Getting to grips with the Locust of Control

The locust of control - naturalists, don’t look too closely, it may be a grasshopper!

When things are bugging you, it’s well worth hopping to it and working on this quick, simple task about your locus of control. That’s locus, not locust, and I promise not to plague you with any more bad jokes based on the similarity between the two. ;-)

What is locus of control?

It’s all to do with how much control you have over something - I use it a lot with clients when looking at things they can do to improve their health, fitness or wellbeing, and in particular when discussing stress management. That’s because one of the main aspects of feeling stressed is that we can feel out of control - anything that helps to tip the scales back in our favour a little bit can be helpful.

There are two parts to your locus of control:

1. External locus - This is the stuff that’s impacting your health, fitness or stress levels that you have no control over. You can’t change it or do anything about it.

2. Internal locus - This is the stuff that you absolutely can do something about; the things you have the power to change.

Taking back control

For the following task, I’ve used stress as the example, partly because as I’ve already mentioned, long-term stress is often connected with feeling out of control, and partly because I know many of us are finding things challenging right now.

You can use it for any health, fitness or wellbeing goal you have though, and in fact, in any aspect of your life where you want to make some changes.

Step 1: Identify the things not in your control

There will always be things we can’t do anything about. With someone struggling with stress, this might be things like:

• Health issues for a loved one

• An existing medical condition of their own

• The state of the economy and possibly even the financial situation of the company you work for

• What the housing market is doing if you’re trying to sell your house

• A worldwide pandemic of a previously unheard of virus

Make a list of the things that could affect your goal that you feel you can’t do anything about.

Step 2: Practice acceptance

I’m not saying this is easy and it won’t work all the time, but if there are things you can’t control or do anything about, there’s no point worrying about them. I’m well aware that this isn’t how stress and anxiety works - it’s not rational and we can worry about things when we know there’s no need. It is still worth practising the art of acceptance though. The same goes for health too - our age, gender, genetics and more can all affect our health and we can’t control them, so we just have to keep practising acceptance that that’s the case.

The simple act of making the list of these things can help you to realise that they’re not within your power and help you to begin letting go some of the worries you have about them. Practising acceptance of them does also, in a strange way, give you more control over them, proving that nothing is truly out of your power to influence positively.

Step 3: Focus on your internal locus

Now it’s time to make your list of the things that are within your control; the things you can do something about to help you achieve your goal. This is the foundation of all of the work we do here at balance - recognising that so much of our health and wellbeing is within our reach by doing the right things. There’s plenty of research to show that the more in control you feel, the better you feel about your wellbeing - you start to see yourself as the pilot of your own destiny.

For stress, this might be things such as exercise, practising coping mechanisms like meditation or breathing techniques, getting into nature, listening to your favourite music and so on.

Whatever your goal, write your list now. Start it as broad as possible - no idea is a bad idea, just get it down as it may well come in useful.

You’ve now got an action plan of things you can do to help yourself, which can feel incredibly empowering.

It can also feel a little overwhelming, as you might have a number of things on your list and not know where to start. Here’s my advice on how to deal with this:

1. Pick the easiest thing on the list to do first

2. Focus on this one thing until you feel you’re on top of it, before picking the next easiest, and so on.

Picking something easy guarantees a quick win, and quick wins will give you a good boost of dopamine, providing the motivation to move onto the next one and keep the ball rolling. It’s that snowball effect; you start small and once it’s rolling, it keeps picking up pace and size and all of a sudden, it’s no longer difficult to do these helpful things, in fact, it’s hard to stop doing them and you feel great!

We’re often tempted to go with the biggest change first, or the one we feel the most pressure to change, like we think that’s what others would expect us to work on, but start simple and get into the habit of being successful.

Step 4: Maintaining momentum

Changing just one or two things on your list might be enough to help you achieve what you’re after, so it’s entirely up to you how many things you work on over time - it’s all about finding the right balance for you. Do consider that it’s always good to have a goal and to be challenging yourself - it’s what gives us the motivation to improve.

If you do happen to master all of the things on your internal locus list, you can always revisit your external locus list and see if there’s anything on there that you now feel you have more power to be able to change for the better..

Coming back to this task frequently and over time, gradully building the size of your internal locus list will allow you to feel like you are more in control of your own destiny. And with more control, comes less stress and a feeling of balance.

A balanced approach to IT rage

Technology is wonderful, but these days we have so much if it and use it so often, that occasionally it won’t work as well as we want it to. I can rarely go a week without some sort of issue with computer, phone, iPad or watch and it leaves me feeling like IT is s*IT. It also leaves me feeling frustrated, stressed and angry, so I thought I’d share with you a few ways that we can all manage our IT rage.

1) First of all, try not to do this.

It’s probably going to be a very costly way of getting your stress levels down.

2) What about swearing and shouting?

There are mixed theories on this. One side of the argument suggests that it’s better to let your anger out, but a lot of recent work suggests that it can in fact make anger a learned behaviour, the way you respond when something stressful happens. I’ll be honest, this was my common response when my laptop crashed or phone froze and I lost a big piece of work I’d been doing in the process. Hearing me go nuts at my computer however was not a very pleasant thing for Vicky to experience and so I’ve been working on some alternative solutions.

3) Walk away

If your computer has frozen or isn’t doing what it should, get up and make yourself a cup of tea (a good brew solves plenty of problems), do another task or even go for a short walk. Moderate exercise is great for stress management, especially if you get outside as it can burn off some of the excess adrenaline you’ve built up and being in natural surroundings is known to relax you and improve your mood. When you come back, the problem may or may not have resolved itself, but even if it hasn’t, you’ll find the urge to break the Laptop Shot-put world record may have subsided.

4) Re-boot

In a similar vein to walking away, shutting down and re-starting can have a positive effect. It’s the golden solution to many IT problems anyway, but it also just allows you a pause to calm down a little.

