Loneliness, friendship and the human need for connection
 

“When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.” —Hillair Belloc

How many close friends do you have? Let’s define a close friend as someone you would invite to a family dinner without first having to make any excuse for them (or some aspect of them); someone you can accept without compromise or condition; someone you can share your most intimate thoughts and feelings with.

Research indicates the average American has two close friends. Yet, twenty-five percent of people say they have no one with whom they can be authentic; no one with whom they can discuss deep personal or emotional issues.

Without true friendship, what remains is loneliness. In its most serious form, loneliness is considered a serious, even life-threatening condition, heightening the risks of heart disease and depression. Tough, stressful times usually make it worse.

Connection isn’t the same as closeness

In many ways, our times are more ‘connected’ than ever before. People engage within huge networks, online and off. We have more means to stay in touch over remote distances. We live in a time when people feel a kinship with TV stars like Oprah; when they engage in non-stop communicating with folks on My Space and Facebook; when people vent and emote on the talk shows and cozy up to watch re-runs of Friends—even if they don’t actually have many friends themselves, or any at all.

From a mental-health standpoint, what’s striking in all of this is the rise of depression in our society. Depression is rising in geometric proportions in every demographic sector. In spite of the quantum growth of connecting through online and off-line networks, people are isolating themselves emotionally and psychologically at ever increasing numbers. We have a pandemic of loneliness.

Who loves ya, baby?

Who supports you—really, really supports you—when you feel lonely, stressed or sad? What’s the difference between connecting online, or with local business or social networks, and the true, deeper connection of genuinely close friendship? The sad truth is that the frequency of contact and the number of contacts in our network does not necessarily translate into the quality of contact.

For a start, we’ve come to expect things instantly, and aren’t willing to spend the time it takes to develop real intimacy with another person.

Take the phenomenon of Facebook.com, the social-networking Web site where members proudly announce their huge numbers of friends. Some members say they have 1,000 friends. The pity is that they probably don’t even know half of them in any measurable way. They are simply contacts—and not very significant contacts either.

Some people thought going to their local Starbucks was a solution—a Marshall Plan for creating connections and finding new friendships. Have you sat in a Starbucks, or any other coffee shop, lately? People come in, get their lattes to go, or sit around ‘connecting’ with their laptops. You can bet that those who are talking to one another arrived as friends.

What’s going on?

We are becoming ever more insular. People spend thousand of dollars on home entertainment centers to fill their time, instead of devoting themselves to connecting with anyone else. They watch TV and don’t speak to one another. Everyone has a meal at a different time. They may live in the same house, but they aren’t a group or a community in any other sense of the word. Family time for many has become an event focusing on doing things rather than a deeper process of sharing and truly being with one another.

If there’s a Church of True Friendship, very few of us show up at the services. We say friendship is important to us, then choose lifestyles that make us too busy and distracted to cultivate or preserve it. It’s no different from the people who agree with their doctors that they need, say, a hip replacement, but never find the time to have the procedure.

So many of the major disconnects we feel in today’s culture—disconnects driven by fear, anger, hate, isolation, insecurity, and the like—are a function of loneliness and the lack of true and meaningful friendships. As Carl Jung wrote:

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”

Our $10 food-for-thought questions this week are:

• How do you define friendship?
• Would your friends describe you as a true and real friend, or more as an acquaintance? Would you feel comfortable asking them?
• Do you feel safe disclosing your innermost thoughts and feelings to your friends? To your partner or spouse? If not, why not?
• Do you ever feel alone or lonely when you’re in a group—or even at home? How do you deal with that?
• Does your lifestyle exclude time and room for developing meaningful friendships? When was the last time someone referred to you as a “real friend”?
• Do you pride yourself on amassing a huge number of social-network friends? How many of these “friends” do you really know and trust enough to share your true feelings and secrets with?

Technorati Tags: friendship, connections, social networking, support, closeness, trusting others

You can’t be in absolute control—but that doesn’t mean you’re helpless either
 

There’s so much uncertainty around at the moment it’s hard not to drown in it. People generally dislike uncertainty. They focus most of their attention on the risks they take and the troubles they face. We humans are such fearful creatures. One whiff of trouble and we let our minds run wild, imagining all kinds of pessimistic and terrible outcomes.

This may be understandable, but it’s never helpful. Don’t let your fears control you. Don’t imagine so many problems you become distracted and too stressed to find a way out. Look carefully at one option at a time, follow it through and see where it leads. Then take another option and do the same, directing your attention where you want it to go. If you don’t let your fears make you confused, you can stay focused on the possibilities and avoid a good deal of the anxiety and stress others will be suffering.

