Are You Creating Enough Mental Space?

by Lynda Holt

Are You Creating Enough Mental Space?

 

I work in the mental wellbeing field, I have decades of experience, and yet the one thing I constantly have to remind myself is to make space – space to just be.

This is how / where I ground myself, feed my soul, stay clear on what is important to me (or rather when I’m ‘doing’ that I’m doing the stuff that matters to me), this is also how I stay mentally well, creative, compassionate, focussed and any number of other emotional states necessary for running my business – and getting the best out of life.

And yet I can very easily find reasons to put myself last, to distract myself with busy things – important and impactful or not, because it’s easier – occasionally necessary, but usually an excuse for not dealing with something else.

Why am I sharing this with you?

I’ve spent months talking to clients – particularly in healthcare, about surviving the ‘mess in the middle’ and space – to ground, to refuel and to rest for a bit is how you survive.

More critically, you can only process – and heal, from the shit you are dealing with (whether it is your own shit or stuff you have absorbed from others you love, you hang out with, work with or from the media), when you step back from it and create space.

Ritual and routine are hugely important and give you the structure to prioritise yourself, self-awareness helps you to work out what works for you and what gets in your way, but in the end, you then need to find the will to prioritise yourself.

We are all work in progress – I don’t say this to be preachy, this is definitely a ‘those in glass houses’ moment!

I know what ritual works for me, I know getting out for a walk with my camera, or scratching around in my somewhat ungroomed garden work for me – I don’t always prioritise them. I’m sure I’m not the only one, it’s sometimes easier to not bother, to be too busy, or watch Netflix, or whatever.

Finding the will to prioritise yourself is about two things, self-worth and understanding the impact (or contribution if you prefer) you make. I don’t know of many truly impactful people who don’t look after their own needs first – maybe not 100% of the time but certainly the majority of the time.

Self- worth is a biggy, and there is no quick fix – but most people I’ve worked with can find something they at least like. Choose to focus on what you like, or even on your impact. You will probably feel weird if you are not used to doing this, but ever so gently you will also start to train yourself to see your worth.

 

Finding the will to prioritise yourself is also about what you choose to limit or stop doing in order to create space.

I have a very clear list – and when my time doing these goes up, it’s usually a clue I’m out of wack with myself. They include feeling guilty – both about what I’ve done and not done, making comparisons, and scrolling through social feeding the above.

It’s amazing how much space I can free up but taking charge of my thoughts & actions – it’s equally horrifying how much space I loose when I don’t pay attention to these.

Mental space is a critical part of wellbeing, there is no one right way to create it, but most of us do have to actively make space to just be – so think about your rituals and practice, your commitment to yourself and what you might need to reduce or stop.

I’d love to know what you what you do to create space and stay balanced please share below.

 

If you enjoyed this join Braver our online community helping people to be braver about their choices and impact.

Losing your life is only one way to die!

by Lynda Holt

Surviving Isolation

by Lynda Holt

First, let’s get really clear about where we are at – we each have different experiences of lockdown and of social distancing depending on our circumstances, our jobs, our families and the degree of isolation we are feeling. To move forward we have to accept and, more importantly, respect those different experiences may evoke different emotions and behaviours. This is a time to be kind, to be tolerant, and to refrain from judging each other for handling stuff differently. 

I believe there are a number of neurological things that help with this acceptance: your perspective, your self-talk and your ability to assume people are doing the best they can in the circumstances they find themselves in. I would be the first to accept this is difficult when your neighbours are having a full volume row in their garden, their dog is barking and you are trying to have a serious zoom call with a client – but hey the rain will put a stop to that, right? 

Seriously though, you have two choices don’t you – well three maybe – you could scream at them over the fence to be quiet (definitely not kind or understanding), you could get really frustrated and distracted and derail your own day, or you could manage your own state – which is the only thing you actually have any control over.  Feel grateful that you are not in that situation and cut them a bit of slack; even when you love people being with them 24/7 has its challenges. 

You can only do this if you are prepared to get real. Being able to focus on positive aspects in life is hugely important and so is not being in denial, kidding yourself everything is ok, when your world is unrecognisable, is equally important.

How do you ever get to act courageously – which is what you need to do right now, if you are deluding yourself that the uncertainty, the isolation, the level of ambient fear is not affecting you in any way. It is, you are a human being – none of us are left untouched by the suffering of other humans, unless of course you are a psychopath. 

Seriously though, none of us are left untouched by this. 

I believe this is about mitigating the damage caused by isolation – we know isolation changes our neurochemistry. Oxytocin is produced in response to bonding – physically and emotionally. Babies evoke oxytocin production in their parents as well as the other way around. The resulting, often unconditional, love between a parent & baby gives us a great start in life, and as we get older we need to find other ways of creating this oxytocin production. Mostly this is from socialisation, from connection with other people – or animals in some cases. 

So just as connection increases Oxytocin – which is needed for empathy, for love and for emotional safety; isolation causes stress and increase in cortisol. It doesn’t need to be actual physical isolation either. The perception of social isolation has exactly the same impact; cortisol levels rise which can reduce your higher cognitive function – like rational processing and creativity – because your brain is focused on survival activity. When you lack social contact – real or perceived, activity in your dorsomedial prefrontal cortex – the region of your brain associated with altruism and social judgement, changes and this in turn makes you less tolerant, less able to see other’s perspectives, less trusting and more judgemental.  

It strikes me that this potentially makes the current situation less tolerable depending on your circumstances, and it makes it more difficult for you to emerge from lockdown as it inevitably gets lifted.

So what can you do to ensure you emerge stronger, more courageous and more in control of your own wellbeing – all of which I believe are possible.

First, focus on the things you have control over and limit your exposure to things you have no control over – to be clear I’m not suggesting you stick your head in the sand – but it might be that you don’t need to read every article or scroll relentlessly through social media just in case you miss something – this just fuels fear.

The things you have control over are those that you can directly impact: your mindset and attitude, the way you show up, how you behave towards yourself and those around you and, critically, how you spend your time now.

I am a great believer in investing in your future self and now is no different – here are a few ways to invest in yourself:

• Invest by being kind to yourself, think about the stories you tell yourself, do they help you to be the person you want to be – or do you need to change your script a little – they are your stories, you can change them. Your brain will look for evidence to support whatever you focus on so you might need to choose to consciously focus on something different to your default story – with practice the evidence follows and a new story grows. 

