The Power of Mindset

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for a while I was a civilian and constantly stressful for back not SHP on
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time so glad time so um we'll get underway we
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good there n we've got about 30 people online something like that so I will endeavor to stay kind of in shot now
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just let me know if if I DFT off shots uh so to introduce myself
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properly so I'm Steve I'm the chief mental health officer nzdf and I'll talk
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a bit about that in a minute um and uh I grew up running around the mang top
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ranges around the top of the South Island my dad told me to fish in the W River just coming today anyone from
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around Nelson tman way it's great part of the country I was down there just to lovely weather down
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there and um uh I've been in the Army 20
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20 plus years on and off regular and reserve and uh I am currently a clinical
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psychologist and as I said earlier the chief mental health uh I'm a clinical psychologist
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but I wasn't always a clinical psychologist for a for a good portion of my career in the Ed de I was a
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performance and organizational psychologist and so my job was to focus on helping our service members and
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civilian staff be at their best across all the kind of context and situations that we asked some top bring to kind
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bring to that what we know about psychology and now a little bit about that because
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that helps understand the kind of uh my thinking and my around what we're going
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to talk about today so um who's head some engagement with
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psychologist many of people right so uh defense psychologists as I said are there to make people be help people be
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at their best all the things we ask out people do so if you want to be in the bond disposal Squad my job is to make
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sure you can handle some stress it's quite helpful from that job to be able to you want to be a physical training
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instructor my job was to make sure that you adjust the right balance of sarcasm and Psychopaths
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too into my own personal trauma um did a lot of work with teams helping teams be
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really effective as effective as possible so and deployed off short with some teams to places like places like
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that uh later on in my career in that role I did quite a lot of leadership development so working with uh helping
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design a leadership development system as well as working with individual leaders often those leaders were in high
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you know high level roles with a lot of responsibility and they got those jobs because they were high performance they
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got those jobs because many of them have done objectively amazing things and we're objectively impressive human
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beings what I noticed as I sat with those people and we talked about how to keep them there and how to keep them
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high performing was that many of them a surprising portion to me anyway also
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carry mental health the same kind of stuff that many many communities anxiety
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depression relationship difficulties burnout all that kind of stuff that
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we and as I as I heard their stories I was also struck I was reminded of uh
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some some words by a famous psychologist a guy called John gotman has anyone heard of John gotman sweet but a
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psycholog down good job does lead anywhere so you probably made the right choice um so John Gman are famous he's
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famous because he's a relationship expert he can watch uh any couple talk
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about you know most couples like having that little niggle that kind of conversation that never goes away no just
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me so Jan gotman can watch a couple talk about that for 15 minutes and predict
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with 90% accuracy whether they'll still be married in six years time those are
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Godlike skills for don't imagine he gets invited to a lot of dinner parties or
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but John gotman says this about life right he says that we tend to assume things are going to get easier things
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are going to get simpler just need to get over this pill get past this phase get through this transition and then
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I'll be able to breathe and SLE most John got said that actually like that's
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not true mostly life just gets more complex we have increasing technical
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responsibilities at work we require leadership responsibilities at work we require partner we have to balance our
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needs with Partners needs we acquire children I have two children myself I love them dearly but they are agents of
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chaos nothing will add complexity to your life children so so often times
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when um I've noticed that with people that I'm working with both defense and when I was in private practice outside
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of this organization that many of the people who are struggling their solution to that increasing complexity of life
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was just to throw more energy at the problem to work harder and and to and to try and squeeze more out of out of out
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of themselves and over time that just became unsustainable and then that showed up as anxiety as depression as
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burn out as bringing toatal relationship so here's my first kind of takeaway from
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today if you notice that in yourself if you notice that for you your solution to
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what increasing complexity of life is to just throw more energy at the then think
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about if I was going to solve that differently what might what might I do and we're going to talk to today about some ideas about how you might do that
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but broadly speaking if all you get away from this presentation is the idea that maybe I
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need to reevaluate just working harder as a solution that's not a waste of time
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cool so uh here's what we are going to talk about today defense would like to start off every presentation or at least I do with the bottom line up front or
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the bluff uh because I sort of presume that people are going to drift off during the presentation that's my experience of Psych of Psych lectures in
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defense so um I like to start off with this fak m proverb as a way of kind of