Always make decisions consciously

When someone asks you to make a decision, you’re going to bring all your prejudices, opinions, likes, dislikes, fears, hopes, antagonisms and knowledge along. Your mind is like a committee—and a pretty bad tempered and cantankerous one too! Like all committees, your mind has some ‘members’ (your habitual attitudes and knee-jerk opinions) who hog the floor and shout twice as loud as the next person. If you let them, they’ll rule your life.

What you need to do is ignore the ranting and get through to the real issues: what is happening, why is it happening and what are the options for dealing with it. You can usually at least influence what happens if you take charge of your life instead of letting things run automatically.

You must step outside the fog of habitual thoughts and opinions. See them for what they are—just automatic thinking. They’re not the truth, even if you believe they’re true. There’s always more you don’t know and change you don’t expect. First you must understand the causes behind the outcome and the effect each one produces. The only sure way to change anything is to change what is causing it to be the way it is.

The three things that will always transform your day are:

• Stay awake and make sure you make the choices that matter. The more consciously you choose your actions, words and opinions, the more influence you will have over your life at work (and everywhere else).
• Know yourself and act on that knowledge. These are the two most basic steps in discovering and realizing your full potential. Discover everything about yourself that you can—then act on what you find.
• Be clear that every choice is an opportunity to change. Every decision contains the possibility of altering the future. If you ignore chances to influence your life, you must put up with whatever comes along.

Accept full accountability for your life

Are you just going with the flow—doing what you’ve always done or falling in with the prevailing fashion? Are you truly making your own choices, whatever you may claim? Who is running your life to their agenda, not yours?

STOP! Ask yourself if you’re happy with your life as it is. If not, what do you plan to do to change it? Note down—now—at least three ways you can get back in charge of your own destiny.

Take your time. Think! Make careful, rational choices. Do what you can see is best for you, regardless of all attempts to control your behavior from outside. It’s your life, and you’re accountable for it. You can’t avoid that, however much you wriggle. Luck and patience are not quite identical, but it’s close.

Here’s what to do to cope best with uncertainty of any type:

• Take time to discover the recurring patterns of behavior that people think of as “typically you.” Inquire carefully into how they are affecting your life and career. That will immediately give you more ways to influence your future.
• Work out what part you are playing in any situation you don’t enjoy. Once you see how you’re contributing to the situation, you’ll know what you need to change first. You can’t control events, but you can always change your own behavior.
• Decide clearly and specifically what you want from your work or career. Set firm intentions to make the changes needed. Focus on them with complete concentration. Don’t let anything else get in the way.
• Use every opportunity to move further towards your goals.
• Stay awake! Never allow choices to happen without conscious thought.

Life is uncertain and you have to deal with that. It’s up to you whether you do it well or badly, or give up altogether and drift along like a jellyfish.

Ever notice how many human jellyfish there are today? And how readily many of them sting the people they meet?

Technorati Tags: uncertainty, change, finding opportunities, making your own decisions, staying in charge, taking charge of your life and career

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Why worrying is not a requirement
 

The job loss count is rising. Just about every day we hear of another new batch of people now out of work, a new batch who are facing cuts in working hours or forced furloughs, a new batch who have given up. Not surprisingly, 81 percent of Americans say they are worried about something related to their jobs, according to the 2008 Workplace Insights survey by Adecco USA. Among the top job-related worries were:

1. High gas prices (25 percent)
2. Stagnant pay checks (13 percent)
3. Work-life balance (12 percent)
4. Rising cost of health care (9 percent)
5. Job market (7 percent)
6. Opportunities for advancement (6 percent)
7. Outsourcing of jobs (4 percent)
8. Other worries (5 percent)

“It’s clear that our current economic uncertainty presents real worries to…workers,” said Bernadette Kenny, chief career officer for Adecco USA.

Will worrying help to solve the problem?

A growing number of people are now also worried about their job security. Such worry is understandable, but it doesn’t help. In fact, it can exacerbate any negative experience. Worry and anxiety take a huge toll on mental, physical and emotional energy. Anxiety leads to psycho-somatic symptoms and potentially serious health issues: stress in the form of headaches, high blood pressure, insomnia, exhaustion, fogginess and confusion, body aches and muscle tension—all major causes of time off work and disengagement from life.