• Invest by accepting that things may not be as you want them, you might not be as productive, as organised, as groomed even and that is ok. You are allowed to stand in your own imperfect glory

• Invest by identifying what relationships or activities enrich you and make time for them, even if they are nothing to do with work, or what you think you should be doing with your time. It’s no accident people are going baking mad – myself included. It’s distracting, it’s nourishing and breaking bread – quite literally – is one of the most connecting of human activities.

• Invest by staying fit mentally and physically in whatever way works for you, there is no right or wrong. There’s plenty of free stuff online you can do at home. Use routine or ritual to calm your mind, it doesn’t have to be clever or traditional meditation, just the things that create space for you. If you need a hand try some simple things like anchoring activities to calming – like hand washing, add in a little ritual about reminding yourself you are well and safe (if those words work for you – or choose your own). Listen to your favourite music, get up and dance, go in the garden if you have one. Remember the things that keep you feeling connected and do something every day.

• Give help and accept help – for the simple reason that this creates connection and raises your oxytocin levels. Even in lockdown there are so, so many examples of human kindness – focus on these and emulate what works for you.

• Finally invest by staying positive and grateful – even on the worst of days there are a few moments of positivity – something that made you smile or laugh, something that made you feel loved or worthy. Focus on this not the hundred bad things that might be your go-to default – it is worth the effort to retrain yourself.

Remember, courage takes two things: a willingness to act and an ability to manage fear and anxiety – even temporarily. You manage fear by focusing on your values, on what matters most to you, on where you can make a difference. You are willing to act because you believe something is possible, you can picture an outcome and that outcome matters to you enough to endure your fear.

What could possibly matter more than being the best version of yourself that you are capable of right now? – this is how you emerge stronger, this is how you care for those you love, this is how you find the energy to re-craft your business or your job, and this is how you stay mentally well.

So please invest the time and know that your future self will thank you. If you need a little help do join us in our virtual co work community.

Don’t be like Pandora!

by Lynda Holt

Like many good myths and stories, Pandora’s Box has iterated over time – if I had a pound for every inspirational speaker I’ve heard say ‘and the last thing out of Pandora’s box was hope’ I’d be doing very well. For hope to prevail, you have to suspend your fear long enough to believe in something better. Pandora did not. 

As far as the myth goes – in a very abridged version – Pandora was a curious being, sent by Zeus to punish mankind. She had many gifts from many gods – these were stored in a jar (mistakenly translated as a box), and she was told never to open it. Of course, she did and once she did all manner of evil flew out into the world – she watched hardship, sickness, sadness, death and many other bad things fly out of the box and in an attempt to stop the flow of evil she had released, she slammed the box shut – trapping hope inside. (Later iterations of the myth have her finding hope at the bottom or  have her husband showing her hope, which is obviously a much more palatable version of the story – particularly for children)

The interesting and relevant point here is that when you are in scary, uncertain situations you don’t know what is going to come out of the box – you may not be the one who opened the box, but you do have to deal with what flies out. You can’t stuff everything back in and you can’t pretend nothing’s changed – well maybe you can do that but it’s not a very good strategy.

When you act from a place of fear you tend to make poorer decisions from a more limited set of internal resources – which is fine when you are in immediate danger and you need to remove yourself, but not so good for the decisions that most of us make most of the time. There is a fairly simple neurological reason why this is the case – fear ups your cortisol and adrenaline activates your sympathetic nervous system and diverts effort to key survival areas of your brain. It literally narrows your conductive bandwidth, bypassing some of the rational processing that might be needed to find solutions.

Once this happens – even if you are not fully in fight / flight mode, your limbic brain has the wrong chemicals sloshing about for courageous, connected longer term solution finding. For this you need dopamine – the reward hormone, serotonin – for confidence and significance and oxytocin – for bonding and connection. Hope helps to release these hormones, but there is a caveat – you have to believe the outcome you are considering is possible. You don’t have to have it all planned out, you don’t have to know how to do it all – but you do have to believe it is possible that you can do it.

These are very uncertain times for most of us, whether it’s health, wealth or both, it is reasonable to feel fearful. The thing is, we will emerge from this pandemic, what is happening now will pass, and life may well be different after. The decisions you make now, right now, about your business, about your behaviour and about how you show up for your community will impact how your future looks – and while it’s really tempting to launch in and start ‘pivoting’ or changing your business, especially if your income has disappeared, remember this, you have to live in the future you create.

So before you react from a place of fear, think about the future you hope for, the business you want, the life you want and look at how you might start to craft that. If you don’t know, and it’s ok not to know – these are exceptional times, sit with it. Wait. You may well have more than a bit of time on your hands. Make sure you are informed about any financial support you may be eligible for, make sure you have looked at your expenditure and culled where necessary – that is good business housekeeping. 

Then, when you start to craft the future you actually want, remember two things – hope helps you to have the right neurochemicals for expansive thinking and creation; and when you hope for something, you need to also believe it is possible in order to get the neurochemical hit.

When people say hope is not a strategy, they are right, and for the record fear is not a strategy either. Both are available to you: fear you’ll probably experience whether you want it or not; hope you might have to look for. 

All I’m suggesting is you hang on long enough to get to the bottom of the box – don’t be like Pandora and react (or shut the lid), before you’ve allowed yourself hope.

If I can help you, if you’d like to join us for Cowork & Coffee meeting on Wednesday at 11am or you’d like to be part of the Braver Business Community, please reach out.

Reduce Your Anxiety By Helping Others

by Lynda Holt

Focus on what you can do something about – the way you do business

by Lynda Holt

Resolving a crisis often demands innovation, a change in the way you do things. Discomfort, uncertainty and fear, will likely call on you to hold fast, keep doing what you are doing, or have you feeling overwhelmed, like you have no control, or you can do nothing to influence your situation. I get it, this is the emptiest my sales pipeline has been in a very long time, and it’s not something I can easily fix.

I have spent much of today on the phone with healthcare colleagues and clients around the world – mostly postponing work we have planned over the next few months. Unlike our non-healthcare clients, they do not have the capacity to take stuff online, to continue developing their staff – they are working flat out to care for those in need. I’d like to say a big thank you to all of you in health care who might be reading this. 