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capturing the sentiment what we're going to talk about today or by thefe it was sort search
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diligently and it will re one you will read one the reason I picked that is twofold first of all kind of alludes to
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this idea of being diligent but one of the things I want you to remember is that there are other ways to solve
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problems in life that just working so be cautious of however the better this
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is that it talks about step by step foot by foot and one of the key messages from today will just be take the little steps
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do little things to invest on in the wellbe all the evidence or a good body
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of evidence suggests that the thing that makes the most difference is focusing on the little things that you can do and
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snacking on wellbeing snacking on investing in your in your mental health on a hourly daily weekly basis rather
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than looking for any big magic prod generally they're hard to find does that
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make sense now a few rules of thumb for today if you've got a question just ask just
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asked you know feel free to Pope up my experiences that if you have a question other people have have that same thought
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and so I would encouraging just ask that perhaps for everyone if you disagree with anything I say that is perfectly
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okay raise that as well you won't be the first person to disagree with me one of these presentations more indeed would
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you be the first person to disagree with me today my 12y old sent me wrri on something just before I left home this morning so please don't hesitate D
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you'll probably be doing it for others as well as so let's make this a conversation as much as possible we only
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about an hour but we'll try and make it as kind of informal and engaging as possible so here's what we're going to
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talk about we're going to talk a little bit about how to um things to be mindful of what to know about your mindset
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particular your h n because that is a focus of our our week this week in wellbeing week we're going to talk about
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how to notice when it's unhelpful how to notice when your thinking is getting in the way of your wellbeing and then what
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to do when you notice that is happening and we're going to have a whistle s tour through a few little things that you
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might be able to do to help help with your wellbeing and particularly around managing uh getting inside your own head
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and tripping yourself up in the so uh just to start off my
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experience often times in life as an in clinical practice uh is that it feels
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feel like when people have a mental health difficulty or wobble often the people around them will say I came out
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of nowhere it just kind of popped up you just went over a clip all of sudden it was really inexplicable my experience is
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that if you listen or if you if you're noticing hard enough actually that's not often not the case right including you
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know I've been in the Army 20 plus years come up through my career with a number of my cohort and again when they have
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head wobbles often times we know what we before we could have stopped got it got ahead of it earlier so my experience is
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it more often looks like this prior to the rapid decline there's a period where
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there's a Glide path into and a and a slow degradation that kind of investment
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in their wellbe and often that might look like as an example there are many indicators and we'll talk about them
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later but as an example it might look like working long outs which is Then followed by getting distant from family
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and friends I'm so focused on my job and getting the task done I pull away from the people in my life that I love and
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the people thatour L time for them even when I'm with them Reon with them
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because I'm thinking about work I'm too TI then that can also come come out as
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irritability and getting distant from workmates we'll talk more about irritability later but it's really
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important to pay attention to irritability in particular being impatient with people around you and our
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population and defense not always in not every case but more more often and not not and more commonly I suspect from the
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general population part of that pattern is also drinking more or know to be healthy inou
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relationships and so there a period here where they start the things that matter to them start to get degraded the things
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that nourish our soul the things that keep us strong and healthy and well and invigorated our relationships our sense
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of identity in our work our sense of accomplishment all start to get degraded and then they'll hit some Tipping Point
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maybe a large or a small thing at work or at home and they'll go downhill fairly s so a key a key thing we uh take
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away from today is going to be focusing on noticing when people are hitting on
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this trajectory and what are the small things you can do in these moments
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rather than waiting till someone's down here so kind of we are going to talk a bit about down here if someone's down
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here and what you or you might do for yourself or someone else if that's the case but the key Focus will be noticing and
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acting early in small ways to stay on top you AIT rather than it is possible
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but a lot harder to soften the land to recover people does that make sense do
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anyone to call sorry to call B Dash
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on so uh one tool we use for this in the defense community and we and this is now
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public a public sector tool as well is the mental health Contin sh hands who who will see the mental
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health so the reason we we use this tool is that many new zealanders are not well
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trained at talking about their feelings and their wellbeing more so um the idea with mental health
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Continuum is it provides a framework for talking about and having conversations with ourselves to ourselves and
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conversations with Faro and with and with colleagues so healthy is
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uh many gas in the tank got some reserves firing on all cylinders you know that feeling just after you get
