Herbie Hancock tells a story about playing with Miles Davis: “Miles was playing one of his amazing solos, and right in the middle of it, I played the wrong chord – completely wrong.“ Herbie was mortified. How was Miles going to respond? He could be angry – after all, Herbie just spoilt his solo! Would he […]
How Mindfulness Boosts Resilience
Faced with pressure, challenge and change, people’s stress response can easily kick in, making them rigid, inflexible and irritable. Sustained over time, the result is anxiety, depression and burnout. This is a growing issue for us in the modern world: in the UK, for example, more than 50% of sick-days are now due to such illnesses. […]
Does Stress Awareness Help?
It’s National Stress Awareness Day. Taking the theme literally made me wonder – is it helpful to be aware of stress? My conclusion: “It depends!” It depends on what you bring your awareness to, and how you do it. Say you’ve just been landed with an additional big project, or someone just said something cruel about […]
Dawood’s Strengths
Dawood had been imprisoned and tortured in Iraq. He’d successfully escaped and made his way to Australia, but his problems were far from over. His social worker identified him as suffering from sleep problems, debt, gambling, relationship difficulties, a highly chaotic lifestyle and possibly depression. “Avoidance Mode” thinking would have him investigate each of these […]
Achieve more by doing 20% less!
Jane spends her life on the road – covering 26,000 miles per year selling technical services products to companies around the UK. With so much ground to cover, she’s always been a rush, driving as fast as she can get away with. Caught in slow traffic? She would “Drive up close behind the car in […]
Like some more Happiness?
Where does happiness come from? According to one study (Lyubomirksy, Sheldon and Schkade), it’s 50% genetic, 10% due to circumstance and 40% due to how we respond to circumstance. You obviously can’t do much about the 50% genetic component – although if other people seem happier, it may help to accept that they may just have better “happiness […]
Do We Know Too Much?
There are so many different benefits of Mindfulness, I’m always interested to know what people are most interested in. So I was really pleased to hear from Julia, an L&D specialist for a large energy provider: A radio interview with Ruby Wax talking about mindfulness caught my ear a couple of years ago. She made a lot […]
Becoming a “Mindful Nation”?
Could the UK become a “Mindful Nation”? That’s the question an All-Party group of MPs are asking. Yesterday they presented their interim report on how mindfulness could enhance our health, education, work and even criminal justice. I found the whole event very inspiring. Our media is full of so much petty bickering between politicians, and so much self-serving behaviour, […]
Is Mindfulness changing Politics?
Mindfulness is really catching on the UK – even at government level. Last week I found myself in the Houses of Parliament, at a “round table” meeting on the future of Mindfulness in the workplace. We heard evidence, case studies and success stories from Cranfield University, CaptialOne, GlaxoSmithKline and others. I was particularly pleased to hear about the […]
Leaving The Office On Time
November 5th – here in the UK it’s “Bonfire Night,” an evening of festivity and fireworks. So lots of us will be thinking, “How can I get away from the office on time, even though there’s too much to do?” One option is to simply try and cram it all in. But today is also […]