5) Plan ahead

One of the best things I’ve done to make IT failures less stressful is to put in place a series of back-ups to prevent it being a problem. This ranges from more technological solutions like storing back-ups of all files in the mysterious and ethereal ‘cloud’, changing settings to ensure documents are auto-saved as frequently as possible and can be restored and updating software more often, to more simple techniques like copying text from any post I’m about to make to Facebook in case it freezes and I lose it. Even if it does go wrong, it then doesn’t take much to recover or re-do what I was working on.

6) Try some progressive relaxation

Starting at your shoulders, tense them as much as you can for a couple of seconds, then breathe out slowly and focus on relaxing them as you do so. Work down your body, one muscle group at a time; spend a few minutes doing this and you’ll be feeling calmer in no time.

7) Laugh

Watch or listen to a few minutes of comedy; the hormones released can help to leave you feeling better already. Alternately, joke to a family member, friend or colleague about the situation, it may help to take the tension out of the situation.

8) Reframe

More than anything, what we can all probably do better these days is realise that more often that not it just isn’t the end of the world. We can re-do whatever we were working on, we can sometimes recover lost files and it often spurs us into doing something to prevent it happening again in future or trying a different approach. Frame it as learning rather than an annoyance and you may find it helpful instead.

Do any one of these and you’re on the way to slightly better balance.

Paul :-)

Why we ALL have mental health problems...and what we can do about it

Mental wellbeing - more grey than black and white

According to recent statistics, one in four people in the UK experiences mental health problems, or rather, one in four of us gets diagnosed with mental health problems. What if though, WE ALL suffered from mental health issues?

In times gone by, you'd often hear talk of 'mental illness' and the simplified notion was that you were mentally ill or not. In reality, it's just not that simple. In the same way that physical health sits on a sliding scale, with excellent at one end and well, to put it bluntly, at death's door at the other, mental wellbeing can also be imagined on a continuum. It can fluctuate towards better or worse mental health and wellbeing on a weekly, daily and even hourly basis. And it doesn't matter who you are or what you do, where you live or how much money you earn, it does affect you.

There are of course differences between us, with some more at risk of sliding the wrong way along the scale due to genetic influences and uncontrollable life circumstances, but there are also many actions most definitely within your control that affect where you are on the continuum at any one time. It is these behaviours that form the focus of this blog piece and that are the target when I work with individual clients or when helping larger number of people through employee wellbeing initiatives. 

A few principles of mental wellbeing

When you think of mental health challenges, you might often conjure up words like stress, depression and anxiety. You may imagine these to be bad, and they certainly can be, but that's not always the case. Stress can be very good; imagine a lion escapes from the local zoo and appears on your driveway. The stress response that enables you to quickly run inside and shut the door is very helpful! Equally, exercise is a stress on your body; you know the saying 'no pain, no gain' or as I prefer to say, 'no challenge, no change', meaning that you only get fitter when you put your body under stress. Too little stress from exercise and you become unfit and unhealthy, too much and again you can get problems. It's all about finding the right balance for you. Depression and anxiety can have their place too; it's normal to grieve for a lost loved one and part of the healing process, and it's absolutely fine to be anxious about a big exam or interview, in fact science is quite clear that, up to a point it raises performance. 

The problems occur when the stress, anxiety or depression become too much, too severe and also when they go on continuously. Mental wellbeing is present when you have a healthy balance of emotions but if the balance is tipped too far, we can have issues. One of the big difficulties about recognising mental health problems is that for each of us, these issues can be different. This definition of stress by Hans Selye, a scientist famous for his work in this area in the mid-20th century, helps to explain this:

"Stress is the non-specific response of an individual to any demand for change."

What he was saying is that stress could be caused by a multitude of things, basically anything that calls for adaptation from a person. A new form to fill in at work, a house move, changes in job circumstances, a closed road meaning you must drive somewhere unknown or any other number of stressors. 

He was also saying that the way in which we all respond to this stress is unique. There might be a physical response like increased heart rate, sweating or trembling, or a mental response and for some that stress may bring about good changes whilst for others it might cause issues. 

This is what makes mental health problems so hard to recognise and understand. When you get stressed you may lose your appetite, whilst another may comfort eat. One might withdraw from their social circle whilst another might go out and party hard. One person may present with physical symptoms like poor skin or a raised blood pressure, whilst another may suffer psychologically. Always bear these two points in mind when thinking about mental health and wellbeing:

1) What leads to stress, depression or anxiety for one person may not for another.  

The triggers for each individual are unique; it doesn't mean they are weak or 'that's just them', it's a complex interplay of genetics, previous experiences and all of the things that are going on in someone's life at any one time. I've heard a number of times in a work setting, 'How can they be signed off with stress? I do the same job as them and I'm fine.' It simply doesn't work like that.

2) The unique response of each individual to mental health pressures can make them hard to recognise.

It's generally impossible to look at someone and see a mental health problem. Again I've heard lines like 'Well they didn't look/seem ill to me' when referring to colleagues signed off work, but as we've seen above, how the issue shows itself can differ from person to person and over time. Doctors will weigh up all of the signs and symptoms when making a diagnosis; sleep patterns, energy levels, mood, behavioural changes, appetite, thought processes and physical checks of heart rate and blood pressure are just a few of the areas that are factored in.

Load and resilience

Your mental health and wellbeing can be influenced by two major factors; firstly, how much load or stress you are faced with at any one time. In the picture above, this is represented by the jug of water...the more that gets poured in the greater the challenge for you. The second is your ability to cope with these challenges, known as your resilience, represented by the glass. If you reach the point where you've poured more in than your glass can cope with, you overflow and, just like the water leaking over the sides of the glass, it can head in any direction, or in other words, it can represent itself in any number of ways unique to you.

This means there are two things you can do to stay well balanced with our mental wellbeing...