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back from just the right amount of leave where you're actually quite happy to be back at work but not you know still not
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weirdly happy but they're happy enough reacting is normal recoverable
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stress every human being has tough days tough times life throws that stuff so
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reacting is normal recoverable stress Orange
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is unsustainable stress so you might be meeting the demands of the key things in your life you might be showing up at
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work you might be uh showing up for your Faro in the important ways but doesn't
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feel sustainable stuff around the edes may may be starting to get fright does
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that make sense and then red is when it's starting to get in the way of the
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things that you love or that are important to next when we start to talk about into
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the mistake that many of us fall into the Trap many of us fall into is that we
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assume if we are not here then we must be human and actually there's quite a
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lot of distance between between being green and in particular the scale of
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noticing when you're going from yellow to Orange from normal human recoverable
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stress to unsustainable stress is the key scale for kind of wellbeing
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noticing what shows up for you and what shows up for the people around you either at work or at home and starting
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to shift from yellow to Orange is a key skill and we'll anchor on much today
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getting on top of early making small adjustments another trap people fall into is that we're so long here that we
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think we are still here when in fact we are orange gusting we right so we lose
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track of or we lose sight of what what this look like for us we think we're still coping when
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infected does that make sense so today we're going to focus on this transition from
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yellow so there are some things that push us up and down that that Continuum that mental health con what are some
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acute events some intense stresses that might quickly shove us towards the red end of the
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spectrum it's awkward to ask question and no answers
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what else relationship breakups totally 100% really really common
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one death and Friends
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definitely now deployment often yeah often deployment can be a mixed bag right know
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it can be a pro and a con and both of those at the same time definitely sometimes the stuff we ask people to do
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on deployment the things we ask them to see and do can can be a big de well in house yeah definitely unexpectedly yeah
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or even expectedly that's bad enough right so here's a list of the common stuff that pushes people up and and
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often times when someone experiences one or more of these things we pay attention right and we check in and we Mon and we
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expect and make and it's okay to be struggling just as an aside or a more
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Insidious impact on our wellbe is often uh often comes from chronic stresses so
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what might be some chronic ongoing stress that might that might impact on people's well SLE deprivation definitely
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so if if you're a new parent that's a very common sort of
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experience yeah so having lots of work and feeling like you're struggling to keep up with it health ill health
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definitely here are some workplac chronic stress ores that have been linked to uh lesser mental health
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outcomes so they aren't CES but they often make it harder to stay there the
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more of these that are true more light the more pressure is it's harder to stay closer to the green
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this so This slide is here to say and here to make the point that don't
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underestimate the impact of just lowlevel chronic ongoing stress our
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brains and our bodies are not built for chronic stress our brains and our bodies are built for short periods of high
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stress and then some time for recovery and some time to recuperate some time to
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reorganize and if we don't allow that for ourselves or we aren't allowed that for whatever reason so to borrow I
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presume was kids there think yeah so for many people for many couples that I or people that I've worked with often times
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have started life where they work hard during the week they go home on the weekend and they have a day or two where they can de-stress and relax and chill
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out and it goes really well and that works really well for then they have children and
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they come to work to relax and the weekends are the kind of high stress period of their their routine and so
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again it's about understanding the changes in your life and how they might impact on your ability to build a cycle
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of recovery of of push and recover push that make sense to anyone comment
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on so um what are if we think about going from yellow to Orange what are
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some of the things you might see in someone that is going from yellow to
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lch what are some of the signs what the first task is noticing right the first task is noticing when someone is
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struggling including ourselves snappy snappy yeah totally grumpiness
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irritability so grumpiness is um grumpiness is really important and is
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actually there's some good evidence that um irritability particularly in men
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would be a sign of depression could be really quiet as well
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withraw what else the opposite of that they could become a little bit more men
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at yeah so sort of super talkative and yeah like they trying
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to yeah or they're trying to distract themselves with their own sort of energy
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what else can't they hear they here like I'm going to change myself yeah get a tattoo or something
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yeah what else say again lack ofing yeah just not
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caring yeah Y what
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else like just keeping working through breaks andar y so yeah