In this debilitated, fear-based state, people have a serious challenge in showing up. In their day-to-day life at work, they are often seen as distracted, disengaged or distant. They put in less effort, perform less efficiently and lose focus. Then they feel even more fear and start to notice causes for greater worry.

If not worry, then what?

In these tough times (all the time, really) it’s important to ask yourself: “What am I thinking about?” Awareness is where change and transformation can begin to take place.

When your mind is filled with worry and fear-provoking thoughts, that’s an opportunity to notice that you’re choosing to think about the opposite of what you really want to experience—unless, of course, you’re one of those who live life from a position of ‘eternal victim’. They choose to spend most of their time blaming others.

Worrying is also a self-perpetuating process. Whatever you obsess about, you will gradually take on as the truth. Choose fear and more fear will surely appear.

By choosing to focus on the fear of losing your job, for example, you’re making that thought into a kind of daily ‘programming’. The result will be a life that contains less happiness, success, well being and freedom than it needs to.

How to stop worrying

To those who feel the need to worry, let me make this clear: Worry solves nothing. I repeat, worry solves nothing.

Many people believe that if they don’t worry, nothing positive will ever happen. Many think it wards off greater problems. Many think the process of worrying is doing something. It won’t and it’s not. Worrying only produces more worry. Action absorbs anxiety, worry feeds it.

The way to eliminate worry and move past fear is not to resist it. You can’t simply think your way out. To move away from worry and fear you must accept the fear, then engage brain, body and heart simultaneously to find a place often referred to as ‘the zone’ or ‘flow’. It’s a place where you can act with efficiency and confidence, focusing on each task or challenge with a sense of clarity, ease and well being.

Reaching ‘the zone’

To reach ‘the zone’, you should begin by sensing the contrast between resistance and acceptance (this alone can be an experience of awakening). All you have to do is pay attention. Notice when you’re feeling armored for battle, angry at the world, afraid of something. Notice when you’re feeling open, comfortable and at ease.

‘Positive thinking’ or willpower alone is never a solution. If you ‘think positive’ but still feel fear and anxiety, the fear and anxiety will always win. Always. The mind on its own is not enough. It requires something more: the wisdom of your body and the power of your heart.

Anxiety and fear form patterns which can be replaced with patterns of being and acting in ways that are self-supporting: patterns which exude confidence, courage and positive expectations—even in the face of overwhelming odds and challenges.

During these difficult times, make a conscious effort to engage in centering and coherence practice. Take time to breathe deeply, slowly and quietly into your heart. Focus on your feet on the floor, or on the support under you if you are sitting or lying. Focus on your belly center. With practice, you’ll begin to move into a state of coherence between your brain, your body and your heart: a state that results in harmony and balance.

Worrying and being fearful is a choice. Releasing fear and worry is also a choice. You can choose to hang on to your fear or you can choose to release it.

Here are some thoughts for self-reflection:

• Do worry and fear control much of your thinking and activity? What threatens you? What do your worry about?
• Are the stories you tell yourself about your future true? How do you know?
• What place did worry and fear have in your family as you were growing up?
• Do you often find yourself telling others you are happy when you are not?
• Do you exhibit ‘presenteeism’ at work: a state of preoccupation where you are there physically but not honestly and sincerely engaged?
• Where in your life do you feel you are losing control? What are you doing to deal with this feeling?
• What one or two approaches can you take over the next week or two to reduce perceived threats and worries?

“Instead of frittering away your vibrancy with worry or distraction, realize your mind and body are inextricably united. What calms and tones up one, soothes and improves the other.” —Marsha Sinetar

Technorati Tags: worry, coping with fear, dealing with difficult times, lowering anxiety, finding balance, dealing with anxiety, building confidence

How are you coping with feelings of deficiency or emptiness?
 

If the question is asked and answered honestly, just about every human being will admit to feeling some degree of personal deficiency or lack— the notion that they are somehow not all that they can be. They feel empty, worthless or valueless in some way. As a result, it’s a universal human experience to suffer feelings of confusion, frustration, fear, resentment, guilt or even shame.

For the sake of brevity, I’m going to refer to this feeling of being ‘less than you could be’, or ‘not being good enough’ as a hole in your life. Experiencing the hole is like feeling a cloud coming over your sun: you feel you lack worth; you feel empty inside.

To avoid this feeling, many people act as phonies and frauds; others take the aggressive road, becoming bullies; and still others stay fearful and submissive, deferential to all authority. It doesn’t have to be that way. The hole is a natural state that can promote conscious and healthy growth, if dealt with openly and honestly.

