Are Your Beliefs Stifling Your Confidence at Work?

In our careers, success and confidence often seem inextricably linked. This can be stressful as confidence is a tricky thing to hold on to. Too often we allow our confidence to be dictated by the events and people around us.

Here at Adaptas, we believe the missing piece is the understanding that confidence is something we control for ourselves.

At its essence, confidence is a sense of “sureness.” Feeling sure that we are equal to the task at hand. This sureness comes from preparation and deep-seated beliefs about ourselves. Confidence is not the complete absence of fear, worry or self-doubt. When we are trying to feel more confident, we often focus on technical preparation, failing to tackle the core beliefs that are fuelling our feelings of self-doubt in the first place. Why? Because they are big, intimidating things to tackle, and because sometimes we aren’t aware of them. Here is the problem: if we don’t tackle the beliefs, we can get stuck in a long game of bluffing ourselves and playing a part, all the time feeling like an impostor.

Our core beliefs act as a life blueprint. Forming the foundations of how we interpret the world, core beliefs shape how we react to success and struggle and the way that we see and understand our thoughts and actions within the context of our lives. Sound a little complicated? Well, it is! It can be tricky to identify our core beliefs and understand how they are influencing us. The best place to start is by analysing the thoughts that pop into your head un-invited.

“I won’t be able to answer the questions they ask me at the end of the presentation.”

“I don’t know enough about ________ to be in this meeting.”

“I am terrible at speaking in front of people.”

These unhelpful thoughts are little clues to the core beliefs that are creating them. Identify a negative thought and ask yourself: why do I think this? Follow the thought back into your mind. You’ll know when you stumble across a core belief because it will feel 100% true, even if you wish it didn’t.

I am stupid.

I am not good enough.

I don’t deserve success.

We call these types of negative core beliefs ‘Limiting Beliefs’ because they prevent you from reaching your full potential and they are not true. They feel true but they are not. These beliefs are a habitual way of thinking about yourself, built on faulty information. Like all habits, they can be changed. Our workshops build confidence by guiding participants through the process of confronting and changing their limiting beliefs around important work-related behaviours, while also teaching the tricks and tools of long-term habit change. This empowers our clients to continue the process of developing their confidence long after the workshop is over.

Creating and Maintaining Culture: Leadership of Self and Others.

Updated August 3rd 2023

Understanding Personal Values: Responsibility To Ourselves And Others

Since recently writing a blog about why it is important to understand our own personal values before we can live an organisation’s values, I’ve received a lot of comments, both on LinkedIn and in private messages and conversations.

It’s great to hear from so many people who are really thinking about what their values mean to them and are more aware of considering how their own values drive their behavior, decisions and their choices. It’s also super to see that more people are thinking about how important it is to understand ourselves before we can understand or have expectations of other people, teams and organisations. Additionally great to hear and see people considering where their own personal responsibility to their values and the values of the organisation they decide to work with are, rather than looking to blame. It is clear that we still have a way to go on this. People might be less disappointed when they settle into a role if they know how to look for evidence that an organisation and the people in it are really actively looking to live to the espoused values and holding each other accountable to same

Why Have Values Become So Important to Business?

Research shows that when an organisation creates a strong culture by focusing on values and the day-to-day behaviours that align with these values, the result is an increase in employee engagement. This is at least in part because these values are guiding principles for how everyone in the organisation makes decisions, and what they hold each other accountable to in their actions. An organisation cannot implement its stated values if the values and the ensuing behaviours are not fully understood, and supported by the people within the organisation.

As I think I have made clear at this point, many leaders and organisations are ‘missing a trick’ by not helping people understand their own personal values, before they ask them to live the organisation’s values and behaviours, in line with the culture they want to create or maintain.

The call to “bring one’s self to work” with one’s interior value set aligned with the work-place has been found to enhance individual engagement and organisational success. Yet, organisations are comprised of people from a variety of different personal and professional backgrounds, with different personalities. Therefore it cannot be taken for granted that personal and organisational values will fully align. Awareness is the key, as with all success and contentment in life. With awareness comes choice around the decisions we make and the actions we take.