1) Pour less in (decrease the load) 

It's important that you're aware of just how much you have going on and ensure that you're never pouring so many challenges in that you start to overflow. That's easier said than done these days with lives business than they've ever been and the constant bombardment of tasks and information that come out us in all aspects of life. In the 'What can you do?' section below, you'll find a range of suggestions to help you lighten then load.

2) Work on your glass (increase your resilience) 

Alongside pouring less in, you can also work on coping better with what comes your way. This means upgrading your glass from a shot glass to a tumbler or even better still, a pint glass (don't race down the pub just yet)! There are many things you can do to help both your body and mind cope better with the pressures you face. You can also learn ways to tip a little of what's being poured in back out again. This keeps you from overflowing and helps you stay balanced.

What can you do?

Pouring less in - just being aware of the volume of stuff you have going on is a good start. Sometimes you'll find that you only notice you have too much going on when it's already overloaded you and you're struggling mentally or physically as a result. Being consciously aware of how much is going on is a great place to start. Remember too that even things that are enjoyable still count as load. For example, you know how much I love exercise and sometimes I forget that doing a long run or bike ride is still load being poured into my glass. I'll then try to also do loads of work on the garden, catch up on all my emails, write a new chapter of my next book, get my accounts up-to-date and catch up with friends. Then after all that, I'll wonder why I'm feeling exhausted! 

You have to learn some important lessons to get this bit right; how to prioritise some things at the expense of others and also, often, how to say no. You'll know how much you can pour in before you start to feel the effects, so have it in the forefront of your mind when you're planning the days and weeks ahead. This applies both to work and life; here's a little table going you some examples of how you might prevent overload in both situations.

Making your glass bigger and tipping some back out - there are a myriad of tools you can use to do this and for simplicity, I divide them into four categories:

1. Psychological

2. Physical

3. Social

4. Recreational

Psychological tools are any that help to alter your mindset. This might include breathing techniques, meditation, mindfulness, counselling or learning to change your inner dialogue to be more helpful. 

Physical tools include all the things that help your body to cope better and be physically as well as mentally healthier; exercise, better diet, getting more sleep and reducing or quitting smoking and alcohol.

Social tools involve getting help from others. Generally, people are awesome and when it comes to mental health, being sociable is proven to make a difference. How you achieve this can vary from talking about your challenges to joining a club, helping someone else or doing something for a good cause. 

Recreational tools are all the things you can do for enjoyment like your hobbies, listening to music, reading books, playing games, learning and spending time with your pets (I often include this last one in with the social tools because pets are people too right?). All are known to have a positive impact on your mood and send you the right way along the continuum towards better mental health.

Here's a nice little summary of all of them for those of you who prefer pictures to words:

There is without a doubt a crossover between these four areas; for example you might join a Quidditch team...yes you really can do that! That will give you some exercise, time with friends and you get to play a game which all help to distract you from the stresses of daily life and boost your mental wellbeing. The categories are simply meant to guide you towards the many possible tools you already have at your fingertips that can help you find more balance.

All of these tools work through a range of powerful mechanisms, including:

• Altering the levels of feel-good chemicals in your brain that help to make you feel better

• Distracting you from the pressures of daily life

• Enabling you to escape, take a step back and maybe evaluate things in a different way

• Getting help; as the saying goes...'a problem shared is a problem halved'

• Boosting your self-image, self-worth and self-confidence

Key considerations

• There are lots of things you can do to improve your mental wellbeing. You do not have to do them all in one go; just one small change will make a difference and it really doesn't matter what you decide to do. Just pick something that feels right and that you think you'll be able to stick to. No matter if it doesn't work, pick something else and go again.

• Health comes when behaviours are repeated consistently over time. Try to do it just for a day at first, then when you've nailed that, aim for a week, then another week and so on until it's just a normal part of everyday life.

• Managing your mental wellbeing is a constant journey. There is a principle in exercise known as reversibility. This is best described by the phrase 'if you don't use it, you lose it'. You know this well from fitness regimes and diets. If you stop doing your running after that 10k race you lose fitness; if you give up the diet you were following the weight can come back. The same principle applies to mental wellbeing too. If you stop practising the behaviours that help you to manage how you feel, you stop getting the benefits. Life will inevitably throw in challenges that mean some days and weeks aren't as good as others but the great news is, you can always start doing the right things again and get yourself back to balance.

Please do get involved in the conversation below. What do you do that helps you balance your mental health and wellbeing? What tips would you offer others? Anything you'd like to share that helps people to be fitter, healthier and happier.

Thanks, 

Paul

This blog was adapted from a seminar I gave recently for Origin Workspace, an exciting new co-working and start-up support business based in Bristol. You can find out more about them here.

If you'd like to make sure you never miss a new balance blog, you can sign up to our newsletter for automatic updates and much more help to you get fitter, healthier and happier HERE.

Have we lost our balance when it comes to technology?

The walk home from school was a short one, about 10-15 minutes, and even less if I ran back which I often did. If it was summertime and still light in the evenings, I’d disappear off to play football with my mates from Atcham Close and the surrounding streets. You could always be guaranteed of good numbers for a game, often way too many leading to a good pile of jumpers for goalposts. Occasionally we’d mix it up with ‘acky 123’ (a bit like tig/tag) or ‘tracking’, both great childhood games, or exploring on our bikes and climbing trees. It mattered little if it rained; you just got wet. 

It was only in the very worst weather and during the darker months that we needed to occupy our time indoors. And that’s where the legendary Spectrum ZX came in to its own…well, sometimes. Games were all on cassette tapes and took an age to load, I’m not sure exactly how long as time seems vastly different when you’re a child, but in my mind, it seemed to take 20 minutes or more, watching the multi-coloured stripes roll across the screen, changing constantly like some sort of psychedelic art display. Quite often, towards the end of the lengthy loading process it would error, and my mom would say ‘never mind, it’ll have to wait until tomorrow’. The disappointment was short-lived as it normally meant it was time for tea!

