Resilience is Useful .............

Resilience is Useful, Mindfulness quickie in the workplace

Im not sure how this post will work as I'm unsure that I'm resilient yet at work and home following my illness this last 7/8 months and the condition I'm now navigating.  There was a phrase in Star Trek 'Resistance is Useless' however something I have often discussed with my GP over the last 7/8 months is that I need Resilience once I'm back in the work place, I have relapsed last year far too quickly after my prior episode and I really want to be back at work, robust and resilient against stressors and challenges and my condition.

One of the things I have been trying to do at work is work mindfully, this probably sounds like a load of old tosh but having read around things and continued my dialogue with my Talking Therapist this feels the right thing to try and do and maintain it even when the work day brings a full diary.

Work is, and has always had the potential to be challenging for people.  We find ourselves in the so called 'digital age'  driven by the constant need for efficiencies and cost effectiveness.  I'm sure in some companies you could argue that this might have led to some unhealthy working practices.  There is an idea that we can multi-task but science has poo-pooed this in reality, the belief being that unless a dual task is something you have done time and time again ( sub conciously now ) then you brain is involved in context switching all the while you try to carry out 2/3 different tasks with different focuses.  The advice here is to prioritise and work on one focus at a time to get the best results.

Working mindfully is said to allow us to become more aware of our mental processes, in theory alllowing us to more easily choose the appropriate strategy for any piece of work/task.  I have a little red book that I have on my desk in plain sight in front of me, the idea being that when I am letting my jobs run away with me and I'm falling into context switching that I will remember that I need to be mindful and pull the little red notebook out and carry out a mindfulness exercise.  I'm not very good at this but I hope that I'm getting better week by week.  It also has some learnings I have made from past CBT exercises and other little quotes and notes that hopefully gee me up and help me to survive in the workplace.

One exercise I have written down is a 3 step mindfulness practice and I've been known to have to do this in the work toilets because I cant find somewhere to carry out the practice, it can be really hard to do at your desk unless its first thing in the morning and nobody hardly is in.  I'm hoping that the more I avoid context switching and the more I work mindfully the more resilient I will get and that relapse will be further and further away as I navigate my BiPolar condition.

The 3 step work mindfulness exercise boiled down.  1)  Find a comfortable upright position and avoid slouching.  Although you can do this with your eyes open at work it's probably easier to do this with your eyes shut.  Closing the eyes mean that you are avoiding visual stimulus.  Initially deal with your current thoughts and by recognising them and letting them go.   2)  Focus on your breath coming in and going out, use this as your anchor, make it your focus.   3)  Spend just a minute or two recognising how your body feels in the here and now.  Be aware of any physical sensations and accept them, good or bad, lamenting on bad sensations with not help, just let them pass over you, let them go.  Move to an acceptance that present moment sensations add no fuel to negative thoughts, in the moment you are under no threat.

I hope that makes sense.  A lot of Mindfulness authors make it sound so so simple and it isn't, I find it really hard to get to that moment of 'Now' where you are under no threat but if you can access it then it's a good tool to garner more resilience.

This is a bit more of a lesson of a Blog so apologies but as I continue my phased return to work I'm finding that I have to access things like this to keep going.  One thing I'm struggling with at the moment is that I seem to hit a wall energy wise at about 2:30pm on full days in the office.  I haven't really found a solution to that as yet.