Why Are Values So Important In Leadership?

A huge obstacle to creating and maintaining a culture that works well for all stakeholders is when senior management fail to consistently role-model the values and behaviours that have been agreed upon. I have seen so many examples of this, some of them quite hilarious in an ‘are you serious?!’ kind of way. Like when the head of training at one organisation expected his staff to be customer focused, friendly and proactive but yet he couldn’t bring himself to say ‘good morning’ or ‘how are you?’ to any one of his direct reports, and indeed only did so in the company of his senior peers.

How can we possibly ask other people to live a certain way when we are not willing to ‘walk the talk’?

The 21st century has been plagued with extensive, and disheartening leadership failures. For example, Enron, AIB, Fanny Mae, Northern Rock, FIFA just to name a few. Of course the stories could be told from many different angles but many charismatic, dynamic and seemingly transformational leaders who rose to prominence in both the public and private sectors have shown evidence of moral and ethical deficiencies.

In response and in reaction to ego, corruption and ethical blunders, people have been looking for something else. Leadership and management theorists have more recently placed an emphasis on the importance of ethics and morality in leaders. What has emerged is values based leadership theories.

The key qualities of a values-based leader have been described as;

self-reflection
balance
self-confidence
humility

Values-based leaders align their own values with those of the organisation in which they work. Self-reflection is a discipline in itself and communicating that through behaviour is a skill. Reflection on the self is not always accurate, because as individuals, we have so many blindspots and unconscious bias.

Leaders Must Model Values To Create A Culture

Values based leadership requires leaders to model values. Ciulla (1999) described different leadership styles and their relationship to values and commented on transforming and servant leadership where the leader demonstrates values but also ‘help followers develop their own values’ which fit with those of the organisation in which they work.

It’s up to leaders and managers to live the values and to help their people understand these values. Where many organisations have made mistakes with this, is where a senior team decides the values, stick them up on the walls around the offices and buildings, send an email out, rather than asking for people’s opinion, and then not living the espoused values themselves. Because, the opinion of the employees is not asked for, there is no buy-in and it becomes a wasted exercise and the leadership teams lose the trust of their colleagues, teams and customers.

One considerable difficulty in developing and maintaining a culture where people hold each other accountable to the Values and Behaviours is that there is a presumption that managers have the skills to implement and share them. As stated previously, this requires self awareness. With the levels of stress, mental health issues, and levels of bullying that exists in modern organisations, we have a way to go when it comes to self awareness in our own behavior; what drives us, what blocks us and the personal impact we have on our working relationships.

What one thing can you do to create and maintain an organisational culture that is values based?

The Power Of Mental Practice In developing Your Communication Skills

Updated 3rd August 2023

Want to hear something that I have always found intriguing?

You can grow your brain by simply imagining yourself practicing a skill, without ACTUALLY physically practicing that skill. Many studies have found mental practice to be nearly as effective as physical practice for skills from types of shots taken in basketball and golf, to movement accuracy and velocity in pianists, to technical skills in novice surgeons.

For example, Pascual-Leone et al (1995a) conducted transcranial magnetic stimulation study (TMS – used clinically to measure activity and function of specific brain circuits), which showed that imagined practice (in this case of a piano sequence) led to comparable expansion of cortical premotor areas responsible for controlling the fingers as actual physical practice.

So you don’t even have to actually move a finger to get the neurons communicating and neural pathways forming!

Athletes have known for years that visualization techniques (otherwise known as mental practice or mental imagery) improve performance, motivation and focus. Many athletes also use visualization to manage and reduce anxiety. This has now filtered into the business and the corporate world. Many highly successful people attribute their achievements to integrating this kind of neural influence with appropriate action. For example, research has shown that self-efficacy is significantly higher and communication skills improved in supervisors, when mental practice is used in combination with goal setting as a post-training intervention.

