The key actions I took away from Lucy’s article are:

  • Taking regular Exercise reduces stress
  • Following a healthy Diet aids positive mental health
  • Taking the Rest periods you are entitled to is beneficial
  • Making time to have Fun with family is important
  • Adopting a positive approach to Mindfulness helps you manage the aspects of pressure you can change
  • Seeking Support from those in a position to affect workloads, and job objectives, also helps

Having read that list here’s a final question for you:

  • What key action will you take, this week, to more effectively manage your workplace stress?

*The article appears in the spring edition of Benenden Healthcare Society’s subscription-only magazine ‘benhealth’.  Information on the society’s work can be found online at www.benenden.co.uk

Goals At Work: Managing Relationships

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I hope 2014 is going well so far.  That’s especially true if you are back at work already, or about to return on Monday.

In the ideal world the work place is full of confident and competent managers and staff.   They all work well as individuals and in teams to keep their customers satisfied.  Sometimes though that isn’t the case.

The Guardian newspaper has presented another exceptional scenario in its Work blog.  Follow the link in my Tweet to see the discussion.  You will probably want to take action if the situation rings bells with you.  A coaching programme would help you take action if so.  I would be happy to help with that.

Is there any room for improvement in your working life?  What goals have you set for yourself this year to help bring that change about?

Stock Take Part Three: Wealth

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What is important about your wealth goal? (c) R Dennison November 2013

What is important about your wealth goal? (c) R Dennison November 2013

Part one of the stock take series of posts touched on work.  Part two concerned well-being.  Inevitably part three draws those strands together somewhat by addressing wealth.

According to a recent ‘Better Life Index’ report for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (link to the OECD’s research is below), increasing the amount of money we possess is an important means to achieving higher living standards and greater well-being.

That may be a particularly important notion for the bottom 20% of the UK population whose annual disposable income, the OECD says, is the net equivalent of approximately £5700.

There is quite a disparity between the bottom 20% and the top 20% equivalent (net annual income of approximately £27,800).  That gap may also underpin the current party political and media conversation around the: ethics of payday loan organisations; senior executive salaries; growth of low-cost retailers’ profits.

Wealth related goals can touch many primal emotions depending on the individual’s upbringing.  Some people are encouraged to view money not as a neutral store of value – but as a commodity about which to feel shame, guilt, or fear.

Once the client’s orientation towards wealth is established the coaching proper can start.

The coaching questions that spring to my mind around managing wealth seem particularly relevant to those on the lower end of the income scale:

–       What is the most important aspect of your wealth-related goal?

–       What progress do you want to have made toward that goal in 12 months’ time?

–       How will you know you are making progress in 6 months’ time?

–       What else could you do to attain your goal?

These are just a handful of the questions which might generate illuminating answers.  I believe if the client can get some specifics down on paper they are increasing their likelihood of success.  Tackling their goals, especially their wealth goal, can definitely make their life seem brighter.

http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-kingdom/

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Trapped In A Golden Cage ?

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Gilded Cage

A Well Paid Job Or A Gilded Cage? (c) R Dennison September 2013

I’ve blogged before about the intriguing work-life issues which the Guardian newspaper features.  Here is one issue from last week, which is well worth a read.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/sep/13/hard-work-time-off

The key points are these, he:

– seems keen to get off the work ‘treadmill’ and out of the gilded cage of a well-paid, but all consuming, job.

– is also clued in about the employment situation he wants for the future.

– values interesting work (with adequate downtime to maintain a social life & his personal relationship).

– has a job currently at right angles to his values.

It would be great to coach him, as he does some action planning.  He may want to decide when he wants his values to complement the other elements in his life.

Once those timings are clear he can get the support he needs to plan his steps to reach his destination.  The actions he takes from now on will help him reach his ideal situation, at a pace with which he is comfortable.

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GROWing Pains

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English: An artist's depiction of the rat race...

English: An artist’s depiction of the rat race in reference to the work and life balance. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_race Made with following images: http://www.openclipart.org/detail/75385 http://www.openclipart.org/detail/74137 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve received some useful performance coaching recently, to help me successfully suggest how the future contributions of a voluntary project group I belong to could be improved, improving my work-life balance.

It was good quality coaching, following the GROW – Goal, Reality, Options, and Will – formula championed by Sir John Whitmore amongst others.  It left me holding a clear set of actions for two, cards-on-the-table, meetings about the project.  I was going to influence greater participation from group at the first, grass roots meeting.  I was then going to suggest changes to the project vision in the second high-level event.

Of course reality doesn’t work like that.  In the first meeting no one wanted to participate more than they were already doing.  In the second meeting the request for help with the vision went up the line, and came firmly back down again.   The issue with the vision thing was ours to address, not anyone else’s.

Which goes to show that, where you can coach with improvements in your own performance in mind, you cannot expect your actions to produce specific outcomes in others.  After all, others haven’t been coached to ‘participate more’ or to ‘change their vision’.

All this possibly means my next coaching goal may have to be: ‘to successfully document my contribution to the outcomes of this project, so I can use my skills in another context  this year’.

(More information about Sir John Whitmore is  available on this website http://www.performanceconsultants.com/ )

#YourGoals : When Will You Ask For The Things That You Need?

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How Are You Feeling About Your 2014 Goals?

How Are You Feeling About Your 2014 Goals?

Do you have too little time to take a break from work? Or are you always too busy to make time for yourself (because you are prioritising someone else’s goals over your own)?

When you look at your answers to those questions, how happy are you with your reality? Are your authentic needs being met, at the same rate as the needs of those people around you?  How do your choices reflect your values; your standards of professional leadership; and your sense of personal fulfilment?

What Can You Do To Achieve An Authentic Balance In Your Life?

If you need to start adjusting your goals concerning that balance, there is a link in the next paragraph to a wonderfully simple TED* talk given by Dr Laura Trice, in February 2008.  Do yourself a favour and invest four minutes during your next break to look at what Laura has to say. I think you will be glad you did.

When Will You Set Yourself A Specific Goal To Ask For What You Actually Need?

Laura’s presentation shows that you can say thank you and ask for what you need By doing so you will motivate those around you to act differently.  You also deepen your authentic connections to others, at work and at home. Try it and see what happens. I’d love to hear how you get on (you can send me a tweet @RogerD_Said ).

There are more ideas relating to your work and life goals in the Archive section here and on Facebook and Google+ too.  Or if you are a Linkedin user you can visit View Roger Dennison’s profile

*In case you are unfamiliar with the acronym TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design.  It is a non-profit organisation devoted to ideas worth spreading.