Tag: #connect

Changing the habits of a lifetime

Published on by Jane MatthewsLeave a comment

Yesterday was a somewhat stressful day: a long coaching session with a challenging client, a visit to grumpy uncle in his care home, phone calls with those charged with helping him be less grumpy, and an evening conference call – past the time when I usually like to wrap work up for the day.

All of which squeezed out everything I know about self-care.

On the way to the care home I stopped and bought a cookie as big as a saucer, then sat in the car, in the sunshine, nibbling it.

Later, after the conference call, I opened a bottle of Merlot and poured myself a large glass.

Both are reasonable and very familiar ways to comfort myself when I notice stress in my body. The trouble is they don’t actually work.

I think they do – which is how they’ve become habits. But beyond the initial pleasure rush they leave me feeling worse: over-sugared, headachey, and cross with myself.

Why did I fall back into old unconscious habits instead of stopping, breathing, and asking myself what would really soothe me? I already know what my body would have said. As I sat in my car eating a cookie my body was craving the bright winter sunlight. I could have used the time to do a circuit of the pretty lake behind the care home. My body, my lungs, my eyes and ears and soul would have loved that.

And as I reached for the bottle of wine I might instead have chosen to sit quietly in the armchair, breathe deeply, maybe do a three minute meditation, enjoy the fact that the working day was over and it had ended with a long call with two of my favourite colleagues.

I’m not saying that cakes and wine don’t have their place. They do and probably always will. I am saying we need to stop and question some of the things we do unconsciously, because they’re habits or because we’ve always done them.

Mindfulness gives us the opportunity to constantly notice and adjust on our way to creating lives that work and feel better.

Next time I’m feeling stressed I will stop and ask my body and soul what it really needs in this moment.

Photo by Dex Ezekiel on Unsplash

A teapot says I’ve got time

Published on by Jane MatthewsLeave a comment

Fast food, fast lane, superfast broadband….it seems the goal of every service provider is to make our lives quicker.

They would add ‘and easier’ but I’m not so sure. It’s often seems to me that the more time they free up the more things I add to my To Do list.

The trouble with ‘fast’ is that it so often also means unconscious. You know, that moment when you’ve been hurtling along the motorway to get home and you have literally no idea where on the route you are: you’ve been operating on automatic.

Or you wolf down a delicious dinner while watching a favourite TV show and realise you didn’t taste a single mouthful.

One of the things that goes along with my wish to live my best year is to be mindful: to extract pleasure, awareness, gratitude, for all the little things in my life that work. You’ve undoubtedly seen that poster proclaiming ‘Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realise they were the big things’ (thanks Kurt Vonnegut).

Yesterday afternoon I found myself boiling the kettle and reaching for a teabag without paying any attention to what I was doing. Until I spotted my new glass teapot standing alongside a beautiful tin of Fortnum and Mason tea leaves which my son Paul gave me last year.

So I stopped.

I picked up the tin, enjoying its smart metallic red and green decoration. I opened it and smelt the leaves, each ant-sized – rather than the usual powder they crush into teabags.

Carefully I spooned the leaves into the metal strainer that sits in the centre of the pot then poured on boiling water, enjoying watching the water turn a deep golden brown.

After I had let it seep for five minutes I poured milk into a china cup and then poured in the tea.

Then I sat down to enjoy it.

The whole process took five times as long as making tea with a teabag. But it also yielded five times as much pleasure. It gave me breathing space. It gave my eyes, my nose and my tastebuds an experience.

And it slowed me down long enough to remind myself that this too is life. Made up of thousands of little moments we can choose to make special if we wish.