In case these terms are new to you, visualization refers to creating a picture in your mind of what you want to happen in reality. It can also be a ‘stepping into’ the feeling you would feel both during the unfolding of the goal and at its culmination. While imagining a scenario, you imagine the detail of the actions and the way it feels to perform in the desired way. This mental rehearsal helps minds and bodies to become trained to actually perform the skill imagined.

Beware though, the feeling throughout the process has to be as much as possible conducive to what is desired, otherwise it can hinder the likelihood of achieving the desired outcome. Focus on what you do want, rather than what you don’t want!

Want To Keep Your Brain Young?

Updated August 2nd 2023

Want to keep your Brain young?

In the book “The Brain That Changes Itself” Norman Doidge (2007) states that the way to stave off memory loss into old age and to keep your brain young, is to keep learning new things “learning new physical activities that require concentration, solving challenging puzzles, or making a career change that requires that you master new skills and materials.”

This is partly because the hippocampus, the part of the brain that is involved with memory, grows if it is being challenged. It also grows if you exercise regularly. Exercise is one of the items encouraged by Neuroscientists to stave off certain types of dementia.

As adults, learning and growing requires us to actively make an effort to do so. It means finding new things to learn and then focusing on these. As well as making life more fun and stimulating, it will help to hold off old-age memory loss. Worth a go, don’t you think?

New Year’s Resolutions- Help Yourself With Goal Setting By Understanding The Power Of Your Brain.

Updated August 2nd 2023

Every January, it seems the world at large, puts themselves under huge pressure to force habit change and adopt unrealistic RESOLUTIONS. By middle to late January, the feeling of disappointment is epidemic.

This series of short and simple blogs hopes to tap into a few key tips to help you understand how your brain actually works in creating habit change in your life.

Understanding the Power of your Brain.

The brain has been shaped by evolution to adapt and readapt to an ever-changing world. The ability to learn is dependent on modification of the brain’s chemistry and architecture, in a process called “neural plasticity”.

Neural plasticity is the ability of neurons to change their structure and relationships to one another in an experience-dependent manner according to environmental demands.

This means that everything you think you know and feel now can change for better or worse depending on what you focus on.

It’s easy to think of the brain as being responsible for processing information and problem solving but not always as obvious how much it controls our habits and behaviour too. In all areas of its capacity, it is not a static quantity. It can be grown and shaped deliberately.

How Can We Engage Our Minds to Make the Best Use of Our Brain?

Here are a few tips for you.

Concentrate on what is working and the motivation will naturally follow.

Set bite-sized goals (chunking down). When we break goals or jobs into bite-sized pieces, the memory of the ‘job’ is not so bad and we are happier to take on the task again and again.

Keep doing it until it becomes habit. If you are having fun and chunking things down, new habits (e.g. going to the gym) will become easier to repeat.

Keep self-judgement to a minimum. If you do fall off the wagon with a change or a new habit, don’t give yourself a hard time. Negative self-chat imprisons you in your own fear and makes it difficult to take action to get back on track again.

National Well-Being DAY – Working Together For A Healthier Future!

Updated August 2nd 2023

What would I see if I walked into the reception of YOUR organisation between 8am and 9am this morning?

Would I notice an atmosphere of positivity and well-being.? Would I notice people who are well, happy and healthy, milling through reception? Or would I see over-tired, stressed, coffee-fueled zombies shuffling around the front doors?

As today is National Workplace Well-Being Day, it is more important than ever to reflect on the well-being of your workplace.

The Tagline is ‘Working together for a healthier future!’ What do you think of this statement?

Do YOU work together with YOUR colleagues to create a healthier future?

We’ve been talking about employee engagement, leadership, companionate love, ‘spirit of work’, communication, happiness, thinking, behaviour and all sorts in our recent blogs. Ultimately, we talk a lot about care for ourselves and for our colleagues.

Did you know that Gallup* found that Managers can greatly impact employee well-being, as well as engagement? Ultimately this all plays an important part in the performance of an organisation (Krueger and Killham, 2005).