Computers at school were limited to Acorns, where we’d be given a sheet of commands to type in that would draw shapes on the screen. Outside of these ‘high-tech’ experiences, there was very little interaction with technology, except the original Atari and Sega video games in the arcades of Britain’s seaside resorts. They were fun but to be honest, we always ended up veering back towards the 2p slot machines, reserved these days purely for contestants on the decidedly average ITV gameshow, Tipping Point.

Family holidays were instead spent walking, playing any number of sports, exploring castles, on the beach or if confined indoors again because of the less than reliable British Summertime, playing cards, board games, reading books or watching one of four TV channels.

Today's tech-filled world

Fast forward to 2018 and how different the world has become in just one generation. I suppose every generation says that, but I wonder how our technology legacy is affecting the physical and mental health and wellbeing of the current generation and those to come? 

Don’t get me wrong; there are many wonderful things that technology has brought for society. The ability to keep in touch at a distance, business communications, medical advances, environmental benefits from the reduced need for paper, and assisting in running our increasingly busy lives. In fact, I recently read that 90 per cent of the jobs we have today didn’t even exist 30 years ago, largely because they’re so heavily reliant on new technologies, which must be good for the economy right? I do wonder though if we haven’t lost our balance in recent times. Technology once felt like it helped in our daily lives; now it feels like it runs them.

Take a recent train journey home I was making from Birmingham as an example. I’d been teaching a Personal Trainer course and had walked to Fiveways station to jump on the train, avoiding the busier New Street. Stood on the platform I looked across at those waiting to head in the opposite direction and it is not an exaggeration to say that every single one of the roughly thirty people stood there were looking down at their phone screens. I considered the irony of pulling out my own phone to photograph the scene and decided against it. Now I doubt very much, that in times gone by, this group would be merrily chatting away to the strangers they stood next to; they’d likely have had their heads buried in a book or newspaper instead, but it seemed to me as if we’d lost touch with our surroundings and our ability to sometimes just stand and take in the moment.

Technology, particularly our phones, is often credited with bringing us together, helping us live more sociable lives. We certainly can keep in touch with more people, or rather we can ogle the filtered versions of each other’s daily lives presented in the form of posts, photos and videos on ‘Twittergrambook’. 

I’m a user myself, a self-confessed addict. Social Media is a huge part of my business and the main way I seek to reach and help people. Most likely you’re reading this because you clicked the link from the Facebook page so I’m certainly not preaching going off the grid completely. I just wonder if we’ve lost our balance a little; if we could spend more time disconnected. I know I certainly could. Did we once have better balance and better relationships with the fewer people we kept in touch through the ancient arts of letter writing and telephone calls? 

The effort of writing a letter, card or postcard, scripting it, locating an envelope if needed, and back in the day licking the stamp, then making time to post it represents a huge amount of thoughtfulness on the part of the sender. Once sent you were content and certainly didn’t expect an immediate response; you simply got on with life and then one day had a pleasant surprise when you received a reply.

We live in an instant world. On a given day I’ll have text messages, emails, voicemails and Facebook messages all piling up, awaiting my reply. Even if the sender doesn’t intend it, you feel pressure to respond quickly, as if you’re being rude by not doing so. At its worst points, this has led me to check my phone almost constantly, concerned that I’ve missed a message from someone, and I’ve even suffered from ‘Ghost Phone’, that sensation that your mobile is vibrating in your pocket with a message from someone, when in fact it hasn’t. 

Vicky has rightly admonished me on more than one occasion for checking my phone for news, football scores or messages whilst we’re out and about, at dinner or on holiday. It has become so endemic that we have a name for it; absent presence. It means we’re there in body, but our mind is away in our digital world. Take this current TV ad from Tesco mobile which states ‘Your phone is more than just your phone…it’s kind of your life.’

‘So what?’ you may ask. Well, overuse of technology can lead to a wide range of issues:

 

Illness and injury

• Postural, muscular and joint problems. Spending too much time sat at a desk can lead to tight hamstrings, hips and shoulders, pulling you out of your natural alignment and creating pain and injuries everywhere from head to toe. Overuse of a phone and other handheld devices has led to the creation of a whole range of new injury terms including a few years ago ‘Blackberry thumb’ and more recently ‘Text Neck’.

• It’s not just your musculoskeletal system that can be impacted; your eyes can too. Computer Vision Syndrome covers a range of eye issues that are caused by too much screen time, with various studies reporting than between 50 and 90 per cent of us have been affected.

• In the news this very week has been the potential link between mobile phones and brain tumours. At present the stance of major organisations such as Cancer Research UK and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of the World Health Organization) say that there is no clear evidence of a link between phones and cancers, but that more research is needed for a definitive answer to be given.

Mental health

It’s not just physical ailments we need to be wary of when trying to find the right balance, there are mental health considerations too:

• Loneliness and self-esteem issues have both been linked to the use of Social Media, but the picture is complex. Some studies show increased issues with greater use of Social media sites, whilst others show the opposite. The real answer as always likely lies somewhere in the middle, in finding the balance right for the individual. Studies have suggested that viewing others social media whilst not getting involved yourself, known as ‘social snacking’ may cause feelings of loneliness to be exaggerated afterwards, whilst comparing yourself with others can affect self-esteem.

Comparing yourself to others is not a new phenomenon and certainly not exclusive to social media. Before the popularity of YouTube and Instagram, it was magazines who courted much of the attention for airbrushing celebrities and publishing unrealistic lifestyles that youngsters tried but failed to copy. Wanting to be like others has always been an issue creating envy and self-esteem issues, technology now just heightens it through its ability to reach almost the entire planet.

It’s not all bad though. Research in elderly subjects has suggested that having contact with others through social media helped to lessen feelings of loneliness and very recent studies have suggested taking a smiley selfie can boost mood and confidence.