The hole of deficiency can be filled

The question is not whether to fill the hole, but how you choose to do it. How far you will experience inner peace and happiness in your life is a function of how you choose to fill your own hole.

There are two principal ways people tend to go about ‘hole filling’—from without or from within. The former results in digging a deeper hole; the latter results in the hole reducing itself—even eliminating itself altogether.

Filling from without

When people look outside themselves for a quick-fix that will bring a short-term feeling of ‘OK-ness’, they either inflate who they are to deal with the emptiness, or try to fill the hole with stuff, stuff and more stuff. Many of them spend their whole life seeking approval and security through obsessive activities designed to cause other people to supply the sense of ‘OK-ness’ they lack. The narcissist is but one example of an individual who tries to fill their hole from the outside with admiration and recognition.

People like this always need to stand out and be seen to be ‘somebody’. Filling their hole of deficiency drives them to try to be the center of the Universe through a life characterized by vanity, arrogance and egotism. The result, however, is to dig themselves into an ever deepening hole that requires more and more filling.

Those who try filling the hole from without soon find that the hole never is filled. They try ever more frantically to fill their hole, but whatever they try seems to have less and less impact, like needing more of a drug to gain the same ‘high’. Hole-filling for them is a never-ending battle, exhausting on every level, as their hole sinks deeper and their need for approval grows stronger.

Filling from within

Filling the hole from within requires a conscious and honest exploration of your sense of deficiency, while accepting that some such feelings of lack are natural. By exploring from inside, you can acquire an understanding of why we carry such ‘holes’ around with us, and what supports their gradual removal. If you work steadily from this place of acceptance, the hole begins to fill itself.

The tools and practices used to fill the hole from within include journaling, self-reflection, meditation, silence, and deep inner questioning. The more your hole is explored, then reduced in size, the more your inner strength and courage arise to allow you to be yourself, without your ego needing any phony packaging or shoring up. You won’t need to put on the cloak of a false self and pretend to be somebody other than who you are.

What we resist, persists. When we resist the hole and look to fill it from the outside, the hole will persist and grow deeper. When we allow the feelings connected to the hole and work with these feelings, the hole will begin to fill itself. You can choose to reduce and then eliminate the hole, or dig a deeper one. It’s up to you.

Here are some questions to start the process of ‘hole-filling’:

• In what ways do you feel deficient or empty? Why do you feel that way? How do you feel about feeling the way you do?
• Do you try to fill your hole from outside by activities designed to make you feel secure and have some sense of ‘OK-ness’? What does all this activity get you?
• Do you ever feel like a phony? Do you ever consciously choose to be a fake? If so, why?
• Do you often feel the need to be the life of the party, the ‘know-it-all’, the expert?
• Do you play small and try to be invisible much of the time? Do you often feel what you are and do is not enough in some way? Do you know why?
• What one or two baby steps can you take in the next week or two to explore your feelings around lack or deficiency and start allowing your hole to fill itself?

Technorati Tags: self-worth, coping with feelings of deficiency, building yourself up, developing greater courage, being yourself, self-acceptance

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If you don’t enjoy your day at work, you may need to look inward for a solution
 

There’s a lot of concentration today, quite correctly, on the need for organizations to provide a more humane working environment. But good working environments don’t make happy workers all by themselves. You can lead a horse to the water, open its mouth and force its nose below the surface, but you can’t make it swallow.

I am not saying that people actually want to be unhappy at work, but employees are not blank slates to be written on; they bring their emotional and intellectual baggage with them to work, just as they take it home again.

Let’s take a simple example; you’re a middle-level employee of a large organization, arriving at work on a Monday morning. What do we get if we open up your head and look inside? First, there’s the row you had with your spouse last night; you have an uncomfortable feeling it might start again when you get home. Parking the car, you remember that it has a problem you really must get fixed this week. Hope it’s not as expensive as last time; you really can’t afford another bill like that. Going through the door, your stomach tightens as you also remember you have an objective-setting meeting with your new boss later in the morning. That sort of meeting is never fun. Finally, you arrive at your floor and see Smith, a person you dislike rather a lot, smugly admiring his new office suite. You can’t understand why he ever got that promotion, but the word is that he’s popular with senior management and will go far. You might even wind up working for him. What then? Should you leave? Who would employ you? And the first email message you come across is to call someone in the HR department as a matter of urgency—someone you’ve never heard of. Oh dear, what can that possibly be about?