*(Analytics and advice to help leaders and organisations solve their most pressing problems)

Improving employee engagement needs involvement and commitment from the leaders and manager (Mann & Harter, 2016). Of course it requires ownership and commitment outside of the workplace from the individual also. In my experience, work and home always impact on each other. What is important, is that to improve engagement, you need to improve well-being.

Did you ever consider that?

When I walk into an organisation that practices these things, I can feel it. From the moment I walk into reception, there’s a difference; a difference in how people greet me, and greet each other.

What are you going to do today to improve your well-being and the well-being of those around you?

What If You Are Low In Controlling Thinking And Behaviour?

Updated August 1st 2023

It is important to make people aware of where their thinking is in this area.

Referring to the BIAC Thinking Styles process, a Team Leader or manager who is Centred in their ‘Controlling’ Thinking and Behavior will have no difficulty empowering others, but is fully capable of being in charge, if required.

They are particularly good team leaders and will tend to create the right, most effective team dynamic. So what about if you are ‘low’ in ‘Controlling’ Thinking and Behaviour?

Let’s take the case of another senior manager I worked with recently:

A finance accountant, in another global organisation, let’s call her Flo. When I first met her, she expressed that she was feeling very stressed. She also talked about two of her peers whom she was ‘afraid of upsetting’ because they are both ‘strong confident characters’, who ‘do not react well to input or feedback’. Flo never makes a decision without consulting these two peers, and often ends up performing items that are their responsibilities, even though she is extremely busy with her own activities.

Flo, on being measured by BIAC, came out as ‘low’ on ‘Controlling’ Thinking and Behaviour. What this tells us, is that she gives way and allows others to take complete control, and dictate her approach to making key decisions.

Very ‘low controlling’ belief leads to thinking and behaviour which empowers colleagues or customers to the point where they take over and dictate to you the terms, conditions and overall approach on most issues. Describing very ‘low controlling’ thinkers, customers or indeed colleagues will say ‘he or she cannot make a decision or a stand on any issue’. For the person themselves, the stress from this type of behaviour can be quite severe, as there is often an inner feeling of disappointment with their own performance and a sense of being put upon. This person will often end up doing the work of others as well as their own. They will often hesitate when faced with a decision and let others do their own thing.

Flo, I learn, has been extremely stressed and had to take a few weeks off for stress leave a few months back.

I also later find out that these two peers are, in actual fact, two of Flo’s direct reports! Her ‘low controlling’ Thinking and Behaviour has allowed her to fool herself into thinking they are at the same level of management as her!

Believe it or not, our thinking and the beliefs that they stem from, can absolutely convince us of things that are not in fact true, about ourselves and others.

Realising that your beliefs and your thinking are not useful or optimum sure is frustrating. But it is progress, and awareness means you can change your behaviour. Flo has been working on this and I am happy to report she is making great strides, and is healthier and happier in recent weeks!

Do You Have The ‘Difficult Conversations’ With Your Staff?

Updated August 1st 2023

I had an interesting encounter recently with a Managing Director, let’s call him Dom. I wanted to find out how he manages difficult conversations and communicates with his staff.

“Having difficult conversations? Listening to people? Why do I need to?” asks Dom.
“How have you survived this long without having these conversations, with a business that is 12 years old and has grown to over 100 people?” I ask.
“I delegate all difficult conversations” he says.
“Wow, that is some expertise in delegation!” I respond.

If this ‘delegating conversations’ was unusual, it would not be all that useful for me to write about and for you to read. At least he is being honest. It is often only when I ask people to give me examples of difficult conversations they have had or need to have, that it transpires they have been avoiding having many, many, many conversations they should have been having all along. My experience, as well as research, shows that not having these conversations results in lack of clarity, lack of follow through and a general disengagement by employees.

Did you know, that 1 in 2 people leave their job to get away from their manager?

Did you know that managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores?