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cool eating patents yeah what might happen to eating patents some people
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overeat some people don't yeah totally so I I become all about
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pies but I worked with someone who would forget to she was when she was stru when she was stressed some people do both so
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forget during the day and then like have three pizzas and a box of ice cream what
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else violent out LS yep definitely aggression violence that kind of stuff
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what else the thing about aggression and irritability is that often there are sign we're not okay and and the but they
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push people away so if we if we if we feel sad that
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tends to draw people in who care about us but but irritability pushes the people that we most need what
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else cynicism yeah so so there's good kiwi
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cynicism you know good healthy cynicism then there's kind of toxic right so
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that's got a snar on each what El illness illness definitely
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y changeing sleeping patters sleep caner in the coal mine yeah what else alcohol
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consumption drinking more just as an aside there quite a big drinking has
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quite a big impact on the quality of your sleep you don't need to have a lot on board for it to start to impact on the quality of your sleep what
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else focus goes down so just anything else smoking so if
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you're a smok already you'll have an uptick and yep
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totally caffeine can be a related one as well or related
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pattern uh what about has any rumination what's your definition of rumination it's the same thing going
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around and around rumination deres from the Latin to chew so it's to chew on
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your thoughts my mind likes to do this at about 3: a.m. just plays whatever embarrassing
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thing I just said that day over over my head the variation I met or another
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variation I met is worry which is when and my mind likes to at 3 A.M as well uh
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plans out whatever the worst thing that could happen tomorrow and just plays that on a loop so those two would probably be similar to overthinking
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anding y both the same talking to yourself yeah I like that can be helpful
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but often it's not right anything else exercise yeah so
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exercise can be often it drops off but a useful thing to notice in our population
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is that it can actually go up so some people there's a really interesting piece of research suggesting that more
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than about 25 exercise sessions a month might signal an increase in distress
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someone because in our population we use often use exercise as a way of managing stress and so when it's not working we
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just do even more of it and that can often be unhelpful in the long term because we get exhausted and it pulls us
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away from our family and loved ones and stff it doesn't give us time to actually rest in what else else being
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unpredictable yeah cool well not cool but accurate
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yes that's good right that's a good list D yeah uh just from um the onl
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online parci does research show that signs and symptoms are similar across cultures do you know about there are
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some variations so uh within particularly of what I'm aware of um
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some cultures tend to have much more sematic kind of body stuff uh representations of into wellness and
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some have a lot more in Western culture we have a lot more kind of thinking
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stuff does that make sense yeah thank you so if I would sort of given this
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away already but if you put a label on this one here what would you give it yep M
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animation put a lab on this one here physical yeah stuff that's happening in our body or we're putting
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into our body this one here
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one here if I were to add um ethics kind of Ethics
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breaches yeah kind of
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meaning meaning
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values identity spirituality and culture all those
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things that connect us to something larger than ourself so for me my identity as a
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soldier kind of goes in here if it takes a hit I take a hit uh my identity as a psychologist goes in here my love of c
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fishing it goes in here um all that kind of stuff that is connects you to the things you love and the people that are
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important to or sorry the things that are important to you does anyone know this
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model so the house of four WS the um pH bar model arose out of a conversation
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actually by the Marty women's league in the 1980s where uh was facilitated by
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Sir Mason jury apponent M psychiatrist now sir Mason jury from I just up in up
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in building and the idea with the model is that uh the Western Health System was
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good at some parts of mental health or sorry well-being and Broad Health but not good at other parts so it was good
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at physical health on CL like I sort of have to say this but the jury is probably still out it's
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arguably good at mental and emotional health it was pretty poor at Social Health and very poor at
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this and now within um within the world
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all of these elements have kind of sophisticated and nuanced understandings and connections uh particularly to
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Hawaii I'm not in a position to talk to those things however what is true is
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that in the subsequent 40 years since the 1980s there's been a shared load of research looking at what makes for
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healthy and resilient human beings and one of the most consistent threads in that research including a large $200
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million study by the US Army is that the thing that makes the most difference is being connected to who matters and what
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matters if you are connected to who matters and what matters then life tends
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to be okay when you are facing struggle when you are facing complexity if you make choices that are based on who
