Wellness at work

Most of our drive is unconscious, like an iceberg consciousness is only the tip above water, the unconscious mind, which is the one that drives us, is under the freezing water.

We start driving our life when we turn into our unconscious.  Most of our unconscious mind is built upon systems we live in.  Maybe we learned to believe that men are stronger than women, that women should obey, perhaps that men are better leaders than women, or that women are better caretakers than men. Women are emotional beings and men are rational.  Men are bold and courageous and women are sensitive and beautiful.  Regarding money, men are providers and women are helpers, but with the house chores men are helpers and women are the responsibles ones.  These are only examples of some of the beliefs we learn.

They are important, they helps us to live in a society, but the more conscious we are about our beliefs, the more we are the ones driving our lives, opposite to when we are not conscious, our unconscious mind will lead us, and usually not to where we want to be.

We bring all our belief systems to our working environment, the dominant system now is patriarchy, which is a social belief system, briefly summarized as men having more value than women, especially at work and this has a direct impact on our self-esteem.

Most of the time we can not control our work environment, but we can always control the way we relate to it.  And to improve our wellbeing at work and in general, I will share with you the basic tool kit compiled by dr Huberman, these are our basic needs, this is not enough, but is a basic foundation we all need:

1. Enough sleep (+ - 7 to 8 hours daily for an average adult) 

2. Healthy nutrition; balanced and quality nutrition.

3. Enough sunlight and dark time

4. Movement: regular exercise.

5. Social connection

6. Stress management

I will deepen into the last two, as those are my area of work.

Social connection, regarding this I will share one simple technique, let’s pay attention to our relationships, who drains our energy and who bust us.  In order to know, we need to pay attention to our body signs, which are the people at work with whom you feel energized, and with whom you feel exhausted when you spend time with them, the people who take your energy away.  Once we know that, then we can reduce as much as we can, contact time with those who drain us and increase the contact with those who provide energy to ourselves.  Usually we feel drained with people with whom we don’t feel authentic. Authenticity is a basic human need, for wellbeing.  This is only information that helps us understand ourselves.

Now if we notice that we are getting emotionally triggered in our job too frequently or intensely, then it means we need to attend to ourselves, it most probably means that we are carrying a very important unresolved issue, and for that I highly recommend psychotherapy.

Stress management is related to our thoughts, our unconscious mind, our beliefs and all our emotions among other factors.  I like to understand emotions as our message system, they tell us what is important to us, the intensity of them usually tell us if the issue is related to the present moment or our past.  For example if we experience a very intense emotion at work, most likely the core issue is more related to our history than to the present moment. 

At that moment we need a pause.  In order to be able to pause we can do a simple regulation breathing exercise: 

Deep inhale, and when you feel your lungs full, give an extra inhale, hold for a couple of seconds and then exhale from the mouth slowly.  This will help to regulate our vagal system.

Once we are able to pause, then we need to be curious, kind and compassionate, especially toward ourselves.

Thank you for reading.