Did you know that employees whose managers excel at performance management activities are more engaged than employees whose managers struggle with these same tasks.?

And did you know that, clear & consistent communication — whether it occurs in person, over the phone or electronically – is 1 of the main ingredients connected to higher engagement?

Dom and I engaged in a role-play exercise, simulating a conversation that Dom had been avoiding for quite some time. Having already practiced various scenarios with his colleagues, Dom understood the importance of being an attentive listener in this particular conversation. However, during our role-play, I noticed that he appeared to be listening while only pretending to do so. Although he asked relevant questions (which is often half the battle), it was evident to me, and therefore would most likely be evident to others, that his attention was not fully engaged. Perhaps his position as the MD and the support he receives from his senior team allowed him to get away with it so far, but the consequences are becoming apparent. Dom realizes that he must address this issue promptly to prevent potential problems. He can no longer delegate important conversations; his colleagues have reached their limit.

Of course, it is everyone’s responsibility to have conversations. If you would like to consider whether you are asking questions and actually listening, see some more blogs on this topic below:

When is the last time you said Thank You to your team?

FEEDBACK – Everyone needs Feedback!

The Power of the Domino Effect in Organisations

Positive Leadership Engages Employees

Updated August 1st 2023

I am involved in, committed to and enthusiastic about my work and workplace…does that sound like you?

Gallup (a US workplace research company) have been studying employee engagement for years. The above is how they describe an engaged employee. A recent article by Mann & Harter (2016) illustrated that worldwide only 13% of employees in organisations are considered to be engaged workers.

Additionally, did you know that managers who are optimistic are more engaged and are more likely to manage teams that produce better results? This is according to a study by Arakawa & Greenberg. The study also showed that managers who valued their employees strengths, who had a positive perspective and regularly provided recognition of accomplishments, had employees who were themselves optimistic and engaged. Positive leadership is shown to be related to employee engagement and performance. This illustrates the importance of optimism in the workplace.

Arakawa & Greenberg found that employee optimism was related to their engagement in work which was linked to their project performance. These findings “suggest that managers who currently embody positive leadership are contributing to the effectiveness of not only their employees, but also the organisation as a whole.” (Arakawa & Greenberg, 2007).

There is much evidence showing that leaders need to reflect on the emotions that they are portraying at work every day, as their mood will be reflected by their team. And as Barsade & O’Neill suggest, leaders need to focus less on their ‘cognitive culture’ (teamwork, performance etc.) and develop more their emotional culture using (as mentioned in recent blogs) companionate love, joy and pride. Hold out for our next blog to learn more about how to do so.

When Was The Last Time You Said ‘Thank You’ To Your Team?

Updated August 1st 2023

When was the last time you said ‘thank you’ or expressed genuine interest towards someone on your team? Or are you of the opinion that if someone performs the role they are assigned to and they get paid for it, then ‘thank you’ is not necessary?

Imagine if you knew that simply taking a moment to express gratitude or inquire about someone’s well-being could significantly enhance satisfaction and teamwork, reduce absenteeism, and create a positive impact on customers and clients. Would you then be motivated to make a more concerted effort in this regard?

As you might recall, I mentioned a study conducted by Barsade & O’Neill (2014a) in our previous blog. They discovered that the presence of companionate love, characterized by interdependence, sensitivity, warmth, affection, and connection among individuals, fosters higher employee satisfaction and improved teamwork while simultaneously reducing work absenteeism and emotional exhaustion.

They also found that this type of culture is positively related to client outcomes. When this research was carried out in a hospital setting, it found that workers who had a better emotional and caring culture directly influenced their patients who experienced better mood and satisfaction, and increased quality of life.

Barsade & O’Neill illustrated across a variety of organisations and industries that it was the strength of an organisations companionate love culture that determined employee engagement; where people could express affection, tenderness and caring, had higher levels of job satisfaction, commitment to the organisation and accountability for their work.