Like any ‘crisis’ Covid-19 is bringing out the best and worst of humanity, I’ve seen all sorts of behaviour from people, as I’m sure you have too. One thing that feels very clear – people are scared, we might not all be scared about the same thing, but there is definitely a heightened anxiety in the air.

From a neuro perspective, whatever you are consciously focussed on gets amplified. At the moment it feels like wherever you look it is fear and anxiety that are getting amplified. Now I’m not saying there is nothing to be concerned about, but I do think we have some individual and collective responsibility to be mindful of what we are spreading around emotionally as well as physically.

I am a great believer in focusing your efforts where you can actually make a difference. As well as obvious self-care precautions, I think there are two areas you can make a real difference.

First, pay attention to what you are talking about, listening too, reading and generally consuming online. Make sure you are amplifying things that actually help you, being reliably informed is one thing, scaring the sh*t out of yourself is totally different. Remember the things that help you feel good, uplifted and resourceful and include some of that in your day where you can.

Second, concentrate on activities that have the potential to sustain your business. 

For many of us this will be bringing work online, focusing on how you can engage with clients remotely and looking at how you use a potentially less busy period to develop your business. 

While times are tough right now, Covid -19 will fuel a wave of innovation – changes to the way we do business, that will stick long after the virus is gone. One of those will be a greater focus on digital working. 

Look first at sustaining your business, think about cashflow, delivering on existing commitments differently and things you already have in place that you may not be using. I bet if most of you did an inventory of your tools and software you’d find some stuff that is underused because it doesn’t fit with how you work, some you don’t know well enough to use to its full potential, some that was just a good idea at the time but you’ve never really got value from.

It often takes an external event to make us change the way we work, we are creatures of habit after all. A great example of this, all be it very different circumstances, was the postal strike in 1988. One of the biggest outcomes was the increase in purchase and use of fax machines, a practice that continued after the strike. What practices might you need to change to operate in an evolving digital world? When you look at what you already have you may find making the transition to more digital working is not as hard – or as undesirable, as you first thought. 

Cancel those things you subscribe to and never use – protect your cash flow. Think about things you could offer to clients, if you are in training or coaching for example, you may have several tools at your disposal, things like 360 feedback, profiling tools and team tools – these might just help your clients with the transition to home working, and the emerging work cultures that come with that. 

Look at how you stay connected and continue to build relationships with your clients and community – what do you have in place that helps you navigate remote working – personally I’m a great fan of zoom video conferencing it has enabled me to serve clients in a much more convenient manner for both of us, and is now an even more essential part of our business. Have a look at what you have access to, for example Microsoft teams if you use Office 365, Skype, even What’s App or Facebook communities – it may be you already have more at your disposal than you realise.

Finally, think about your future business – what can you reasonably spend your time on now, especially if you are a bit light on client work, to invest in the future of your business. It might be getting round to creating resources to support your main client offerings, it might be creating a digital version of what you sell, it might be learning to use your software and tech more fully, or it might even be investing time in yourself and your own development – personally I quite like the idea of reading, researching, catching up on things going on in my industry and beyond.

Whatever you are doing over the next few weeks, protect yourself – both emotionally and physically, take the opportunity of a quieter time (if you have one) to stay connected with those you serve, to build relationships and to spend some time on your business infrastructure and offerings. 

If you don’t fare well working alone – ie. you are easily distracted or demotivated, in addition to our existing Braver FB group, I’m hosting weekly Brave virtual coworking & coffee sessions. These are an open, no agenda co-work session, bring questions, ideas and challenges – let’s connect and lift one another. Join us here at 11am every Wednesday. One plea, there are plenty of places online you can talk about Covid -19 and its impact, this is not one of them, give your brain a break for an hour.

The antidote to uncertainty

by Lynda Holt

When thinking about this week’s blog I had a wee debate with myself – do I address the elephant in the room for many of us, or do I carry on with my planned neuroscience and connection theme. The reality is these are uncertain times. 

Whether you are worried about the Covid-19 virus itself, the impact on your business or the effects of mass purchasing seemingly essential supplies, whether you are irritated by what feels like hysteria, annoyed that others don’t seem to be taking the risk seriously or happily trying to bury your head in the sand, it is unlikely you will be totally unaffected.

Uncertain times create stress and tension – as humans we don’t do well with ambiguity, in fact our unconscious will do it’s best to fill any actual knowledge gaps and create a cohesive story upon which we can act, (or react). This is in part why you can share an experience with someone and yet have conflicting memories of it.

Neurologically most people have an aversion to ambiguity when it comes to decision making. Back in the 1960s Daniel Ellsberg’s famous decision-making game demonstrated this beautifully. The game is predicated on simple gambling known factors against unknown factors.

In 2005, Colin Camerer, a neuro-economist tested this paradox while monitoring brain activity, he found that the less factual information people had to rely on, the more amygdala activity there was. Your amygdala is associated with emotion, particularly fear, aa well as the storing and sorting of memories, often ‘filed’ through their association with emotion. It also balances risk and reward and, by default, prioritises fear responses. Unchecked your unconscious will fill gaps in your knowledge with fear. It is this, seemingly irrational, by-product of not knowing that stops you focusing on the possibility of future rewards.

In our ordinary lives most of us don’t actually deal with much actual uncertainty. Most of what you feel uncertain about is, in fact, predictable, it’s socially based and related to how secure you feel. As your brain likes patterns, or habitual responses to certain triggers it is easy to repeat the same cycles, drawing on stories created from emotion, memory and incomplete information. 

Of course there is a huge variance in how much uncertainty people can tolerate. Two people can have the same circumstances but a totally different experience, think about someone you love being late home, not answering your attempts to contact them, where does your brain go – are you catastrophising, are you unphased – or simply the parent of a teenager! Seriously though, your reaction will totally depend on your tolerance of uncertainty. Most people, even when excited by something, will also feel a little uncomfortable with uncertainty. At the other end of the spectrum anxiety induced by uncertainty is thought to affect 1:20 of the population.

Even if you are not particularly risk averse, most people will try to control circumstances to include more known variables and reduce the likelihood of surprise, just as demonstrated in the Ellsberg Paradox. The more you know the more you can predict what will happen and decide on ways to deal with it. When the outcome is unclear it is difficult to prepare, especially if you are splitting your brain processing between several possible outcomes.