• There’s no off-switch. Phones and computers so allow us to connect with others, to take our work out with us wherever we are and to keep up with the latest news around the world, that can also mean we never truly switch off. It’s no coincidence that the boom in technology has also seen a growth in techniques like Mindfulness. Our brains are deluged with so much information on a daily basis that we desire, and need, the ability to shut down and process it all.

• Read about any ancient culture, tribe or civilisation and one of the most common themes is an awareness of your own mind and body, and an inter-connectedness with nature. Yoga, tai chi, any number of martial arts, the practices of Shaman and wise tribal elders the world over are all evidence of a once strong connection between people and the nature which surrounded them. Just one example of how this has changed in modern times is the map. Once we studied these on pieces of paper, planned our routes and used them to guide us along when needed. This progressed to the printing of multiple pages of written instructions in the late 90s and early 2000s from the AA or RAC, where you’d sometimes forget how many roundabouts you’d gone straight over at and have to stop (or not) whilst you attempted to count them on the page to work out where you are. Today we don’t even bother to navigate at all; in cars we type in our destination and are told where to go, completely oblivious to our surroundings, whilst on foot we run the risk of ‘text neck’ and head-on collisions with others as we focus on the blue dot as it moves around the map.

• Anger. This is one I definitely need to work on. The pace at which technology has developed has left many of us behind, meaning what we think it can do versus what we're capable of making it do don't always match up. Add to that the fact that technology is made by humans and we should realise it's as prone to error as anything else, yet when we can't get it to work it can lead to 'tech-rage'. As with all stresses, this stems from a lack of control and is a response to just how much we rely on technology to live our daily lives.

• Safety and security. You can't have escaped the news headlines of recent times about the improper use of our personal data. Add this to online bullying, trolling, hacking and cyber-crime and there's a strong movement towards getting our identities offline for fear of the above. The pressure caused by recent events has led to changes for the better but many people are still fearful of the consequences of their online presence.

Fitness and Energy expenditure

Technology has affected our exercising too. When I started working in gyms I’d often notice people moving incredibly slowly or sometimes even stopping on the cardiovascular machines and standing stock still whilst starting at the screen, before starting again at a very laboured pace. I’d go over to chat and discover that the machine was telling them their heart rate was too high and they were moving out of the legendary fat-burning zone. I’d ask how they were feeling and they’d always reply to say they felt fine, not in the slightest bit breathless at all and I’d try my best to get them to ignore the data and go on how they felt, working to a point where they were warm and slightly breathless.

More recently I’ve become a slave to fitness devices, evidenced by the Garmin on my left wrist and the Fitbit on my right. The Garmin is fancy and suggests how many hours of recovery I need before I can exercise again. Whilst useful, I know my own body and can disagree with Mr Garmin’s suggestions not to exercise for the next three days. I do however make use of the resting heart rate tool, knowing full well that when this is elevated by a few beats I’m a bit tired and if five beats more than normal, it’s definitely time to ease back. Again, it’s all about striking the right balance.

The increasingly easy nature of our lives is most certainly connected to a decrease in health and fitness and increase in waist sizes across the planet. Gone are the days of walking miles to work in a job that involved hard graft and carrying our shopping home from the supermarket. One wonderful childhood memory I have is of Saturday mornings when I’d visit my nan and grandad. Their back garden had a gate that led right out onto the canal and from there we could walk along to the local shops, my nan with her trusty black leather and tartan trolley in tow, me racing along with the dog, stock up on supplies and make our way back in time for Grandstand.

Today it’s different. Technology allows us to reduce calorie burn at every opportunity. We can order almost anything online and have it delivered to the door, drive to and from work and spend the whole day sat down, enjoy hobbies that involve nothing more than flicking our thumbs around a game control and even our cars these days save us the bother of turning on lights, windscreen wipers or lifting the handbrake. 

We have learned to be lazy. Survival of the fittest has become more survival of the tech-savvy, or has it? All of those little calories we would previously have burned add up over weeks and months to weight gain and precede further health issues. Muscles become weakened and waste away, or to give it the fancy term, atrophy due to the lack of challenge they receive. This includes the most important muscle of all, your heart.

How can you find a balance?

Whilst my intention is not to paint a picture of some sort of dystopian science fiction future Earth where technology has taken over, it is to present an argument that we might need to make some changes and that these involve rediscovering things from times gone by, simpler forms of living. Here are my top tips for a balanced lifestyle when it comes to technology. I shall be working hard to practice some of them myself.

1)         Make a stand. Avoid sitting all day at work; if you can, get a standing desk. The fancy ones allow you to lift and lower them as desired, so you can mix sitting and standing. If not, be sure to take regular breaks away from your desk and walk around. Speak to people across the hall rather than email them, make a drink, get out to buy lunch or walk in the park, anything that keeps you moving.

2)         Set technology boundaries. This might be times of day when you won’t look at your phone or laptop, or maybe even ‘tech-free days’ for the whole family where you can enjoy active hobbies or relive times gone by with cards, board games or whatever takes your fancy. You can set most technology these days to silent or to power down between certain hours, so use the fancy features to help you find a better balance.

3)         Consider how you communicate. Could you call or visit someone rather than text or email? Or if you’re feeling really nostalgic, write a letter or send someone a postcard.

4)         Think about how you use social media. Is it a positive influence in your life or do you feel it affects you in a negative way? I’ve had positive experiences in the past by reducing the number of social media sites I use and also by vastly reducing the time I spend on my particular addiction, Facebook. 

5)         Escape. Get out in the great outdoors, somewhere you’re surrounded by nature and just take in the present moment. Listen to the birds singing, the wind in the trees, the sound of the river flowing by and refresh and reinvigorate yourself. It’s also a great way to get your exercise in which is a sure-fire way to help you feel balanced.

Yours in balance,

Paul

A balanced take on stress

Stress.