In workplaces that don’t experience or promote companionate love there are minimal displays of affection, caring and compassion among workers and people tend to be more indifferent towards each other. Employees in such cultures don’t get to experience the positive emotions that go with companionate love in work and they are less equipped to deal with work situations that are going badly.

I know the idea of this at all makes a lot of people very uncomfortable. But it doesn’t have to be complicated: Barsade & O’Neill illustrate that most importantly “it is the small moments between coworkers — a warm smile, a kind note, a sympathetic ear — day after day, month after month, that help create and maintain a strong culture of companionate love and the employee satisfaction, productivity, and client satisfaction that comes with it.”

I know there have been many times I have suggested to people in management positions to say ‘thank you’, or to write the odd note. I have often been asked in response to this type of suggestion, ‘isn’t it enough that people get paid?!’ or similar.

What do you think?

“When You’re Smiling, The Whole World Smiles With You”

Updated July 31st 2023

Louis Armstong sang “When your smiling, the whole world smiles with you”.
I know a lot of people who are feeling very, very stressed right now. Whether it be from pressure at work, home or just that start-of-the-year feeling, and the expectations that come with this time of year, or a culmination of all of these things.

No matter the source of your stress, remember that you are not alone in experiencing these feelings. I vividly recall a recently challenging day I had in Belgium which took place shortly after the devastating Paris Attacks. Despite my father’s pleas to stay, I found myself going anyway, lugging two massive suitcases for the third time in as many weeks. Exhausted and burdened by my father’s concerns, I realised that I was yet again myself working tirelessly on what was meant to be a day off. Passing most responsibilities to my team, I had anticipated being able to take the time off. To add to the strain, I received a distressing call from a client, marking a significant turning point in a longstanding relationship – and not for the better.

I believe a series of events similar to this served as the catalyst for my recent venture into writing a book centered around the themes of ‘happiness, contentedness, stress management, and choice’. Throughout the process of writing this book, I delved into extensive research, seeking to understand the effects that maintaining a positive outlook, embracing gratitude, and choosing to smile can have on improving our well-being. It became evident that these simple actions have the power to transform our lives through changing our general outlook from negative to positive.

Many years ago, a feedback loop between the expression of and experience of emotions was suggested by the likes of Charles Darwin and by Dr. William James. There is now an accumulation of evidence illustrating how facial-muscular action can affect our mood and perception. For example, Michael Lewis, a psychologist at Cardiff University found “Facial muscles do not just express emotions but they are also involved in the experience or feeling of emotions: Smiling while reading a cartoon, for example, increases amusement.

Another study by Lewis & Bowler (2009) involved people who had undergone Botox injections and thus paralysed their ‘Frown’ muscles. They found that when people couldn’t make negative facial expressions, they found it harder to sustain negative moods. The absence of negative feedback from a person’s face muscles results in people feeling happier! On top of this, according to a rake of research (Wood et al, 2009 etc) grateful people experience positive emotions more frequently.

On the stressful day I spent in Belgium, I practiced smiling and gratefulness endlessly; after the call with my client; on a packed bus with cranky passengers (rush hour and me carrying large suitcases didn’t make them my best friends); a bus driver who was not prepared to wait while I lifted the suitcases off, and snarled at me for leaving the bus at the front door instead of the back door; the complete absence of any taxis, trains or buses for the final leg of my trip; with an aching back, and aching feet. I kept smiling and telling myself how grateful I am that although I am in pain with freezing hands, and have experienced a lot of negative people today, I am so lucky I get to put my head down in a clean hotel bed tonight, whilst so many others around the world have a cement slab, a park bench, or worse, are living in a war zone.

And you know what, other than the bus driver, I definitely got a lot of smiles back that day, because although I felt frustrated and cranky, I just kept treating other people as I would wish to be treated; with a smile and in gratitude!

🙂

Mindfulness- Living WITH The Speed of Life!

Updated July 31st 2024

We think, say, and hear all the time:

“I can’t believe it’s already Friday!”

“We’re already into August!“

“Another year has passed so quickly”

“Where has the time gone??”