When significant uncertainty arises, like major financial difficulties, significant health issues or major relationship challenges, anxiety increases across the board. The less control you have over a situation the higher the increase. Which brings me back to our current situation. Whatever your views around the newly declared pandemic, one of the things we should all be watchful of is its effect on mental well-being, our own and that of those around us. What is unfolding is the perfect storm of uncertainty – health risk, potential financial risk for many of us, lack of control and lack of knowledge.

Your brain will create a story or stories that enable you to process what is happening around you, it will fill in the blanks based on what you have previously experienced, what you choose to believe, and your emotional drivers – whether that be fear or something else. You will then unconsciously seek to prove your story right – it is no coincidence that you see more of what you focus on. 

Our tolerance of uncertainty has diminished over the last decade, in part because we have so much technology at our disposal, it is easy to stay in touch with the people you care about, it’s easy to find ‘facts’ to support whatever you say, and it’s easy to create echo chambers from the places you consume ‘news’ – especially social media. Emotions are just as contagious as viruses and excessive or extended bouts of fear are bad for you. It is exhausting, quite literally weakens your immune system and prevents you enjoying your life. They might manifest as paralysing anxiety, but much more likely you will notice symptoms like poor concentration, increased excuse making, procrastination, irritability, finding distractions, refusing to delegate, double checking yourself, being distant or disengaged – this is not an exclusive list.

There is no magic button to turn off uncertainty anxiety, but the good news is that because it is created and driven through your brain’s limbic system you can go some way to creating healthier, more empowering responses to uncertainty. There are two key factors, self-awareness and control. Self-awareness requires you to understand the stories you repeatedly tell yourself, the excuses you make and the triggers you own. Control requires you to understand what you can impact, where you might have some control and what you might be concerned about but can’t change right now.

Here are a few strategies to help you maximise your awareness and control:

1. Understand your triggers, they are the start of an emotional reaction – good or bad. When you are aware of the things that send you into a more anxious state you have a better chance of knowing when it happens and consciously intervening in your brain processing. Even a simple word with yourself – ‘I recognise this is fear talking and choose to let it go’ or a sentence that works for you.
2. Focus on what you can control – you always have control over some aspect of a situation so to decrease uncertainty anxiety, focus on this. In the current situation it might be washing your hands , choosing what you read or give air time to. It might be building up your mental resilience. Choosing to act on what you can control calms your limbic activity and done repeatedly becomes your default way of responding.
3. Stay positive – not for hippy, happy, clappy reasons, but because it raises your resilience, mentally and physically, start by consciously looking for and finding the small positives in everyday activities – there will be many you take for granted. This focus amplifies over time and creates an easier transition out of fear into calm.
4. Trust yourself – if your internal alarm bells are ringing listen, go through the steps above and ensure you are not reacting to an unhelpful story and then take the wisdom your ‘gut’ or intuition is sharing.
5. Take action on decisions you make it removes ambiguity – even if it turns out to be the wrong action.
6. When all else fails stop, take a breath, well a few breaths really. This activates your parasympathetic nervous system creating a sense of calm, calms your sympathetic nervous system and reduces anxiety.

We may have an uncertain few months ahead, and I don’t write this from some place of judgement or even direction. I do believe we each also have a responsibility to each keep our own house in order, we need to look after each other’s wellbeing and resist spreading harm, viral and informational. I also recognise that it can be a concerning time, if you need to talk, want to share ideas or challenges as part of the Brave community you are very welcome to do so.

Why being ‘shriven’ is good for you

by Lynda Holt

No idea what I’m talking about? I bet you’ve eaten a pancake or two in your time. Maybe enjoyed a pancake race, or tossing ritual?

Being shriven is to be absolved of your sins – it’s an Anglo-Saxon Christian ritual where on Shrove Tuesday, 47 days before Easter Sunday, you confessed your sins and sought absolution. This was followed by a period of fasting known as Lenten.  It later became a day of feasting and celebrating preceding Lent. Making pancakes, once a practical way of using up eggs etc, became central to the celebrations. Similar rituals of celebration, food and parade can be seen in Mardi Gras and Pre-Lenten in Europe.

While we often associate ritual with religion, ancient tribalism or even the occult, it is actually in small everyday things that rituals are at their most powerful. Rituals give us a sense of order, control even, and in some small way they help to make sense of the chaotic world we experience, whether that be grand scale ceremony or a very personal routine. They are often symbolic enactments to which we attach a meaning. 

Historically we see rituals where the outcome is important – like being absolved of your sins if you are a Christian. We see rituals when the outcome is uncertain – like dancing around the Maypole, an ancient pagan fertility ritual, designed to bring good luck to crop growing. We see rituals where the outcome is beyond our control – like the ancient fire walking tradition, a rite of passage in iron age India, purification in Malaysia and a modern-day empowerment activity.

These kind of rituals exist because they create a sense of connection, or belonging to something bigger, even if only for a moment. This is really important to human well-being. 

In principle, rituals are a good thing, in practice not so much, unless we are prepared to get both conscious and intentional about what rituals we engage in. It is daily practice that shapes who we are, it is daily practice that determines how we show up and contribute to the world and it is daily practice that has the biggest impact on our mental wellbeing.

Here’s the rub. Most daily practice is completely habitual, it is often unconscious, and we don’t think about its impact – on ourselves or others. Think back to being shriven for a minute; how often do you continue to beat yourself up for something long after others involved have moved on?  Is part of your ritual to beat yourself up, or can you learn what you need to learn and forgive? The latter of course is far better for you.

Many of our rituals are unconscious, habitual acts, yet we feel a bit out of sorts if we haven’t performed them. Think about cleaning your teeth for example, you probably have times of the day when you do this – when you get up, when you go to bed, you might have a way you do it and order in which you move round your mouth and so on – it’s habitual and a ritual. So might be the way you prepare for certain activities – I know many speakers who have a pre-stage ritual to get themselves in the right place to do their best work, musicians, actors, athletes, people who have grounding, connecting rituals prior to something important.

Rituals are a powerful internal conversation (no words necessary) about your self-worth, about the way you treat yourself, whether you are prepared to invest in yourself. 

However busy you are, you can find a few minutes to be conscious about your rituals.

