Fear

I've heard a number of talks where someone espouses 7 principles to dealing with fear etc. and I have to say I've never really came up with anything that takes away or reduces the fear in something.

It's true that fear limits us from being the best we can be, however it's not something that is easily dealt with, as much as people say 'face your fear',this is definitely something that is easier said than done.

The seven specific principles that I highlighted in my talk are to: listen deeply, focus on people, be addicted to learning, be of service, flow through change, move through fear, and follow joy.

Let’s look at moving through fear. Fear is a big block for many people, whether in an agile organization or not, and in people’s lives. Fear limits people from being at their best, for example they may not:

·         Speak up about something they are not happy about

·         Ask questions when they are unsure about something

·         Try a new activity or practice

·         Share new ideas for improvements

·         Pair up with a team member to accomplish a task

·         Ask for help

·         Talk directly to someone they are struggling to have a good relationship with

·         Speak openly at retrospectives

·         Say no to a request that can’t be accomplished, or accomplished in a sustainable manner

When these fears are active, people are not able to fully and authentically contribute to a team and it’s success. We are not able to get the best from people if they do not feel safe to move through fear. Fear holds us back from taking risks, trying new things, being authentic, and moving forward to be at our best as individuals, as a team, and as an organization.

Fear doesn’t ever really go away though. High performing groups still feel fear, but to lesser degrees as they practice moving through fears. Fear comes up, and they say "hi fear, thanks for coming out… I’m going to go do this thing I’m scared of anyway." That is how we expand to become better versions of ourselves. That is how the most successful people and organizations became successful. That is one way companies gain a competitive edge — create an environment where people feel safe to move through fears.

What Hypomania can look like?

I haven't blogged recently, this is because my energies have been directed at keeping me on course at work and it's been busy and challenging for me with a bit of a blip a few weeks back where I had more anxiety than I had  had for a long time.  I think I've managed to course correct and I feel better than I did a few weeks back.
I saw someone else blog regards what their BiPolar meant to them and as BiPolar and Hypomania is oft misunderstood I thought it might be worth explaining the Hypomanic state and what it can feel/look like,  I don't find myself with Hypomania very often as I'm more in the depths of anxiety and depression but when it does kick in it can feel very strange, partly because whilst it's happening I'm not very aware of it and it's only in looking back that I can reflect on it.
So looking back at my episodes of Hypomania what can I reflect on?

• It's racing thoughts and ideas, a feeling that you are a Superman
• It's obsessing over very small things such as skin tags and moles
• It's being hyper positive, saying 'yes' to multiple things at once and feeling that you are limitless and things need to happen now, right now
• It can be like your mind has a 100 search engines open at once
• It's a feeling that you are late when there is no deadline but things need to happen fast
• It's a feeling that you have all the answers and speaking at 100mph

It's all the above and none of them and it's only after an episode that I reflect on them, a very normal Hypomanic episode for me is me going from an empty social diary to booking in something almost every day for a month, it's like the opposite of catastrophe thinking when you have anxiety where you think you can make things happen/succeed at will.
I'm learning that this is all a part of my BiPolar and with medication and therapy I'm learning to navigate this better and trying hard to see if I can identify warning signs as normally i rely on other people noticing that I'm manic.

Hillsborough and Humanity

As a Nottingham Forest fan I'm very very aware of Hillsborough and all that happened at the FA Cup Semi Final that Nottingham Forest could not win when replayed.  I'm aware of the reaction of the Murdoch newspapers which was my overriding memory of what followed, the low brow way that they made amazing unfounded claims before any investigation had taken place and ran with the headline 'The Truth'.  As we knew then i think as football fans and as we now absolutely know, it was far from the truth.  It's sad that 'The Sun' and 'The Times' did not feel that they could run with Hillsborough headlines on the day that the verdict was the number 1,2 & 3 story in the British press.

I am so pleased for the families and the activists that they have got a Jury verdict that vindicates their loved ones.  I remember the compelling Jimmy McGovern film that Chris Eccleston said was the most important work he had ever done and he's a Manchester/ Salford lad I believe.