Understanding your ego

So it goes on. In a way you are probably half-unconscious of, you’re tired, irritable and worried and you haven’t yet done a stroke of work; or rather, it’s not you who are worried. It’s your ego. In Latin, ‘ego’ simply meant ‘I’. It was taken over as a way of translating Sigmund Freud’s expression “Das Ich” into English. It means essentially the conscious, rational mind—the sense of self and individualism. It’s used in a rather vaguer sense in popular psychology, and in Buddhism it’s the thing that causes all our trouble and unhappiness.

Don’t be nervous or leave this article now. Buddhism is actually just a highly-sophisticated system of mental training, developed by practical people over thousands of years. What Buddhists say, is that your ego doesn’t really exist. What you think of as yourself—the person who is angry, upset, disappointed, hopeful, uncertain—is just a collection of noises in your head, patterns others have imprinted on you, and fears and fantasies about things that haven’t happened yet and probably won’t.

It’s not really you who are upset about Smith’s promotion, it’s your ego. You’re not really worried about answering questions on your expenses—your ego remembers the humiliation of being told off when you were a child. If you can still the chatter of what Buddhists call the “monkey mind,” you will find the real you underneath all that. Until you can, all this debate about multi-tasking is rather beside the point. You are probably ‘doing’ twenty things at once in your head, at a minimum, almost all of them negative and useless.

Are you here, or somewhere in the future or the past?

Notice that none of the events I’ve listed is happening right now. In fact, we are usually so obsessed with resentment of the past and fears about the future, that we forget that life is only a series of present moments. Unfortunately, the mind does not distinguish very well between things that are happening right now, and things that happened in the past or might happen in the future. So we relive events and anticipate events not only emotionally, but physically as well. In your head, you start running through what you are going to say to your boss and your throat tightens as though you were really there.

There is a simple cure for this; every time you have a though about the past or the future, if it’s negative, say to yourself: “I’m glad that’s not happening now”. Try it. You’ll be surprised. There are a few other things you can do also to still the chatter of the monkey mind, all extremely banal and none requiring any special equipment.

How to deal with your ‘monkey mind’

Sit still in your office chair for two minutes. I bet you can’t do it. Your mind is full of thoughts which have physical consequences. You start to think of Smith’s promotion and your jaw begins to clench and naturally you sit forward in your chair. If you can manage it though, your mind will be quieter when you have finished.

Take a document, any document, and read it through without your mind wandering. If your mind wanders, notice where it goes to. “It’s a report by so-and-so. Pompous idiot. I remember that meeting—or was it somebody else; wait, I think I’ve still got a record of that meeting in my notebook . . .”

Train yourself to sit motionless for five seconds when new e-mail arrives. E-mail exists for you, not the other way round. Slowly, the hormones of fear and excitement that your body naturally secretes, and you are only vaguely conscious of, will start to be produced less often.

Buddhists have always known that you can’t repress thoughts, and you can’t think of nothing. All the Zen arts, from archery to the tea ceremony, are designed to still and calm the mind and teach concentration by focusing on one thing. So think of one thing, and you will not think of many things.

Let’s take the most banal example imaginable; lunch. Do you eat a sandwich at your desk? Then notice the sandwich. What’s in it, what the texture is, what it tastes like, how many bites it took you to finish it. It’s not enlightenment, necessarily, but it’s a start.

When you give up the incessant mental chatter, when you learn to concentrate, you’ll not only work better, you’ll be happier.

Technorati Tags: focus, concentration, being in the now, stilling the mind, Buddhism in the office, learning to concentrate

Introducing a new ‘author’ for Slow leadership

Ever since we moved to Arizona, I have had a soft spot for coyotes. We see them fairly often around here, at all times of day. We hear their ‘concerts’ in the early evening, especially in Spring, when the high-pitched yips of the pups are added to the howling and yapping of their elders. Most look well fed and in good condition — though that doesn’t stop them from being a significant threat to people’s small pets.

Most of you will already know that Coyote is a major figure in much Native American folklore. He’s a trickster, a bit of a rogue, always trying new ways to avoid effort and often getting into problems as a result. But he’s also a significant part of the creation, often adding oddities and creating quirks and alterations in the Creator’s designs — more often than not to the benefit of mankind.