It’s hard to escape it. Everything is so fast-paced these days and there are so many demands for our attention and time at home, at work and online. It’s thought we process 34 gigabytes of data through our brains each day, around 105,000 words absorbed through emails, the internet and other sources. It’s no wonder we sometimes struggle to cope.

And we do struggle; in 2013, the mental health charity MIND reported that 34 per cent of people surveyed said that work was either quite or very stressful. Last year the HSE reported that 12.5 million work days were lost due to stress and it was recently reported that stress affects one in five of the working population.

What if that last statistic was wrong? I’m going to argue that stress affects five in five of the working population and in fact, the population as a whole. It’s an inescapable part of life; in fact, it’s essential to your survival and needed to get you out of bed in the morning.

Just what is stress?

A very clever man named Hans Selye once defined it as:

         “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change”

Simply, it’s the changes brought about by something new that we’re not used to. As he rightly points out, these changes aren’t specific; they’re unique to the individual. Some of the changes are physical, some psychological and often we experience both. Here’s a short-list of just some of the possible changes that can occur in a stressful situation.

Physical

-       Increased heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate

-       Sweating

-       Dizziness and fainting

-       Pins and needles

-       Tight, achey muscles

-       Indigestion

-       Fatigue

Psychological

-       Unable to sleep

-       Inability to switch off

-       Changes in appetite

-       Irritability

-       Difficulty making decisions

-       Restlessness

-       Mood swings

-       Loss of interest in activities and withdrawal

There are many more and that’s what makes it challenging to diagnose and treat; we all get stressed in different ways.

Good and bad stress

How can any of the changes above be good? Well, let’s give you a simple example. You’re sat at your desk one day when a hungry lion, recently escaped from the zoo, wanders in. At this point, your heart rate, breathing and blood pressure increase, as do levels of stress hormones, firing you into action so that you can run away and hide in the store cupboard. Stress can be a real life-saver.

The word stress comes from the Latin word ‘stringere’, meaning to draw tight or put something under tension or pressure. We all need a little pressure in our lives as that’s what brings about change. Exercise is the prime example; your heart only gets stronger when you challenge it with a run, bike ride, Zumba, Insanity, walk up the stairs, spot of gardening or whatever takes your fancy. Your skeletal muscles only get stronger when you challenge them with weights, Pilates, gigantic elastic bands or heavy shopping. In fitness, it’s known as the principle of overload, or as I like to say…no challenge, no change.

Equally, in life, we need a challenge. Ever had a job that was so easy it was stressful? What did you do? You went and sought out a tougher job to get a bit more stress in your life, because you knew it would be good for you.

This good stress is known as Eustress, and, as always in life, this is balanced out by the bad stuff, which is termed Distress.

Distress occurs when stress takes us beyond our ability to cope, or rather sometimes, our perceived ability to cope. It may actually be that there is a way to cope; we just can’t see it at the present time.

Our clever chap Hans Selye, who we mentioned earlier, identified three clear stages to stress, which he called his General Adaptation Syndrome or GAS for short.

1) Alarm – our initial reaction to a stress. This might be a sudden increase in workload, or the lion entering the office, which leaves us with any combination of the signs and symptoms discussed earlier.

2) Adaptation OR Resistance – Stage 2 is pivotal. We may discover a way to adapt to the new circumstance; maybe we can shift our working day around to fit in the work or discuss with our line manager that it can’t be done to the deadline being requested and agree a new date or get someone else in to help, or in the case of the lion, we run into the store cupboard, close the door and phone for help. At this point, the stress levels reduce.

If we don’t do this however, that’s when resistance occurs, which essentially means we don’t find a way to adapt.

3) Exhaustion - The lack of adaptation means the stress continues over time and that’s when the changes we’ve talked about become an issue; for example, blood pressure stays higher, our appetite is increased causing weight gain or our lack of sleep affects our mental and physical state and ultimately, our health.

It’s vital to say here that what classes as eustress and distress is unique to everyone. Some people find a certain job, workload, task or process highly stressful, whilst another absolutely loves it. It’s why sometimes people find it hard to empathise with other’s stress; ‘but I do that job and it’s absolutely fine.’ That really isn’t the point here.

What can we do about bad stress?

Essentially there are three things we can do to lessen the likelihood of distress and deal with it better when it occurs:

1) Increase our resilience to stress

2) Decrease the amount of stress placed upon us

3) Distract ourselves from the stress or learn to see it in a different light

Resilience – here we build up our minds and bodies to be able to cope with more stress before it becomes distress. Imagine your body as a drinking glass, and stress the water that you pour in. The aim is to turn it from a small tumbler into a pint glass, able to cope with more fluids before it spills over. If you can increase your reservoir, you have the capacity to deal with more stress without being negatively affected.

We can make both our minds and bodies more resilient to stress; here are just a few ways:

• Exercise – there are so many benefits of exercise for stress management. Your heart is stronger and healthier and more able to cope when placed under pressure, moderate intensity activity helps to control levels of stress hormones, it can act as a distraction from work and life, socialising with others whilst doing it is known to reduce stress and getting outdoors, particularly into green space or around water is a proven way to reduce stress levels.

• Healthy eating – certain foods and drinks can help with stress management. Reducing caffeine and swapping for herbal teas like chamomile or Rooibos is a particularly powerful technique, as is ensuring you get all the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other plant nutrients you need. This helps to keep your immune system on top form as it’s known that stress is particularly potent when it comes to lowering your body’s natural defences. If you can get your 5-a-day that’s fantastic; if not can you simply increase your intake by one or two above where you are now?

• Sleep – another powerful protector of your immune system, sleep is when your body repairs, recovers and files away the day’s stresses and challenges. It also helps regulate your mood, meaning you often find it easier to cope with stressful situations. Look to go to bed a little earlier, ensure the environment is calm, quiet and cool, and if you have stresses on your mind, attempt to wind down from them at least an hour before bedtime with a hobby or something more relaxing; music, reading, puzzles, it doesn’t matter so long as it works for you. Some find writing down tasks for tomorrow or current concerns helpful, as it means they won’t forget about them tomorrow but don’t need to deal with them now.