Think about your habits and rituals for a moment, how many have you got? How many create control, a sense of order? How many make you feel calm and /or connected. What have you been doing unconsciously and does it enrich or empower you or are your rituals keeping you stuck?

If you have some enriching rituals in place already well done, if you are alarmed by what you are habitually doing to yourself or not doing for yourself, it’s never too late to start investing.

Uncertainty, and the fear that comes with it, drives your sympathetic nervous system –your fight/flight, stress response. Your body is designed to operate here in exceptional circumstances, it can’t differentiate between actual physical threat and psychological threat, destructive self-talk, judgement and fear keep you stuck and have a detrimental impact on your long term well-being so watch out for destructive rituals.

Creating certainty, even for a few minutes, has a powerful impact on your neurological function. It trips you back into parasympathetic – rest and restore mode, where we ideally operate from most of the time. Ritual is a great way to create a few minutes of certainty. 

If you need to upgrade your rituals here are a few things to try – 

• Wake up and consciously smile, it changes the chemicals floating around your brain.
• Create tea / coffee / water time out routines for yourself (I love my 5 minute start my work day routine, of a coffee, my aim for the day and some affirmations – it sets my brain up again with the right neurochemicals sloshing around to keep me empowered and on track)
• Set your intentions  – some people say this is a morning activity, I believe it is a regular, but what works for you activity – the important bit being setting yourself up to succeed.
• Exercise whether it be yoga, running, football, the gym, a regular routine for yourself is a great ritual.
• Your self-talk – we are predisposed to focus on negatives, positive self-talk often takes a bit of conscious processing.
• Getting outside and breathing fresh air.
• Visioning 
• Meditating
• Journaling
• Gratitude

Pick one of these and try it. you might find you have to try a few before you find the right fit, have fun. This is not an exhaustive list, if you have others you think people might like please share them in the comments or the Braver group.

You don’t have to join a ceremony or embody an ancient custom to enjoy ritual, unless you want to, but you do have to absolve yourself or your perceived shortcomings and wrong doings and invest in your well-being a little. Spend a little time on yourself and if you are having pancakes or joining bigger ceremonies have fun, as we will be with our own who can actually catch their pancake once they’ve tossed it competition.

Ego: the creator or destroyer of connection?

by Lynda Holt

I am constantly fascinated by narrative, language and storytelling, as they are key to the reality we create for ourselves – even when we are not the originator of the narrative. Our narrative frames possibility, both creating and limiting our potential to live our best lives.

Somewhere in the middle of all that sits ego. There are several differing interpretations of what ego is in psychology and neuroscience, so to be clear for the purpose of this article, I am talking about ego as your sense of self, the opinions you have about yourself and your abilities, and your sense of self-worth. I am not talking about ego in terms of conscious mind or psychoanalysis. 

Humour me for a minute; stop reading and just jot down somewhere who you are, how you might describe yourself – your words, not what you think others might see or think.

Don’t read on until you’ve done the exercise!

Now have a look at what you’ve written – how does it read?

It’s probably a bit of your personal story , the things that define you. For example, I might write: I’m a mother, a teacher, an author, an enabler. I’m big into neuroscience, spent many happy years working in the NHS leading emergency care. I hate rules and being told what to do, I’m stubborn, curious and love creating – words, photos, food, décor – just creating. I have big dreams, a bigger heart and the courage to follow through – most of the time.  The longer you give yourself the more you will come up with, the deeper into yourself you’ll probably go – and I often get clients to spend much longer doing this, it can be a very interesting voyage of self-discovery.

If your ego is your sense of self, then it is the story you create about yourself – create being the salient word. It’s not real, it is simply the illusion – or the story, you create in your mind. Your story is, of course, your lived reality, so reflect again on what you wrote above and think about the stories you repeatedly tell yourself – are they empowering, supportive of who you want to be in the world or are they fear driven limitations and excuses that hold you back? 

Most people have some and some; you might believe you are great at what you do, you might also believe you are no good with numbers or money, you might think you are really clever and that you are too old to make a difference, you might believe you are kind and loving and also that nobody listens to you – do you see how these contradicting, but potentially real internal stories can create confused ego?

Your ego is in play every time you say I can do this or I can’t do that, it is being formed everytime you think I’m not good enough or I’m too good for this, and for the most part you will be oblivious to what is going on. Your ego is an evolving part of who you are, and it can be difficult to see, mostly because you are not looking; introspection is a hugely undervalued activity in our society. 

Your ego plays a massive part in how you show up and engage with the world, it is fundamental to how you connect with those around you personally & professionally, face to face and online. It is also responsible for many of the emotional reactions you have to circumstances, other people’s behaviour, perceptions of fairness, feelings of insecurity. To protect from the confusion created by both empowering and disabling stories you may well have created one or a series of masks you pull on in different situations to protect yourself and your fragile ego. 

It is these masks that are often the destroyer of connection, because the you that is showing up is playing a part, fitting in. However practiced you are – and you may have been wearing some of those masks for a long time, people can’t quite connect, they don’t feel entirely safe or like they can trust you. When your ego puts up a mask it creates a barrier to genuine connection, your ego fields behaviour and emotion driven by fear and self-protection. When people think about ego it is often over inflated opinions, or arrogance that come to mind – ego can keep you small just as it can make you big yourself up.

If ego is going to be the creator of connection then you have to drop the mask, you have to get comfortable paying attention to your ego and treating it as your friend – as the integral part of you that it is. You have to nourish it, not punish it and this comes down to what you feed it – the stories you chose to believe about yourself, the stories you repeatedly tell yourself. 

It is time to stop confusing your ego. Think about who you need to be, how you want to show up in the world, how you want to connect and feed those stories to your ego, create that reality for yourself. 

If you are not sure who this is go back and repeat the earlier exercise as if it were the very best version of yourself. You might start by jotting down everything you believe about yourself, then cross out the things that are not true – other people’s opinions you have chosen to own, or old stories that are no longer true. Look at what is left and choose to keep the best version. This way there is no need for a mask, the real you shows up and connection is created.

If you falter along you journey, be kind to yourself, your ego has been a lifetime in the making, remain introspective and work on your stories a bit at a time.

Your ego is not your enemy, it is simply your story – make it a good one.