With it's lies, cover ups, half truths, grotesque pantomime headlines in Murdoch newspapers, behaviour of public servants across the Police and Politics. Bernard Inghams letter to a Liverpool supporter said all about the disdain that the political elite had for Football supporters at the time, the Guardian has been at the centre of any journalistic integrity around the story.   For football writers across the Papers outside of the Murdoch and right wing press the story has been a back beat to any coverage of Liverpool over the years and it reached it's crescendo with the verdict yesterday, then a barnstorming and passionate speech in the House of Commons from Andy Burnham, I had always thought Andy just a little light weight in the oratory department but yesterday his speech was fair and well judged and I think the reason SYP had an almost immediate suspension at the very top of its management.

The Guardian reporting in 1999 prompted the then new Labour administration to set up the Hillsborough Independant Panel, a process of discovery was started.

It was interesting to see Theresa May read the full Jury verdict when to me this verdict is a result of the pressure of 'Human Rights' being brought to bear when everything else is stacked up against tose who want to get to the 'Truth', we need the EU Human Rights legislation and we ought to be proud when people are exonerated and justice is done that we were founding sign ups to the Human Rights legislation.

Don't be fooled by a Little England, Little UK view that Britain is better on it's own, after all what did the Bill of Human Rights ever do for anyone ??????


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Breaking Good

There was an article that appeared in mid March on the ‘A Life of Productivity’ BLOG that looked at ‘breaks’, we are all aware that in using IT equipment we are encouraged to have regular breaks from the equipment but this BLOG talked about engineering our breaks to follow the same pattern as our sleep, I’m not quite sure what the science of it is but I guess finding and utilising our bodies natural rhythms has got to be worth a try.  The BLOG called for breaks every 90 minutes because the general accepted period that we sleep in, is 90 minute cycles, each period alternating between light, deep and REM sleep.  There is it seems an argument that in the mornings at work our bodies alternate between 90 minute periods of wakefulness punctuated by 20-30 minute periods of sleepiness/tiredness ( my won experience is that I’m tired most of the afternoon after 2pm rather than in bursts in the morning ).  The advice seems to be to break every 90 minutes and take 10/20 minutes when we are naturally groggy.  This seems a bit simplistic to me and is obviously hard to achieve when you have colleagues booking meetings across your natural rhythms of the morning.

So we have a counterintuitive proposition that its better to take more breaks for better productivity.  This sort of implies that a break acts as downtime to refresh and recharge yourself, now there might be guilt associated with this but lets remember the end goal of our working isn’t so much about how much we do, but its about how much we achieve.

To play this into my mental health challenges that I have in the work place, I know that I am really tired in the afternoons so my takeaway is that in order to improve my productivity in the afternoons I will need to take more breaks and I’m hopeful that will improve my performance in the afternoon,  I will also look at the 90 minute period in  the earlier part of the day as best I can.  Apparently a way of doing this is to look at writings on the Pomodoro cycle which looks at the work/break make up of your working practices.  Another thing I am looking to achieve because of the fatigue I have in the afternoon is to work on tasks such that I don’t try to finish them without a break but I work on them whilst I feel productive, then break, then come back to them and by working on lower priority work in the afternoons I should still maintain performance at work.

The many mantra's of BiPolar Disorder

I came across the below link when you get to it, that offers 20 messages for the BiPolar sufferer, the problem I have with this though is that when you are navigating BPD and Working you have to bring something to the party, you have to have a degree of performance at work.    What I'm trying to say is that the many mantra's out there are often, rightly, attending to self BUT the reality of work is that you can't switch off for hours at a time, you do have to learn, with help, how to navigate your condition and your work environment.

It doesn't mean that the mantra's are not of value, they just seem a little me me me sometimes and as mental health sufferers we still have to work,live with everyone else on a day to day basis.

Have a look
Reflect
See what I mean ........ some are more engaged with the World than others .........

http://themighty.com/2016/03/20-messages-for-anyone-who-feels-restricted-by-a-bipolar-disorder-diagnosis1/

Of value but very self-centric, the world turns still while we navigate our conditions as well.

Happy Easter all, may we all 'rise' with the road .............

Sunday Evening Syndrome & BPD

BiPolar is an interesting condition to have.  I had 'Sunday Evening Syndrome' this last Sunday as I had been on holiday for a week and a half and a lot of the BPD symptoms were mulling around in various ways.