Let’s face it: we live in a world where life is literally running away from us. Not because it doesn’t like us and wants to escape from us. It’s because of how our way of living has evolved over many years; we have been surviving – and I literally mean surviving – on this planet.

Having said that, I feel an urgent need to throw a crucial question into the air for everyone out there to catch: Does our fast-paced world represent the rock-solid, inevitable nature of our life? Or are we just “living too fast“?

We always have 3 ways to deal with a challenging situation:

1: We flee.

2: We fight.

3: We adapt.

No. 1 (We flee) is ESCAPING the speed of life: I deem this as something impossible, because we might eventually grind to a halt and stand still for the rest of our life.

No. 2 (We fight) is living AGAINST the speed of life: at first this sounds like a good idea to me, because momentarily we are drowning (or suffocating – picture whichever option you like better!) in the current world of immediacy, instantaneousness, and promptness – it’s now or never!

Turning this world into the promised land where ‘time“ is a foreign word, is something that many of us – be it tangibly or just subcutaneously – wish and strive for.

However, I have one little issue with this: the word “against“ embodies a fight, a struggle, resistance – basically a lot of “negative effort”. We have enough of this in our daily life already, don’t we? So we don’t want any more of this, do we?

This leaves us with the last option, No.3 (we adapt). In which we don’t deny or run away from time but instead focus on ADAPTING to the speed of life. Now what’s decisive here is that we need to understand that we have two possibilities, as well as the choice to pick one of them – just like a train track can go into different directions as its rails split into two at certain points.

The first sub-option is that we live AT the speed of life, which means that we imitate and take on all its characteristics – we basically become one with the speed of life, meaning that we will BE the speed of life!

Getting back to what I said earlier about our urge for being gratified either now or never: if we choose this option – most of the time we do it without conscious intent, (perhaps because someone out there e.g. friend, parent, media, has in fact told us to do so)- we perceive less of what is happening in the world – because all we focus on is instant gratification!

Something happens which inevitably out-smarts our vast skill-set and reduces the quality of our decision-making, as we don’t take the time to see the whole picture. This means that we have less control over what we do, and eventually we get frustrated because of where our (unconscious) decisions have lead.

If this scenario does not appeal to you, you can always opt for sub-option 2, which is living WITH the speed of life. What we need to understand here is that when we adapt to something, we have the choice of shaping what we take on, as we like, without becoming that thing itself. We can instead become our own version, living next to that thing, rather than taking on its characteristics. For example, say you don’t like your manager, who is a stressed and aggressive person. You can adapt to him/her rather, than becoming like him/her – easiest thing to do to deal with the situation would be to become stressed and aggressive towards your manager or others. But the healthier thing to do is to learn some techniques to deal with this type of personality, and hence keep yourself calm and content.

In other words: we can let the speed of life determine how we adapt to it, or we can determine it ourselves to eventually live WITH it.

The former (sub-option 1) is the far more convenient and satisfying “low-energy-cost“-version, which will – ironically enough – lead to a “quicker“ life and therefore frustration.

The latter (sub-option 2) requires us to consciously slow down, hold on, step back, and see the whole picture.

The key is that only achieving a state of mindfulness will allow us to perceive the huge amount of options that are available to us – including living a “slower“, “longer“, and therefore a happier life.

I know why I thoroughly enjoyed writing this blog.

Written by our Guest Blogger Oliver Sifkovits (Msc, CSCS)

Oliver Sifkovits (Msc, CSCS) is a Performance Enhancement Specialist, Personal Trainer, as well as 4th belt holder in Capoeira. He has provided Strength and Conditioning service to athletes from various sports, levels, and age groups, including footballers from Hertha BSC Academy, World Cruiserweight Boxing Champion Pablo Hernandez, as well as multiple Austrian Racketlon Champion Michael Dickert. His approach is designed around improving body-mind-spirit performance and health in individuals.

Are Your Beliefs Stifling Your Confidence at Work?