Love is all there is

by Lynda Holt

Depending on how loved up, romantic or cynical you are, Valentine’s Day will hold differing levels of significance for you. One thing is for sure, the increasing levels of commercialism around it make it hard to ignore – from cards, to gifts, to restaurants, your online and offline world is bombarded with pink & red hearts and flowers.

This, of course, is not how it all started out and while I’m not opposed to honouring romantic love in whatever way you see fit, I am calling on you to think about how you love yourself. 

If you’re interested, St Valentine’s Day is really about Christian Martyrdom and honouring sacrifice. In 496AD, the Pope deemed the 14^th February a day of feasting in honour of St Valentine of Rome who had been executed some 200yrs earlier – it was not until the 14^th century that St Valentine’s day actually became associated with romantic love.

Think about this, what if instead of martyring yourself – or over working, over criticising, under nourishing, under valuing – whatever you do that threatens your mental and physical wellbeing; you make this a week for self-love. 

Self-love is fundamental to our functioning as a human being. It is an integral part of our neural programming – if you want to be able to show up, to be real and truly belong, then at your very core you have to feel internally aligned in order to connect with the world in a meaningful way. It’s very difficult to do that if you don’t love who you believe yourself to be.

It can be very easy to feel down on yourself or self-critical if something has not panned out the way you expected or wanted, when you spend too much time comparing yourself to others, and when you don’t feel good enough in some way. I believe there is a clean distinction between self-love and liking yourself at any given moment. Liking yourself is much more about your behaviour, your reactions and your emotional responses, which, let’s be honest, can sometimes fall short of the high bar many of us hold ourselves to. 

In just the same way as it is possible to love your children or partner unconditionally, but not like them very much on occasions; it is quite possible to love yourself and not like something about yourself or your behaviour in a specific moment. Because we operate from our limbic brain most of the time this can easily get amplified, focussed on and become a recurring pattern of behaviour.

Like many of the things that threaten our mental wellbeing, not loving yourself is learned behaviour. As a baby and very small child you knew you were perfect as you were and you knew how to get what you needed to survive. As a growing human you are also very connected and receptive to the responses you get from people and quickly get socialised into what is acceptable, what is approved of and what keeps you liked and safe. 

In a perfect world these would be all the same things that help you flourish, enjoy life and make your contribution. In the real world they are not always the same, so to fit in, to be liked and to stay safe, you adapt your behaviour to meet expectations – yours as well as those of people around you. When this doesn’t fit with who you feel you are, your values or what you want to do on this planet, your mental wellbeing can suffer. Your ability to like who you are and what you stand for will certainly take a hit. You may even start to feel you have lost part of yourself, you are playing roles for others and showing up how they want you to. This internal disconnect messes with how you process information, where your unconscious focus goes and ultimately what you do more or less of. 

You may recognise this in yourself as negative self-talk, never quite making time for the things you personally love, putting others needs before your own, not nourishing yourself, not sleeping enough, exercising enough – I suspect there are a few more I have not thought of. All of these send you and those around you a clear message that you do not love yourself enough to treat yourself well. It also gives others permission to, unwittingly or otherwise, take advantage or not treat you well either. 

I know for most of us there is a balance to be struck between our own needs, caring for others, and looking after our businesses, and I know personally it can be a tricky thing to balance, too far one way and you might feel selfish, but too far the other and you martyr yourself, or the best version of you can’t show up, or you might even harm your wellbeing to the extent you can no longer serve others.

It is OK not to like yourself all of the time, we all do, say or think things we are not proud of occasionally, we all have bits of ourselves we might not like, whether that be our wobbly bits, our inability to do something, a quick temper, an inability to say no – insert your own here…  

These do not make you unloveable. 

Because you are neurologically predisposed to focus on the negative – just in case they put you in harms way, it is easy to focus on what you don’t like, amplify it and find increasing ‘evidence’ to support your thinking. Your unconscious mind will always look for evidence to prove it right, this might involve the most tenuous of links, but it will make them all the same. 

Deep down, most people have as many parts of themselves that they do like or love. These don’t put you under perceived threat so they don’t get the same focus.

This week when we celebrate love, how about looking at elements of the St Valentine’s Day differently, think about honouring and feasting. Honour yourself by focusing on the things you like or love about yourself by being conscious about them, focused on them and feast yourself on the evidence that supports them and really allow yourself to feel the beautiful lovable being that you are. 

Notice how much better you feel, how much more able you feel and know this, love is a basic human need, we may survive, but certainly can’t thrive without it. Each one of us deserves love and this starts as an inside job, the more we are able to love ourselves, imperfections and all, the more love we have to give to others.

Channelling my inner hippy, I leave you with this – 

“There is no such thing as too much love in the world, the more there is the more we share around”.

Where are you in your business lifecycle?

by Lynda Holt

There are a lot of great, well researched, business life cycle models available and this blog is not aiming to usurp them. My simple analogy is to demonstrate the importance of staying connected.

I’ve built my business on three core values courage, connection and contribution – although I certainly didn’t know that when I started (my infancy phase) and even a decade in, during adolescence, I probably couldn’t have articulated it. As it has matured, and is starting to move into its legacy phase, everything we do as a business has to pass the values test. This is mostly an unconscious neural process and when it is a conscious test, that in itself, is usually a warning that something is off – it isn’t really connected or congruent. 

It is this true connection with my business values, mission and legacy that has enabled me (and my business) to weather rough times, change course when necessary and embrace the journey. It is also this connection with a bigger vision that has enabled me to grow and mature as a business. 

My vision is for a world where we are each brave enough to act on the things that matter to us. We contribute to this a number of ways through education, particularly neuroscience, through mentoring, though coaching and with practical support – and all that we do has to lead towards a braver world. 

I believe your business has four phases – we don’t all move through all four and, unlike human life phases, it is quite possible to regress as well as progress. These four phases are pregnancy, infancy, adolescence and maturity.

There are clear functions and activities that belong in each phase. Each of these phases tests your courage, your commitment and your connection with yourself, your goals and your greater purpose. Each of these phases bring you their own rewards and challenges.

Phase one – Pregnancy

This is the incubation and growth of your business idea. It’s getting it to take its first breath. This is a period of anticipation, of investing in your idea, of preparation for birth. Do the right stuff and you give your business the best change of thriving. The right stuff includes a birth plan – what are you delivering, how are you going to start, where are your first customers coming from, what are your hopes and dreams for your baby?

