Welcome to my blog
There is a lot of information around on the importance of looking after our health, like maintaining a healthy diet and plenty of exercise. This is all well and good if your aim is just to keep your body healthy. But what about your brain?
From chocolate to coffee and sleep, to sharper smarter thinking, join me for an article or three as I share insights, tips and ideas on what it takes to keep your brain operating at full speed, so you can wake up feeling refreshed, happier and healthier every day.
Welcome to my blog
There is a lot of information around on the importance of looking after our health, like maintaining a healthy diet and plenty of exercise. This is all well and good if your aim is just to keep your body healthy. But what about your brain?
From chocolate to coffee and sleep, to sharper smarter thinking, join me for an article or three as I share insights, tips and ideas on what it takes to keep your brain operating at full speed, so you can wake up feeling refreshed, happier and healthier every day.
How to Thrive in a Pandemic
If anxiety has become your middle name you may have found yourself lost in survival mode where every day, anxious thoughts about your health, your family, your financial security and the future loom large. Operating in this zone over a period of time creates an undercurrent of fear that never leaves, and it’s exhausting.
If you’re wondering where best to start, let’s start at the beginning by recognising how things are for you right now and how you would like them to be different and here are five steps to help you on your journey to fully thrive.
Are You Ready for The Road Ahead?
With no way back, there is only one way to move from where we are now. Forwards. Which might seem obvious, but have you had a moment or three recently when your mind drifted to thinking that you wish life would return to as it was before the pandemic?
Our most important lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic
Of all the things that living though a pandemic may have taught us, there is one that has the potential to reshape your life and it’s not handwashing.
We have learned how to protect ourselves from the risk of infection with good hygiene practices and physical distancing. We have learned that the goal posts of what to expect are constantly changing. We have learned how to manage our insecurity and uncertainty while fearing for our jobs, our children and our future.
The one thing that can help you successfully navigate the choppy waters ahead won’t be a stimulus package, it will be the strength of your relationships, those bonds of connection that provide us security, hope and optimism.
How Respect Makes Us Better Humans
We seek respect for ourselves in our own lives because it shows we’ve been acknowledged as a fellow human being, we’re valued, and it makes feel accepted for who we are.
But too often showing respect for others goes missing in action; overlooked because we were too busy to notice or hear the cheery ‘good morning’ from our colleague, too disengaged to really sense the intensity of the pain of a friend who shared how they had been racially abused on the bus on the way to work, too tired to care how our snappy and dismissive response to the effort of the most junior member of the team seeking to add their contribution to an important project was hurtful and unwarranted.
Building respect for ourselves, for our friends, family and colleagues demonstrates our humanity. It makes us better human beings.
How to use psychological safety to boost productivity and happiness
Imagine, if every day you went to work expecting the worst, anticipating rejection, ridicule or public humiliation. Would you want to stay? Would you be motivated to deliver your best work? Would you have developed chronic neck pain from looking over your shoulder to see who’s coming next to stab you in the back?
It sounds ridiculous and yet for too many people this IS their reality. There has always been an emphasis on ensuring an individual’s right to physical safety on the job, far less on the need to include psychological safety.
Five Quick Ways to Reduce High Anxiety
In the BP (before pandemic) era, anxiety was a well-recognised menace to many. According to Beyond Blue, 1:6 Australians are currently experiencing depression or anxiety or both. Seventeen percent of the population or 3.2 million people have experienced anxiety or an affective disorder in the last 12 months.
As a Doctor I have looked after many people who struggle with anxiety in their life where it has affected their ability to function normally, to hold down a job, to make a decision, or even to be able to leave the house.
As a workplace wellness consultant, I have worked with individuals seeking assistance because their anxiety has become so overwhelming it’s impacted their ability to work or to work to the level, they know they are capable of.
As a human I have had first-hand experience of learning to live with anxiety.