• Psychological techniques – there’s been a boom in recent years in tools and techniques to help us manage stress. Mindfulness, meditation and relaxation are all hot stuff right now and that’s because many people find them to be powerful tools.

Here are a few simple tools you can try:

Progressive relaxation – this is my go to technique. Sit somewhere quiet, just for a few minutes. Begin by taking a few deep breaths, then starting at your toes, tense the muscles for a second or two and then focus on letting them relax completely. Repeat the process for your calf muscles, thighs, hips, core muscles and all the way up to your shoulders, neck and even face. You’ll be amazed how much more chilled you feel by the end.

Count your breaths – another one that’s quick and easy to do. Sit or lie somewhere comfortable, although you can do this stood in a queue for your lunch or in the post office too. Breathe out through your mouth for a count of eight, pause briefly then in through your nose for four. Repeat for around 60 seconds.

Mindfulness – there are numerous mindfulness techniques; this one is great as it can be done anywhere. When you feel yourself getting stressed, pause and just focus on the things around you at present. Look away from your laptop or phone and work through your senses, noticing three things you can see around you at present, three you can hear, smell, touch and even taste. It’s a great little distractor to bring you back to the present.

Affirmations – I often notice how my clients are their own biggest critics, but during our conversation, I’ve noticed a range of things that seem to be going extremely well. It’s easy to focus on the negatives and leave ourselves feeling stressed and down. When this happens, get a piece of paper and make a list – what have I done well today or this week? Give yourself some praise for these things and sometimes things feel a little better.

There are of course other tools and techniques you can use; here’s a link to a fantastic website with a whole host of others for you: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/stress/developing-resilience/#.WnReFq10dp8

Decreasing the amount of stress we’re under

This bit is all about taking stock; asking ourselves ‘can I do all of that in that time-frame?’ or ‘am I taking on too much?’

If the answer is yes, here’s some stuff you should consider:

• Do I need to have a conversation with my boss, colleagues, partner, friend or other person who can act as support crew about it? As Bob Hoskins once said, it’s good to talk and it often leads to solutions that can decrease our stress load

• Look at where else we can reduce stress. I know when I’m super busy that trying to push myself really hard in exercise sessions doesn’t help. I need to work out for my sanity, but long runs, heavy weights and tough intervals are replaced by low-intensity, shorter workouts to help me stay balanced without becoming completely worn out. And to prove that I sometimes get this wrong, last week I was very busy with work and then at the weekend I decided to lift the heaviest weights I've done for some time and run the furthest I've gone in ages; result? I now have a cold. Well...man-flu and we all know how bad that can be! ;-) 

• Always remember that change is possible – we’re never really stuck in a situation. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to change but there’s likely something that can be done to make it better.

• Ask for help. Reaching out to someone, be it a medical practitioner, counsellor, manager, colleague or friend, is not a weakness, it’s a strength. And it’s the first step in reducing our stress levels.

Distraction and reframing

One of the reasons exercise is thought to be a great tool to combat stress is that it takes your mind off it. Whilst you're thinking about getting enough air into your lungs, making it up that hill, lifting that weight or getting that ball back, it's hard to also think about work deadlines and finances. It offers an escape.

And there are other escape tools too; yoga, tai chi, meditation, listening to music, reading a book, socialising with friends, taking the dog for a walk, stroking your favourite pet, playing games; it really is whatever works for you. 

There are of course less healthy distractions like smoking and alcohol. Don't get me wrong; they work to distract you from the stress but at the same time they add physical stress to your body so they aren't ideal long-term solutions.

Reframing is the art of looking at something in a different way. Think about these two words:

- Stress

- Challenge

The first is often thought of as being negative, whilst the second more positive, but they can actually mean the same thing. If you see a workload as a challenge then it's something you want to conquer and might actually enjoy whilst doing so. Are there any stresses in your life that you could reframe? Thinking about them in a different way may make a surprising difference to their impact on you.

Important points to stress

1) Can you build your resilience to be able to better cope with the stresses you face?

2) Can you reduce the amount of stress you are under?

3) Can you find a way to distract yourself or see the stress in a different light?

Doing just one of these may help you to find a little more balance.

Thanks,

Paul

Stressed? Here's how to find some balance.

Do you often feel stressed? How do you know? What do you feel? How do you feel? What do you see and hear?

The word stress is one that you’ll probably hear many times these days, but its meaning is probably more complex and controversial than you may imagine.

The word stress comes from the Latin word stringere, meaning to draw tight. This is a good analogy, as it’s true meaning is to put strain on something. When thinking of it in relation to you, it relates to anything that challenges your body and takes it out of its comfort zone. This could be a mental stress, challenging your brain, a physical stress challenging your body, or both.

When most people think of and use the word stress these days, it generally carries a negative meaning, yet that does not always have to be the case. There are in fact two distinct types of stress:

Eustress

This is good stress. What’s that you say? How can stress be good? Well let’s look at a few examples.

Exercise - you know it’s good for you, or you do if you’ve been reading the balance blog and Facebook posts! Exercise involves physical exertion, placing stress upon your body. In fact, one of the key principles of exercise that any fitness professional can tell you about is called overload. In simple terms, your body will not adapt and get fitter unless you challenge it. Why would it? If you’ve ever taken up exercise, you’ll know that feeling of discomfort in the first few sessions, then after a while you don’t find it so hard. You have stressed your body enough that it’s decided to change, primarily because it’s quite lazy and doesn’t want to have to work hard. Suddenly you find the same exercise session pretty easy, and the only way to get more changes from your body is, you guessed it, to work harder still. Of course, you need to do this sensibly and gradually or you place your body under too much stress and increase the likelihood of overtraining and injury.