My head was switching from can't keep up with it all to can do it all, from can't possibly fail to irritation that I didn't think I would be able to hit the ground running after a week and a half wrapped up in my family and far from work ( well apart from when my anxiety meant I logged into my work eMail account ).
Depression teetered, doubting my ability to do anything well, my mind feeling like it was burning out and that I was virtually useless.  Folks say 'it will pass' and they are right BUT in the moment this and the anxiety and so unnerving.  I thought I had built up some resilience recently as I had a good 4 weeks full time before my holiday and things had gone okay.

Then, off the back of some great family times I had a bounce into Mania, fast ideas coming too fast, too many ideas.  In stead of clarity there is an overwhleming confusion but a belief that I'm on the curve, I think my humour is brilliant BUT it fails to amuse others.  Everything ends up against the grain. 
It seems that, basically, my condition seems to have exacerbated my 'Sunday Evening Syndrome', eventually I get to grips with it all to some degree, I find some distraction, I create time for mindfulness and breathing ( pulling myself away from Mania ). 
Eventually I get to sleep later that night, a short nights sleep and I'm at work Monday morning, tired as a Dog BUT I'm at work, I haven;t succumbed to despair and mania, I haven't beaten my condition BUT I have navigated it.  I'm tired all day Monday but I acheive a few small things and a sense of stability is there by the end of the day.

The problem is that this condition has exhausted me and that's ridiculous and perhaps hard to run by others as I don't want to live off excuses or be a passenger at work and so I continue to try and navigate my condition through my tiredness and I'm glad that my mood swings have settled.
Just wanted to try and get across teh effort that the condition can some times require to navigate it.
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Do No Evil .............

Its just recently been brought to my attention that Sunday April 10^th is Good Deeds Day 2016.  This is an initiative that has taken off in the last 10 years from quite a humble start.  One of the things that Happify.Com has brought out of this upcoming Day is that the very process of doing a good deed is in theory good for your mental health.  So here we have altruistic behaviour that you could engage with that will actually do you good even though your initial beginnings might just be that you want to do the world a favour.

Google started with it’s mantra many years ago of ‘Do No Evil’ and now with it’s pervasive search engine and it’s lack of tax paying in countries where it makes a profit, you could say that the holding back of tax payments might be construed as ‘not doing good’ or making their contribution to what might be used for social good in various countries.

Anyway that’s a bit of a tangent really, regards Google.  Just a bugbear I have, a little like the fact that the ‘X Factor’ isn’t  really a TV show looking for someone with the ‘X Factor’  as they tend to find the same types of singers year on year, just another one of them………….

Anyway, as  I said, that’s all tangential.  ‘Doing Good’ allegedly decreases Stress.  There have been studies that have looked at the link between volunteering for example and hypertension, it was found in a 2013 study that giving back, doing good, volunteering etc etc can have a significant positive affect on blood pressure.  There are other studies that align with the position that giving money and time away can also have the same affect, basically having a generous demeanour will benefit you and also you may well get that ‘Helpers high’ where the brain releases endorphins, feel good chemicals in your brain. 

Now this is where it gets tricky as I want to share my own sense of ‘Doing Good’ but I don’t want folks to think I’m blowing my own trumpet, what I do want to do though is give a sense that you can engage with this as I have tried to with a degree of organisation.  I have a 6.66 fund which I use for donations to Just Giving etc causes so that I can support people who ask me without having to think how much to donate as I have a rate that I set and that’s what I use, I like to be able to do this giving, it does feel good that you laready know you’ve allowed for that in your monthly budgeting. Someone asks me and if it’s something I like the idea of, I donate £6.66.  I then try and be thankful myself, sounds a bit twee I agree by ‘Paying it Forward’ as I know people have done stuff for me, so I look each week for something that I can just do when the opportunity arises to help someone out without there being any payback for me, I don’t look for things that would over reach me like say, painting the whole of someones house BUT something like last week where I got someones shopping for them because they couldn’t get out to do it.  I guess I’m just saying that it’s not normally too much of an ‘ask’ to deliver on ‘Good Deeds’ as you can limit them to what you, as a person can manage.  With mental health challenges you would often have to do that but there is a benfit to engaging with this attitude.

As ever, I hope this make some degree of sense.

Tony

Good Deed Day ~~ http://gdd.goodnet.org/about

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