Master your Mindset
Week 1 of 6 Monday Morning Tools to clear your head & lift your State of Mind.
In this 6 week series of Monday morning posts, I’m going to give you 6 tools from my suite of 22, to help you clear your head and improve your State of Mind. Whether you’re feeling the heat of the inner critic or you’re being asked to do more with less, this collection of practices will give you greater focus and more bandwidth. Tried and tested on elite athletes and corporate teams, we know they work (brilliantly) and the science is there to back them.
Issue #1: Many highly successful people have a very loud inner critic that at a certain point in their career, can become a stumbling block. The monologue can be incessant and it fuels the body with adrenalin and cortisol, keeping us in a state of mild anxiety (or worse) 24/7. We can’t perform at our best, in sport or business, if we are in that busy beta mindset constantly.
Tool #1: Take 3 body breaths. This works by shifting us out of the left hemisphere of the brain (the endless narrative that is list-making, planning, over-thinking), into the right hemisphere, the realm of the ‘felt senses’. How do we do it? Place your full attention on the feeling of breathing and notice where you notice your breath. Is it in the chest & abdomen rising and falling, the air coming in and out through the nose, or the air passing over the back of your throat? Just keep your attention on this felt sense of the breath. The mind will become calm because we can only (effectively) place our attention on one thing at a time. You will see athletes using this technique to re-centre themselves or to calm pre-game nerves. They focus fully on the felt sense of say water they’re spraying on their face, or the boot tightening around their foot as they tie their laces in the locker-room. Not rocket science, but definitely science! Do it a few times throughout the day and notice the calming effect on the mind and subsequently, the body.
To view the first module of the online State of Mind Capability program, please go here. Have a brilliant week and stay tuned for the next 5 tools on each of the coming Mondays.
Dr Samantha Graham has designed and delivered corporate leadership programs for 25 years, working across all sectors including blue chip corporates, NGOs and government. Corporate clients include Nestle, Mars, the BBC, Deutsche Bank, Lend Lease, Microsoft and the RBA, to name a few. Her work has been featured in the Australian Financial Review, the Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend Magazine and on ABC television and radio. Her current suite of tools allow clients to manage their state of mind, whether needing composure under pressure, focus for productivity & efficiency gains, or to disarm the mind chatter that leads to fatigue and overwhelm.