Challenge - ever had a job that was just too easy and you were bored? Many of you will have experienced this and will have spent time trying to get promoted or looking for a career change. You’re basically trying deliberately to add more stress to yourself, but that’s because you need it and want it. Imagine if there was no challenge to life, what would be the motivation to continue? It could easily be argued that stress is actually what keeps you alive.

However, as with all things in life, it’s all about balance. Too much stress, or unwanted stresses can have a negative impact.

Distress

This is the term for bad stress, any stressor that puts your body under too much strain or has a negative effect. This is what most people think of when they use the term stress.

What causes distress?

• Work - being overworked, not enjoying your job, demanding deadlines, pressure passed on by your boss or by targets set for your team, bonus schemes, long hours, there’s a whole host of reasons why work can stress people both mentally and physically.

• Money - life these days can be expensive and throws up unexpected costs when the car breaks down or a utility bill is bigger than you thought.

• Family life - it’s hard to get on with the people you love all the time. Even when you do, you want to look after them and time apart, exam pressure for children, job interviews, university placements, holidays, illness and a million other things can make life feel complicated and stressful.

• Lack of sleep, too much exercise, exposure to electrical and chemical radiation, taking exams, and even sitting down place stresses on your body, the latter putting your knee joint under strain by tightening the muscles that attach around it.

Whether you are affected by stress (I mean distress) depends on a number of things:

1) Your balance of eustress and distress.

2) The coping mechanisms you have in place.

Let’s have a look at these and see what can be done. Firstly, it can be useful for you to identify all of the things that create good stress and bad stress in your life.

Make a list like the one below.

Eustress

• My gym visits

• Taking exams for my courses

• Rehearsing for a play that you’re going to be appearing in

• Preparing to go self-employed

Distress

• Lack of sleep

• Work pressures

• Getting the kids to school on time in the morning

• Flying on holiday next week and hate flying

• Fitting in visits to the family around after-school clubs, visits to the doctors, going shopping, picking up a prescription, posting your tax return on time and a million other things you struggle to make time for

• Spending 10 hours a day sat in front of a computer

Now you’ve got your list, don’t get stressed if you think you’ve missed something, you can add it at another time, it’s worth looking at the balance of good and bad and asking yourself two questions:

1) Can I add more things that will give me eustress to my life?

• Take up yoga or meditate

• Go for a walk outside at lunchtimes or at least get away from my desk more often

• Book a race to raise money for charity

• Spend time playing sports with my children

• Go to sleep half an hour earlier

These are just a few examples, you’ll have plenty of your own.

2) How can I manage or remove the things that cause me distress?

Some would call this stress management or stress reduction, you can call it distress disposal, Fred or whatever you like that makes most sense to you. Let’s choose one possible cause of distress and look at ways to reduce it; in this case the fear or hatred of flying. Hate is a strong word so it must be pretty stressful. What can you do to manage this stress?

1) Avoidance - in this case don’t fly. Go on holiday in the UK? Nah, no sunshine! Drive and take the ferry? Too far and would take up half the holiday.

2) Drink - many choose this as a way to remove stress as it makes them feel relaxed. You need to ask yourself though, is it a good method? One or two drinks may supply an instant feeling of relaxation as the alcohol acts on the nervous system, any more though and guess what, you’re actually placing your body under distress as it then has to cope with the increased level of toxins in the body and the dehydration. Your liver and other organs end up stressed and long-term this won’t be a good solution for removal of stress, you simply replace one stress with another. Some go even further in times of stress and take drugs, the consequences of which are much the same if not even more severe. Getting out of it is not a great way to get over it.

3) Distraction - I know, I’ll read a book, listen to music, do a puzzle, plan a presentation, schedule my exercise for the next 12 weeks before my race. This is a great option if it works, as it uses eustress methods to overcome distress.

4) Rationalise - I could read up about the statistical likelihood of being involved in a plane crash, and reassure myself that I’m far more at risk statistically when going for a walk than I am when flying.

5) Mind tricks - I could use hypnosis, have counselling, practice meditation or anything else that I thought may help me to overcome or allay my fears.

As you can see, I have options open to me and this is a good thing, as it means I can take action and do something. Try it for yourself, pick one of the things that cause you distress and make  list of methods you could use to remove or manage this. You can try them all or even use just one of them, it really is up to you. The key thing you need to ask yourself though is, will the things I have written down have a positive impact on the health of my mind and body, or will they cause me further distress? Opt for the ones that have a positive impact. Smoking, alcohol and junk foods are common ‘stress relief’ methods employed by millions of people across the world, but they’re not effective because they end up loading different and equally harmful stresses onto the body.

The advice above serves only to help you manage stresses you feel you are able to control without seeking further help. What you may have discovered by doing this task is that there are some stresses in your life that you feel are deep-seated, that you can’t think of a way to remove or that you feel are causing you real harm. If this is the case, you should seek medical advice in the first instance and then work with your GP to find suitable solutions to balance your stresses and improve your health. 

Let’s have a quick re-cap:

• Stress can be both good and bad for you. You need good stresses in your life to motivate you, but too much stress or negative stresses can affect you both physically and mentally.

• Spend time considering the balance of your good stress (eustress) and bad stress (distress). Do you need to take action to redress this?

• Add as many things to your life as you can that cause eustress - exercise, get outside, listen to music, dance, paint, read, have a bath, spend time with friends, go for promotion, set yourself a challenge, whatever it is that you personally find challenging but enjoyable.

• Identify ways in which you can manage or overcome things causing you distress. Sense check these to ensure that they themselves will not cause you further physical or mental distress. Choose realistic changes that will help bring you back into balance.

• Accept that 'stress’ is a part of your life, now and forever but recognise it is essential to your life. It will come and go, rise and fall, but you need to find the stress management techniques that work best for you.

• Always seek medical advice if you feel a stress is having a negative consequence on your mental or physical wellbeing. Your GP can discuss a range of options available to you that best suit your needs and circumstances.