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matters and what matters you will generally be okay you can deal with all of the stuff including if you are
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experience a mental health condition it is a lot easier to stay okay if you stay
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connected when we get disconnected from who matters and what matters that is when we start to walk that is when
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things get hard so here's my second con take away from today if the only thing
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you walk away from today with is the idea and the intention of getting just a
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little bit closer to who matters and what matters to you and prioritizing that just a little bit more that will
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make a difference does that make sense now everyone has some of these
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some of the time right it's normal and human You' got new babies who have sleep
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disruption um no life is stressful and things happen and we get irritable all that kind of stuff
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one of the elements or fundamental premises under the model is that all four Wars are connected so if one gets
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wobbly others start to get wobbly as well so a pattern that we should we should pay attention to ourselves in
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ourselves and in other people is if these things start to feed off into so I
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have a bad day at work and I start ruminating on which means that I don't sleep so well which means that I'm tired
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and too tired and fatigued to do p the next day which gives me a lot more time to sit around and have a few be there we
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go which means that um I'm grumpy and irritable with the people at home so I
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sort of stay on my own and withdraw because I know I'm not good company and I don't have the energy to go kayak
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fishing I get a bit cynical that's when you get into trouble was when those things start feeding off each other if
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you notice that in yourself or someone close to you or that you're responsible for then it's worth having a
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conversation and doing something the important thing is you don't need to do anything big because disrupting any of
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these LS will impact on the ones Downstream so if you stop someone from
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if you take someone for a run or for a walk on a day like today whatever it is if you do something small you can then
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disrup some of these other feedback loops further down so once again just an example of why it's important to focus
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on the little things and making small changes rather than big ones does that make sense
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so
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[Music] now so what I want you to do is just
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take uh two three minutes to talk to the person next you and just have a chat
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about what shows up for you first when you're starting to go from yellow to Orange and see what's different what's
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the same just have a chat with a person to share a story or two
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you uh have a have a
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the onl one of your sides
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injury thatal
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injury Financial like breaking your leg or thr your back out all that
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yeah I mean yeah
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no
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um
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s
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but I'm curious any observations
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comments yeah so saying the other day I was like quite
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tired had like an extra cup of coffee in the afternoon and went to my running club yeah um but at the time I was I'm
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going to go to running as you said it's better to go and do exercise to
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go but then if you're if you're exercising then you're also more like yourself good point yeah yeah when
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you're tired and not yeah so you have to think about all
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so just do something yog
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Al so um here's the thing when we are busy when we are stressed when we have a
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lot on our plate and we are yellow nudging orange nudging red we forget to
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notice when when what that that we are that way we're so busy dealing what with
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what is in front of us that we forget to notice so uh my advice or my kind of
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suggestion to you is have a think and get familiar with what shows up first for you and if you're feeling really
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Brave you could have a conversation with the people in your life that matter to you whether it be your at home or your
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workmates that you trust about how they might raise it with you when they notice
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it in you because often the people around us notice it before we do if they
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can help us notice that in a way that is gentle and compassionate then that can be
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useful any comments questions I just thr um because I did
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what you just said because I have a tendency when I was a petrol withdraw in fact there's a leader that's
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need to do the opposite yeah and so we had that conversation with the team and it made a huge difference and I just say
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a little thing like hey you was more quiet than normal and I knew straight away all right I'm showing that so and then learn what the mechanisms was to
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adjust to that so get myself out of the office and go talk to people and it was really interesting because being uplifted by people that actually gives
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me energy yeah so it actually had a real positive effect not to me but to others as well so great it really works well
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great example man' and the other really useful point from that is that um you know if we had more time we do the
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reverse of this like what are the strengths that you have in each of these areas right which includes Faro includes
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you know whatever exercise so FR clubs your good your happy place not my happy place that's fine you know so protecting
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the things that and you and you also get a reverse spir right when you do one little helpful thing makes it easier to
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do the next little helpful thing in sell so now what I'm going to do is use
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the rest of the session today to give you a Whistle Stop tour through some little things that you can experiment with with or think about in terms of
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particularly so managing the way you are thinking and and what is happening emotionally for you getting better and