Every parent knows you can only plan so far, as you enter the birth phase things can change rapidly and unexpectedly, you may have to adjust course to survive, it may take longer or be harder than you’d hoped, and this is just the beginning. The thing is you may never feel fully prepared – especially if it is your first, or you may feel totally prepared – only to find you have prepared the wrong stuff. 

At some point you have to give birth, you can’t just keep preparing, over thinking, or waiting for everything to be perfect – if you want a business you have to start.

Phase two – Infancy

This is exciting and often terrifying at the same time. It will probably have you eagerly looking for and ticking off early milestones – things like going live online – whether that be website or social profiles, your first client, going into profit. You’ll also hit some not so welcome milestones, your first complaint (we all get them), sleepless nights because life isn’t tracking with your plan or your ideal. Then there’s the isolation because looking after your business feels all-consuming, especially when your friends or family without a business just don’t get how hard it can feel. They don’t understand that, just like being a new parent, in your head, your self-worth, your confidence, your very identity are completely wrapped up in your success. Somehow you are it, your business is about you – if you don’t do it ‘it’ doesn’t happen!  

It can be very tempting at this stage to slip back to the pregnancy phase, you had control, they were your ideas you felt really connected. The reality is much more messy. In my experience business infancy is trial and error, and there is likely to be more error than success – even if you follow models and rules. My advice, get comfortable with failure – it is part of growth, stay nimble enough to adapt to your baby’s needs and – the critical bit, stay in control. There may be the odd emergency where your circumstances determine your actions, but most of the time stick to your core values, do what you believe in and own your business – don’t let it own you.  

The only way through this phase is to put the effort in, establish what works and what doesn’t and do more of what works – provided it brings you satisfaction and a sense of contribution. If it doesn’t you may want to return to the pregnancy phase – you have more of an ideal what to expect second time around.

Phase three – Adolescence

This is scary stuff, your beautiful baby is developing a life of its own, you are not making all the decisions – there are external influences at play. You’ve had to get help in order to keep growing, this might be outsourcing admin, it might be marketing or sales help, tech support, more people making your product or delivering client work. Here’s the real rub, none of this help does stuff exactly how you would, they have their own expertise, ideas or ways of behaving – you are on a crash course in managing many moving parts as well as probably taking a bit of a profit dip because you are paying for help.

This is one of the most painful stages for a business, it is where many small business owners circle back to infancy. You’ve forgotten those all-consuming first few years, you remember the control, the confidence from the routines you’d developed and the glory of being all things to all people. Settling back into late infancy is incredibly common. You know how to make a reasonable living, you know who your clients are and it kind of feels comfortable and successful. 

The other common characteristic of adolescence is believing you are indestructible – this is also true of adolescent businesses, you take on too much, diversify too widely, and expand too fast, believing you can do anything – or everything. This has been the undoing of many well known young businesses. My advice, introduce something, consolidate, introduce the next thing consolidate and so on – you can add in pretty much anything you want to, but not all at the same time and not without knowledge and experience.

Surviving adolescence is about purpose, it is about connecting with your values, and knowing what you are prepared to do and what you are not prepared to do to make the contribution you want to make. Then you just have to get courageous enough to hold the hell on and grow into the person and business you are meant to be.

Phase four – Maturity and Legacy

Just because you grow older doesn’t mean you mature. A mature business understands its journey, how it got to where it is and how to reproduce itself. This might be by way of continued expansion, it might be by way of diversity – this very much depends on the you as the business owner and what you want to contribute. What is for certain is that a mature business has systems, it doesn’t rely on you for daily operations. You and your business have to have grown through the first three phases to get here. 

Most businesses do not get here. They get stuck and circle back or they settle. The businesses that make it here are birthed and nurtured by people who are connected to their own values, to their mission and to the people their business serves. They know what impact they want their business to have – they understand legacy. I don’t mean all these businesses have to be huge and world changing, but I do absolutely believe all of these businesses have an impact on their chosen bit of the world – the thing that matters to the you as the business owner, your legacy. 

It is this perceived impact that attracts great team members – they connect with the mission, they want to be part of what the business stands for, not just what it does. Sure, people come to work for a pay check – but in the small business world, I believe most who just want a pay check are in adolescent business, employees in mature business got there because they are connected, their values align, they are there for the mission. 

People increasingly make values driven choices, your clients make value driven choices, so if you are not already, get clear about what your business values are, about what you really stand for, and about your impact, then use these to connect. I’d love to hear about where you think you are on your business journey, if you’ve found yourself stuck in a particular phase – or even recognise yourself circling back. I’d also love to know about your legacy, the more we know about each other the more we are able to help one another.

Your perspective is the real problem!

by Lynda Holt

Whether you call yourself an entrepreneur, a business owner or a freelancer, when you work alone – or are the ‘boss’ of a small team, it can feel very lonely. You are the decision maker, maybe the breadwinner for your family, you’ve gone out on a limb, you may seem like a risk taker or rebel to your family and friends, the bottom line – you have something to prove!  Whether you identify as lonely or not, this ‘aloneness’ can create a serious lack of perspective.

You might feel like a small fish in a big and busy pond, a pond where the water keeps moving and if you don’t, you’ll get sucked down the whirlpool in the middle. There are a few superstars in your industry who have claimed islands around the pond, a few more who have tiny moorings they anchor to, but most are circling the whirlpool working hard not to get sucked in. 

It’s easy to get caught in the whirlpool. You swim faster and faster to make sure you don’t get sucked in, but without perspective you can’t see beyond the whirlpool you are spinning in, no matter how many times you swim round the edge just keeping everything together.

Life and business can start to feel repetitive – you may even know it’s your own story / excuses that have you circling the whirlpool, but while you’re busy swimming, the water is moving too fast to reflect what you are actually doing – hence your perspective disappears. 

Your little whirlpool is kind of like your social media echo chamber, or the rhetoric from the same people you have the same conversations with over and over, the things you regularly fill your head with, the habits you repeat whether they serve you or not – these all limit your perspective.

This is where connection is vital, whether it is a partner or family member, a friend or fellow entrepreneur, a formal mentor or business group, having someone who understands your dreams and aspirations who can see what you are doing from beyond the edge of the whirlpool will give you a totally different perspective than your own.

