Employee Engagement Education, Speaking, and Consulting
I encourage you to read, download, and share this very brief, under 7 minute, guide to meditation based on my 40 years of meditation experience. You will find it easy going, playful, and potentially very helpful.
To read, download, or share click the following link: http://www.davidzinger.com/wp-content/uploads/How-to-Meditate-with-David-Zinger.pdf
Do you want to be happy? According to self-proclaimed positive psychologists: Fill your life with gratitude.
I am finding this current focus on gratitude to be, well, rather grating. We are told if we want to be happy that we should reflect upon 3 things we are grateful for before we go to sleep. One thing that makes me happy is not doing some happiness exercise prescribed by a self-proclaimed guru of gratitude.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of good in my life but many nights I just want to lay my head on the pillow and before falling asleep shout, “F*CK YOU VIRUS!”
Gratefulness is pathetic when you make a public declaration in a social media post by taking a picture of your neighbour’s golden retriever and express deep gratitude for the color it brought to your dim day when the neighbour changed the bandana wrapped around the dog’s neck from red to blue. And must you adorn your social media declaration of gratitude post like a Christmas tree with gratitude #gratitude #Iamsograteful #youshouldbegratefultoo #gratefulforhappiness #gratefulforlife #gratitudeisforthedogs
I hear your neurons firing in rebuttal. You think if Joe Exotic had gone to bed each night reciting his gratitude for the fine work of Carol Baskin’s Big Cat rescue he might not be in jail. But would he be happy? Really? As the accompanying picture for this post proves I know something about this issue as I have a head for tigers.
Yesterday, I was grateful to have a grater to grate the mozzarella cheese for my pizza. I don’t need any of those cheesy happy docs to tell me to get with gratitude. And those docs are PhDs, not real doctors like the type of doctor flight attendants yell for when there is a medical emergency.
I supposed you’re thinking, “that David is an ungrateful son of a b….” But sometimes, gratitude is like putting fresh and delicious chocolate icing on a cake that is 3 weeks old. Even if you can choke down the stale cake it leaves a crummy taste in your mouth.
I am worried about being perceived as a curmudgeon as opposed to the well-balanced person that I am. I have proof that I am mentally healthy as I was born on September 24th — so that makes me a well-balanced Libra! #balancedlikealibra #davidisnotacrumudgeon #donotreadthispostifyouwantinstanthappiness.
I’m grateful you read to the end, now back away from the computer and go do something useful with your life rather than basking in the glow of your personal gyrations of gratitude.
This morning I was rereading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s, Full Catastrophe Living. It feels like so many of us are being thrust into the full catastrophe. Here is a little present from the introduction to the second edition:
“The only way we have of influencing the future is to own the present, however we find it. If we inhabit this moment with full awareness the next moment will be very different because of our very presence in this one. Then we just might find imaginative ways to fully live the life that is actually ours to live.
Can we experience joy and satisfaction as well as suffering? What about being more at home in our own skin within the maelstrom? What about tasting ease of well-being, even genuine happiness? This is what is at stake here. This is the gift of the present moment, held in awareness, non-judgmentally, with a little kindness.”
This post can be used by individuals to manage the transitions they experience with the change to working at home. If you are a leader/manager I encourage you to take time with your staff either individually or collectively to help them be mindful and to manage the challenging transitions that can accompany the movement from being at the office to working from home. Ensure you also do this for yourself.
As a leader, you don’t have to become a psychologist but you need to know that the single biggest failure of organizations around change is the failure to acknowledge who is losing what because of the change (William Bridges). Don’t fail to address the loses around the changes people are experiencing in their work due to COVID-19.
Debbie misses her morning order of dark coffee before arriving at work. She felt helpless when she told her three young children that the trip to Disney World was cancelled. And now, she was worried about her ability to get her job done knowing schools were closing for 3 weeks.
Ahmet missed the interactions with the people in his building – going to his basement in the morning failed to energize him the way the daily small interactions with the dozens of people in the office did. Working on Zoom and Skype really did not feel like the next best thing to being there.
Nancy assumed her job would be forever but now with all the stuff going on with the virus she wondered if she would even have a job after this was all over. It felt next to impossible to focus on the task at hand. Simple tasks were taking almost twice as long for her to complete.
Shin relied on the IT department to come to his desk to sort out his computer woes but now he was left staring as his machine and cursing because the off/on and plug/unplug didn’t fix his computer woes. He was worried about how the economic downturn would impact his retirement.
One of the challenges with the change from working outside your home to working inside your home is managing or at least being mindful of all the accompanying psychological transitions involved in these changes.
The master of transitions, Bridges (I love his last name for someone writing on change) said it was vital to know that transitions begin with endings, enter a middle or neutral zone, then end with beginnings.
Have you fully attended to what ended when you made the exodus from the office to home?
It is useful to take even 10 minutes to heighten your awareness of the transitions you are experiencing working from home. Use the Circle of Transition below to target in on your psychological experiences of change.
Step 1: Consider what roles, routines, relationships, and assumptions ended or were lost when you left the office. Some of us are out of kilter because our routines have changed while some of us miss the incidental daily relationships. Because this change was precipitated due to COVID-19 it may have shaken your assumptions about wellbeing at work. Or maybe, our role was clear at work but now our roles and functions are murky as we move forward. Of course, not all loses are negative and you may appreciate not encountering certain people each day. Perhaps you have also lost several meaningless tasks you were requested to do each day you were in the office.
Step 2: Now, focus for a second time on the circle of transitions. As you work at home what new roles, routines, relationships, and assumptions are being added to what you do. Are you developing new assumptions about how to work? Have you created rituals or routines to keep you engaged while away from the office? Are you developing new relationships with the other people in your neighborhood who also working from home?
Step 3: Don’t be surprised to find your engagement and productivity at home temporarily diminished because of all that ended and you feel like you are in a neutral zone unsure of what your work will be like in the next 2 weeks to 2 months. Of course, there are a great deal of individual differences and many people will find they are more engaged and productive working at home and hope they can maintain this working arrangement after the crisis ends.
Taking time and giving some thought to the transitions we are experiencing in this change can help us successfully navigate the turbulence we experience.
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Do you want some temporary coaching/support/guidance to navigate the transition and to work from home successfully?
I am one of the world’s leading experts on employee experience and engagement, I taught counselling psychology for 25 years, was a workplace coach for Seagram/Diageo for 15 years, and I have personally worked from home for over 40 years.
Contact me today for 1 or 2 individual coaching sessions via phone, Zoom, or Skype. During this challenging time I am reducing my fee to $100 Canadian a session — under $75 US per session.
To get started email me at: david@davidzinger.com or phone 204 894 4483.
Here is a small way to feel better while you work at home.
Never enter a room without making it better before you leave.
I wander while I work at home. After an episode of work I may go upstairs or downstairs. I may poke my head into the garage or hover around the refrigerator. When I visit each room I do something before I exit to make it better. It could range from putting a glass in the sink or wiping a counter to throwing out the trash or organizing papers or engaging in an albeit brief positive interaction with Susan, my wife.
These are tiny actions but in this time of fear and isolation it gives me a small nudge of positive emotion and contribution each time I leave my desk and before I return to work.
I have extended this thinking to outside the house. When I enter a room full of people or visit with friends I determine how I can make it better for even just one person before I depart.
Acknowledgement, recognition, appreciation, listening, curiosity, laughter, conversation, and connection are powerful ways “to make a room better.”