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more skillful at noticing and and responding to that stuff so we talk about notice name and
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navigate is the kind of process that we talk so noticing what's showing up for you building a habit of noticing what's
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showing up for you internally naming that ah I know what this is this is stress this is frustration whatever
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it is and then having an idea about what you going what you do when you notice that stuff and identify
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name so the first part is to focus on the things you can control stress comes
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from uh or the almost the definition of stress is when we are worried about or
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pay attention to things we can't control and get fixated on things we can't
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focusing on the things you can control no matter how small they are tends to make better mental health over time and
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a friend of mine who's a firefighter he tells me that firefighters have this phrase you are 100% responsible for your
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50% which is their way of saying there are lots of things in life that you that are important to you that you can't
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control that is okay and and to notice those things is okay but to give fixated on them is not as helpful as focusing on
36:24
the things that you can control so as we go through today talk about little things you can do when you notice that
36:30
you're focusing on things you can't control and bringing them back to things you can does that make
36:36
sense so the first first kind of phase is this noticing and paying attention and being aware of what we're paying
36:44
attention one tool for this that i' many people that I work with find helpful is noticing our time traveling mind so the
36:51
idea with this tool is that build up a practice uh of and you can even do this
36:57
like draw the line in your diary and when you notice your mind wandering or getting caught up or getting dragged
37:03
away into into rumination it can be helpful to kind of draw a line in your diary with these these points distant
37:09
past recent past present moment immediate future and distant future and then let your mind wonder and notice and
37:17
track with your finger or with a pen where it goes on the top so let's imagine that I say something
37:24
embarrassing in front of a group of people that I haven't met before that I know I might bump into awkwardly in the office or later on and my mind then goes
37:32
to a did that last week too and it was super weird when i r that person one in the elevator and then that reminds me of
37:40
uh my very first kind of embarrassing presentation I ever did in defense and I've never really stopped kind of
37:45
thinking about that which then sort of takes me forward to uh my my upcoming
37:52
career development meeting with my boss and how this Pat might start to come up there is that sense so your mind starts
37:59
to bounce around evidence suggests that we spend between 60 and 80% of our life
38:04
somewhere else on the timeline other than the present moment and the only
38:10
thing you can control really is the present moment past has already happened the future isn't here yet and your
38:16
capacity to influence that is limited so focusing on the here and now and not and
38:22
bringing your awareness when there's a little break in your flow bringing your awareness back to the Here and Now now
38:28
the task that is in front of you the thing or the person that is most important to you here and now that can
38:34
be a very useful skill so tracking it physically and then when you notice a little break bringing your attention
38:41
anchoring your attention does that make sense as a so that's one small thing to try if
38:48
you notice that you're caught up in rumination if your mind starts
38:54
to the next thing you can do that can be useful is to build up a bit of an activity log so many of us make lists of
39:00
things we want to do and that kind of stuff who does that makes lists who sometimes add stuff to the list after
39:06
they've done it just it's not a waste of time actually
39:13
there's some there's some good reasons why that's not a waste of time so um but
39:19
uh one of the often the best ways to notice how we're spending time is to actually make a habit of just logging it
39:24
just noticing where we put our attention for we often find that we spend more time on social media on our devices in
39:30
the next we spend more time doing less important emails for instance then the
39:37
more important critical tasks that we should be so making a habit of just actively reflecting on where you're
39:42
spending your time and your attention can be worthwhile one thing to think about as
39:48
you log where you spend your time is break it down into things I must do like pay the bills things I should do like um
39:56
my ironing so like to and then make sure or pay attention to how much of your tasks are
40:03
things you want to do often times in life particularly if we're busy with Pho and other addictions we we deprioritize
40:10
the things we want to do and then bring us joy and it can be useful at least once each day to make sure there's one
40:16
thing in the day that you want to do whether it's at work or at home it's going to naturally kind of help you feel
40:23
that sense of excitement and finally use of clock the
40:29
things we enjoy doing and to log that as well as ourense of Mastery or our sense
40:34
of achievement sometimes we have so much in front of us that we have yet to achieve we lose track of the things we
40:39
have achieved so blocking and logging actually the things and Crossing stuff off like adding stuff onto your list in
40:45
order to cross off um can be helpful for that can help keep our motivation and our sense of some progress to build
40:54
motivation coms on the other thing you can do which is a
41:00
similar version but is a bit more free freestyle is reflective or expressive writing there is a plora of evidence
41:09
around the benefit of keeping a diary or doing some regular ref reflective
41:14
writing process if you want to Google something you can Google expressive writing there's a good website called
41:21
greater good which has some very nice kind of guides around reflective and expressive writing um and the reason
41:28
this helps is that it uh gets stuff out of our head and onto the page where we
41:33
can look at it and decide what to do decide whether we should so building a
41:38
practice of doing that can be useful here are some tips if you do decide to do it include writing about your
41:44
thoughts and your feelings so may pay attention to labeling and noticing those
41:50
write continuously so don't sense yourself just kind of keep going put a timer on for 10 minutes just keep going
41:55
write about what it's like to write about the stuff if you notice some anxiety or some tension or some
42:01
uncomfortable thoughts or feelings some self judgments for instance that pop up as you do that that is okay that is
42:07
human and normal and my advice to you is to keep going just push through that for
42:13
many people most of the time not all the time but most of the time that anxiety or that discomfort will rise and then if
42:19
you stick with it it'll fall and you'll start to learn that these thoughts and feelings maybe aren't quite so
42:25
uncomfortable as I thought they were as they first F does that make
42:31
sense and then at the end take a moment just to rewrite that story I was to put a different lens on the story if I was
42:37
to frame this in terms of opportunity or growth how would I frame whatever it isse that I just just to put a different
42:43
lens different perspective on it towards does that make
42:49
sense next thing we talk about is naming and getting getting familiar with and identifying okay this is a choice point
42:55
this is a moment a decision point when I when I need to do something different and what what might tell you that how
43:01
you might name it for yourself so one of the most useful things you can do is name your emotions
43:07
so let's imagine that I am starting a new job what are some of the emotions that I might
43:14
feel overwhelm anxious definitely because I'm not sure how it's going to go what else
43:20