The key to here though is that the person or people supporting you are actually able to hold space for you, you feel safe enough to be vulnerable, to explore what you are doing – or not doing, and that they have the right experience or expertise to help you to find perspective. This might be because they know you well, they’ve shared some of your life journey, it might be that they have an island or mooring already, or previously swum in the pond that you are navigating, or it might be that they are a professional ‘space holder’. 

It is definitely not the people who love you dearly and want to keep you safe. It is not the people who want you to do things their way – and in there I include many ‘coaches’ selling solutions for this, that and the next thing without even understanding your issue. Neither is it colluders, those people who when you say it’s tough will immediately share their hardships or horror stories, agree about how tough it is and encourage you to swim faster round the whirlpool, or worse, sink into it with them.

Most entrepreneurs and business owners I work with crave safe space, somewhere to gain the perspective that enables them to swim in their own lane and not round in circles. I believe that connection with others who understand the risk, the loneliness and the rewards of having your own business is critical to perspective, success and mental wellbeing and I actively encourage you to seek out this connection. You are welcome to look in the Braver Business group for starters. 

Perspective is a neurological habit, a way of thinking – often when busy, tired or stressed you take the neurological shortcut – which is to keep doing what you’ve always done and keep doing it the same way. It’s easy, but madness. Not only does this default keep you stuck, it can prevent you considering new things in your industry, from finding better ways of working and from connecting with people who may help you. Like all habits, your default perspective seeking habits can be changed.

Here are my favourite ways of ensuring I (nearly always) keep an expansive perspective:

• Understand what takes me close to the edge of the whirlpool – for me this is usually self-inflicted – I have not saved enough space for perspective, either I’m busy with client work or I’ve taken on too many different things, or underestimated how long I needed to do something.
• Know that it is ok to have the occasional meltdown – it’s part of the growth cycle, if you are growing, out of your comfort zone, or things are not going to plan you are going to feel vulnerable. You are a human being – it’s normal. The key here is to find a safe place to lose the plot temporarily and know what grounds you and allows you to regain your perspective.
• Have trusted people, who get the entrepreneurial journey and are prepared to hold space for me – for this to work you have to feel safe, not judged and know that they are in your corner but won’t tell you what to do – unless you ask of course.
• Be prepared to be that person for others – the more you are able to see perspective in all situations the better you train your brain (or get into the habit of) to look for multiple answers or ways of doing things. The more you learn to listen, to hold space the better you will be able to do it for yourself. Let others be heard and the chances are they will reciprocate. 
• Finally, keep your sense of humour – laughter is a great neurological release, it changes our internal chemistry and floods our bodies with positive more expansive hormones – literally expanding our brain’s processing capacity – creating more perspective.

This is not by any means an exclusive list, please do add your own in the comments or the Braver Business group and lets help each other stay out of the whirlpool and find our island or mooring.

Blue Monday – a reality created through story

by Lynda Holt

Today’s blog is really about connection with stories. It is Blue Monday, the day that we – as a nation, are collectively feeling at our most miserable. It’s January, Christmas is gone, the credit card bills are in, we’ve broken most of our New Year’s resolutions and it’s cold and dark out there. Add to this general concern about the environment, hostilities and politics – it is easy to feel a bit out of control and down. It’s also fair to say that we as humans are affected by our environment and circumstances. It’s not fair to say we have no control over the affect these have on us.

Blue Monday is a story, a PR stunt by Sky travel in 2005, something which over the past 15 years has grown into a real ‘thing’ – story that has fed many, many marketing and PR campaigns over the years – most of which are ultimately trying to sell you some version of a better life, whether that be travel, home improvements, personal development. Not all of these are asking you to part with money, some are asking you to make a change, offering different options or inviting you to look differently at a situation. Mine (this blog) included, to be fair; I am asking you to look at the stories you tell yourself.

When you own a story, your brain looks for ‘evidence’ to prove you right – and usually finds it. Once you have this ‘evidence’ your story becomes your reality. Why would you set yourself up to be miserable – even for a day? When you buy into the collective misery of Blue Monday you amplify it, for yourself and for those around you. Even the psychologist & happiness guru, Cliff Arnall, who did the original calculations for Sky Travel admits it was not helpful to have named a day as ‘the most depressing day’ and in recent years has campaigned for people to use it to think about creating positive change. 

Like most good stories, ‘Blue Monday’ is believable, it reflects an element of truth – some people are affected by the dark winter months, some people are feeling the effects of a more sedentary life or are feeling the financial – or physical, aftermath of an indulgent holiday period; it’s easy to use this as an excuse for not taking responsibility for yourself. It is also an incredibly unhelpful story to buy into. Those who have ever experienced mental illness – as opposed to poor mental well-being, will know feeling low is not the same as depression, anxiety, neurosis or seasonal affective disorder. They will also know that one day – even a titled one like Blue Monday, makes little difference to the trajectory of the illness. A low mood is different, it is something you can choose to enjoy, something you can choose to do something about and ultimately something which will lift. I believe it is this low mood that Blue Monday exacerbates.

In the end you choose what stories you tell yourself – consciously or unconsciously. If you feel great and inspired in January, if you are storming ahead with business and personal goals well done – keep doing what you are doing. If, on the other hand, you are feeling a bit low, look at what you are feeding yourself, literally and emotionally. Are you being kind and empowering in the stories you tell yourself, are you getting enough connection with nature, your environment and the things that enrich you? Decide if you need to tell yourself a slightly – or radically – different story in order to be the person you want to be. 

Remember your brain will hunt for (and find) evidence to support whatever you are focussed on – so focus on something that empowers you today and every day. 

I bet your inbox is full of ways to beat Blue Monday, so I’m not going to go beyond asking you to look at what stories you buy into because they become your reality. I am going to ask you to think about what you amplify and spread, because as humans we are unquestionably energetically connected – one person’s mood and energy impacts another. And finally, I am going to suggest that today, and every day, we all choose kindness. We may not know all that is going on for those around us, what stories they are owning, whether or not they are feeling low. When we choose kindness we spread kindness, we are more open to connection and we may just make someone – or ourselves, feel better.

Whatever you are doing today I hope it’s a good day – or has some good bits.