This ambivalence — part rogue and joker, part wise and creating spirit — was what drew me to the character of Coyote in the first place. It seemed particularly relevant to our world today, where few things are quite what they seem and even the best of intentions tend to run into the law of unexpected consequences. We certainly need wisdom, but not always of the all-too-serious, moralistic kind typically handed out by academic professionals and self-appointed gurus alike. We need something more earthy and practical — and hopefully more fun to hear about. Read the full story

When everything becomes a ‘definite possibility’, nothing useful can come of any of it

In a time when stress is adversely coursing through so many people’s experience, ruining their quality of life, why are folks reluctant to slow down and stop living life at 90 miles an hour? Why are they unwilling to make healthy choices for the sake of their own well-being? Why is lifestyle change such a threat, such an overwhelming and fearful challenge? Why do people feel such a need to keep their options open and consider everything and everyone — as one client said to me recently about an event he was considering ­— “a definite possibility? A definite possibility? What’s that?

Why are life and lifestyle choices so painful? Why does every door have to remain open? Why does one need to consider ‘every’ option? Rather than cutting back, or narrowing down choices in the face of overwhelming stress, juggling options seems to be the day-to-day self-management tactic that has so people many feeling trapped and fearful. Yet, they trudge on.

Whether it’s an attachment or add-on they’ll probably never use for a new digital camera; or a continued relationship with an individual with whom they have nothing in common; or staying connected to a Yahoo or other on-line group to which they haven’t contributed in years; or an event for which they have season tickets and never attend, there’s a reason that keeps them going on going on. A reason that explains their fear of loss if they let go. Read the full story

Part 3 of a series on simple ways of de-stressing your life

 
This is part 3 of my short series of ideas and suggestions for taking some of the stress out of your life and bringing back a better sense of balance and enjoyment.

De-stressing Idea Number 6: Eat quality food, not junk

This is such a tough one. When the work/life balance gets tough, the tough end up reaching for the chocolate. With a bit more organisation however, it isn’t an impossible task to have healthier foods to eat.

Dietary reductions you can make to help your body cope with stress include reducing or eliminating your caffeine intake — including the caffeine found in sodas, cola, energy drinks and chocolate. Caffeine is a stimulant that can make your body as tense as it would be if under stress and elevate your heart rate and blood pressure. Over-indulging in alcohol will make you feel relaxed at the time, but eventually produce the opposite effect. It can also affect any medications you are taking. High fat and high sugar foods — typical in ‘comfort eating’ — contribute little to your body’s nutritional requirements, so it’s vital that you are aware of what you eat, how much you eat, and when you eat it. Read the full story

Part 2 of a series on simple ways of de-stressing your life

 
Here comes part 2 of my short series of ideas and suggestions for taking some of the stress out of your life and bringing back a better sense of balance and enjoyment.

De-stressing Idea Number 3: Take time out

As your work load and responsibilities increase and your free time is filled with house work, childcare and chores, finding ‘me time’ can feel like an impossibility. You are interrupted all the time through reacting to the needs of others; your brain still buzzes with unfinished business that affects your sleep and you run the risk of exhaustion, which in turn repeats the cycle by increasing the output of stress hormones.

Your time out — maybe just half an hour per day — must be spent doing something you enjoy. My friend Jill likes to read a magazine; Dean likes to do a work-out; Kent goes for a bike ride; and Sonia weeds her yard by the coast.

‘Me’ time can also be . . . nothing. For me sometimes, it is a big chunk of quiet. It is not that I don’t enjoy my work and I love being with my family, but I recognise the need to unplug the mobile phone, keep the TV turned off and just go outside and sit in the garden. On the other ‘me side’ hand, I also love spending time with my friends doing something relatively simple like going out for a movie or coffee — anything that isn’t related to work or responsibilities or sensible ‘to do’ lists. Read the full story

Part 1 of a series on de-stressing your life

Work/Life balance is more than a buzzword, it’s a way of life. The word ‘balance’ doesn’t necessarily mean an even divide between work and life; instead, ‘balance’ means successfully managing all the responsibilities you have in all areas of your life.

Despite all the technology and labour saving devices that we have, and our parents and grandparents lacked, we work longer hours and have more time poverty than any other era in history. We also struggling with ways to find ‘quality’ time for ourselves and our families among the never-ending chores: work demands, commuting, home, kids and social and community commitments.

The failure many experience in achieving any real work/life balance means that family life can suffer and so can your physical, emotional and mental health. The huge increases in illnesses such as chronic back ache, clinical depression, heart disease, blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and obesity, are all indicators that our current work/life balance is way out of whack. Read the full story