EXC excited so I might feel like there's opportunities there looking forward to what else
43:27
feel sense of grief leaving the [Music] old
43:35
so so so um if we all those emotions tell us to
43:42
our emotions tell us to help us to do things that are helpful gener so I I feel anxious that tends to prompt me to
43:49
prepare to kind of investigate and figure out what the demands if I feel excited I might plan for those
43:55
opportunities and be more explicit about these are the things I'm going to get after the job if it's relief I'm going
44:00
to practice or look forward to putting those things behind me whatever it is if it's grief if I'm sad at leaving the job
44:07
then I can say goodbye and make time for saying goodbye to the people so when we start to put emotions
44:13
around our experiences we tend to get better at making choices that are helpful about what we're going to do
44:20
next many new zealanders though are not well trained with emotions and not well
44:25
trained at labeling your emotions if you're parent one of the best things you can do is help your kids develop an
44:31
extensive emotion of vocab and then be able to articulate this stuff so you
44:36
know often times when I'm working with with people one of the things we'll do is we'll build a list like this and
44:42
there are tons of these kinds of list on the internet and will build a regular practice of going through when I'm
44:47
feeling intense emotions when I'm feeling a lot is going on going down the list and ticking off all the stuff I'm
44:54
fing so what I get you to do is just take 30 seconds to think of a time when was the last time maybe in the last week
45:00
where you felt a bit of motion not like a 10 out of 10 don't want to go there but um but like a five or 67 been a bit
45:06
going on bit irritation maybe or something else at home bit of business in life just go down the list and take
45:11
the ones that you were feeling in that
45:25
moment is and F of a
45:45
shame who is experiencing one to
45:51
three who's experiencing four to five five six
45:59
so often times when you do this what you when people do this it's often helpful for two reasons one starts to feel a bit
46:05
more controllable starts to feel a bit like I know the landscape my internal landscape a bit better I feel like I
46:11
know what's going on a bit more and with that can start to make some more deliberate choices more intentional
46:19
choices one small thing you can practice give give a
46:24
go uh the next thing it can be used for to notice is your goto rules so uh David
46:31
car was a psychologist also actually a professional poker player in the 1960s ably not a huge kind of career diversion
46:38
um and he noticed in his practice that often times people had one of five rules
46:44
in their head that they clung to when things got sticky or hard so if I'm
46:50
feeling stressed out or things are not going away my way I tend to do one or more of these things so I to hurry up or
46:58
my mind tells me that I should be stronger my mind tells me that I have to please everyone all the time or my mind
47:04
tells me that I have to just work harder if I just work harder they'll make me feel good or if I be perfect and I get
47:09
it just right there I'll feel good so it can be useful to notice these rules and
47:15
the frequent flies for you for me one of my things my mind tells me that I have to hurry up so this morning when I was
47:21
getting my 12-year-old out the door uh and I was telling my mind was telling me to hurry up cuz we're under pressure I
47:28
was telling her to hurry up how do you think that so Tri with these rules is that
47:35
sometimes they are helpful often they are not and so noticing when the rule in your head is actually making things
47:42
worse right now it's actually creating more pressure and stress for you and is becoming unhelpful that that can be
47:51
very any questions on that does that make sense how do you distract yourself from that oh good question you know yeah
47:58
if you know what it is yeah
48:03
yeah um another thing to label is a is when a value becomes unhelpful or or a
48:09
principle becomes unhelpful so in Buddhism I de with bism when I was at University they talk about near enemies
48:16
which is when something a value that is important to you starts to create more problems than ites so for instance cons
48:22
becomes possibly High stand beautifulness becomes pleasing other there's some really interesting research
48:29
looking at defense members in the US and how their values can get in the way of their well so these are common military
48:36
values and how they might get in the way of military so if you notice any of those
48:43
in yourself again it is worth saying I know what this is this is my value of
48:48
stoicism it's getting in the way my asking for help from the people that could that could be
48:55
given so again noticing when you have a rule in your head is getting in the way
49:00
actually making things harder for
49:06
you so now we're going to talk about what you might do in few minutes with um
49:12
when you notice some of those things show up you decided actually I need to make a small change so the first thing you can
49:19
do is well here's what we tend to do as human beings we tend to assume that we can get up in the morning have two cups
49:25
of coffee in my case is one is not quite enough and then sh at 100% And just crack on all day at 100% our brain will
49:33
tell us that is how we operate and should operate all the time all the evidence is that it doesn't our our
49:40
wellness and our brains don't operate L that in fact it doesn't matter whether you're a Google software engineer or a
49:46
fighter pilot your brain can only operate optimally for about 90 minutes before it needs a rest it literally runs
49:52
out of glucose particularly here at the front preed so you need to take bre it might
49:57
feel like you are here but if you track outputs typically people's outputs strong so the skill in life is building
50:05
a rhythm of Surge and recover Surge and recover Surge and recover over the
50:11
course of an hour over the course of a day over the course of a week over the course of a year building this habit
50:17
pushing and then relaxing and recovering pushing and then recovering that is sustainable High performing athletes
50:25
they build them they they notice these rhythms and build their rhythms so they Peak at important moments and
50:30
importantes ccum so for me for instance when I was a private practice um when I
50:36
was seeing clients I find shredding paper like a deeply spiritual
50:42
exper and so I would you do that I would when I saw a client often quite intense
50:49
moments I would make sure that I would take take the notes record them into the system and then I'd always make time to
50:55
read the paper at the end of the session because for was seconds
51:02
of for whatever if you have taken little moments like that in your Rhythm and giving yourself permission to that stuff
51:08
is important smoko quiz becomes important because it's time for rest and the step always and so look for those
51:15
little rhythms in your day and build them similarly over the course of your week over the course of your
51:22
year so one and if you if you don't give yourself a time to that break it's often
51:27
during those breaks that we notice that we are caught up in an unhealthful so
51:33
one of the things you can do if you if you notice a pattern is to just take a break and rest y or slow down have drun
51:40
water have a cup of tea take a deep breath and then see kind of what you have the energy to
51:47
do here's another kind of thing you can do if you notice yourself getting caught up if you know your your anoc critic
51:53
having a crack at you today real heart then try this as an experiment imagine sitting down and wrri
52:01
writing a letter to yourself from the perspective of a compassionate friend so we all most of us I think in life have
52:08
that dear friend who we know will say helpful things and offer a kind heart and a and a warm word of advice and so
52:16
it can be an interesting useful and useful exercise to sit down and write ourselves a letter from that perspective
52:22
from that perspective of some we know off as an unconditional nothing
52:27
if that is hard for you then that's interesting because human being we will say things to ourselves that we would
52:34
never say to another human being particularly someone we care about so making a deliberate and intentional
52:41
practice of being kind to ourselves and the way we would for others that can be
52:46
useful and interesting and a small experiment
52:53
with uh another really important thing to do is to connect with the people around you when we get tired we often
53:00
tell ourselves that uh we're not good company and so we should we avoid our feelings we often tell ourselves that um
53:08
we just don't have the energy to deal with people all of that as man was alluding to so uh when you notice that
53:17
it can be useful to start reaching out and be intentional and deliberate about connecting with with the people around
53:22
you that can be hard and when you are busy particularly if you're in a busy household with kids and other things
53:29
then um it can be easier to S into a pattern of just admin Logistics just talking about what what we have on the
53:35
day y uh if you notice that in yourself here is a useful tool so uh John gotman that
53:42
relationship guy that I spoke about earlier he's got a tool that is free you can use it and one of the things that He
53:49
suggests every couple does is sits down regularly and just has a conversation about things they haven't talked about
53:55
before before so uh for example me and my wife when we started doing date nights uh often the conversation would
54:02
be 90 minutes of edmin and logistics for the next three months and how we were going toize gymnastics
54:08
and after a while we realized that pattern and we started getting more deliver we banned actually talking about
54:14
logistics on date night and we and in order to fill that awkward Gap we ran out of things to talk about we would
54:19
draw on this this particular which has a whole bunch of tips and tricks for building relationships but one thing it
54:26
has there's a bunch of random questions that you can use to start conversations so things like who is your favorite
54:31
superhero as a kid what's your worst fear if you could uh have one superpower
54:37
what would be all that kind of stuff but uh they seem like trivial questions but
54:42
often it's really it's a really it Sparks an interesting conversation and we just start to build a slightly richer
54:48
understanding so one thing I'd encourage you to think about is how can you have different different conversations and
54:54
even trying new things together trying new experiences getting out of that rut becomes important for
55:03
building and then the next excise what I get you to do is uh just with a person next to you um
55:11
I want you to come up with just count them on your hands I'll give you one minute I want you to come up with as
55:16
many positive emotions as you can online just type them into chat give you one minute to come up with
55:23
just on your hand okay
55:28
your
56:01
EX
56:32
okay so got
56:38
between we got between 5 and got between 10
56:44
15 15 and 20 20
56:54
plus um what did you notice as you did
57:05
that um here an interesting thing well if i' have asked you to do that for
57:15
negative so so that's the thing right our brains are built more to pay attention to
57:22
negative emotions and when we are stress and pression it's harder to come up with and
57:28
connect with positive emotions so being deliberate and intentional and planful
57:33
about cultivating positive emotions is a really useful Habit to build and the
57:38
important thing about positive emotions is that you don't that small and often is the so snacking regularly little
57:46
little bursts of positive emotion is much more helpful and saving it all up till that holiday PG or until the
57:53
weekend so think about what you can do day to day to help cultivate just little moments of positive emotion and also
58:01
what you can do when things are down in your workplace or in your home life when everyone's kind of frazzled and tense
58:07
what you might do just to just to shift the dial on the positive emotion Le one example of that and I stole this from a
58:14
client of mine is that um when things are fra oring tense in our house I've
58:19
learned that it's always often it's always 100% so far been helpful to launch a Nerf Ambush with my children
58:26
and my children without a doubt that lifts lifts the mood in the house because they up me that's that pleases
58:33
the so so if there's little things you do like that that you know can just break the cycle and can insert just a
58:40
little injection of positive emotion and think about being deliberate intentional and planful and even having a list so
58:46
that you know where to go if you notice that needs to happen uh good good so uh the last to
58:55
I'll talk to today is uh we all know that there are things that we could do
59:01
that would um we would be better off if we did more OB so drink less exercise
59:06
more um sleep better or sleep more whatever it is and so if you feel like that is true
59:14
for you but you've noticed that actually it's quite hard for you to do those things welcome to the human L human
59:21
beings it's a lot harder to change Behavior than we think it should be or will be um so that this the next the
59:29
next to I'm going to talk to is one easy way that that research shows is much
59:35
more likely to result in Behavior and the thing you can Google is whoop w p
59:42
the technical name is go contrasting and implementation planning but the cooler
59:48
name is there's a website woop my life with all the academic research relating to both health
59:54
education and and mental Health behaviors and uh the way this works goes
1:00:00
like this and I'll one of your tasks out of when you go back to your desks from
1:00:05
here we be maybe think about putting one of these together for you so the first element is the wish this is the change
1:00:12
I'm going to make and generally it's like a smart go so I might decide that I
1:00:17
am going [Music] to try emotional abling put in a little
1:00:24
emotional label thing in my a little emotion list in my diary when I'm feeling overwhelmed at least three times this week I'm going to try just
1:00:31
going down the list and kind of getting getting better at identifying what's going so that's my wish that's my next
1:00:37
step is the outcome so the outcome is if I do this and it works what is the payoff what is the benefit what is the
1:00:44
reason why so I might and write that down so it might be for me if I get just a bit better at this might help me be
1:00:52
more nuanced in my management of my emotions it might help be a bit more present as a father for my kids because
1:00:58
I'm bit more able to kind of connect with what's going on with them and what's going on with me it might also help me be less overwhelmed by emotions
1:01:06
because I'll be able to see them a bit more clearly and get a bit more definition so that's the payoff that's
1:01:11
the one the next step is the obstacles and there are two kind of obstacles to
1:01:16
think about the first is external obstacles so things in my situation that I might not be able to control so I
1:01:22
might be in this instance an example might be looking at my diary and looking down my motion list is going to be a bit
1:01:27
too public because I'm meeting it's important or something that um and an internal obstacle which is the most
1:01:33
important thing is the thing that my mind will whisper to me that will stop
1:01:39
me doing this thing what is the excuse that I will give myself for buing this so in this case it might be oh it's a
1:01:47
bit fluffy and the py seem to do it but I feels like a bit or it might be uh I don't have the
1:01:54
time for that I just need to begin more with stuff I need to hurry up so notice what is the excuse or the
1:02:02
reason that your mind will give you to not do the thing decide and then the last but in good
1:02:09
military good military P has come up with a plan a contingency plan for each of those things so if I can't pull out
1:02:15
my diary I'm going to at least memorize like five top emotion anger happiness sadness dis
1:02:24
whatever it is you know man at least five top words I'm going to memorize those and try to figure out at least which one of those
1:02:30
I'm if I know that my mind is going to tell me that I'm too busy I've got too
1:02:37
much on I just need to get on with stuff I'm going to remind myself actually my experience is that I'm more
1:02:46
effective when I slow down take the time to check it slow down and take time to stop take I actually give
1:02:53
more so that's what does that make sense so the wish outcome
1:03:00
obstacle research is that if you do that you're about twice if not more likely to
1:03:06
actually achieve or do the thing that you tell us and with that thing that's everything I wanted to talk about today um good
1:03:14
luck for the rest of the week and we've got some other events coming up you'll see them coming up in the ILP over the
1:03:19
course of the month focusing on other parts of the water and that's I want to
1:03:40
yeah I'll