Following on from our call to action in our last blog, what decisions and changes have you made to facilitate personally getting off the “busy being busy” bandwagon?
Making the decision to prioritise where you spend your time, energy and focus is no doubt paying dividends right now with improvements to your overall health and well -being, enriched relationships and enjoyment of life. If you haven’t taken the time to reflect or to make those adjustments; why not? What’s stopping you?
For those of us who have started on our regime of creating moments to be more ‘present’ in our lives you might be starting to notice and register some things related to people in your circle of influence.
Things at work, perhaps like when did ‘ Brendan’ stop sharing stories about his travel adventures? or remove his favourite pictures from his desk? or stop contributing ideas in your weekly meetings? or even when was the last time you simply saw a smile on his face?
You see when we are “busy being busy” we don’t tend to notice subtle differences or initial changes in the people and the environment around us. Often those subtle changes are about what people stop doing rather than what they start doing as an indicator perhaps not everything in their life is as balanced as it should be.
So use your enhanced state of mindfulness to observe ‘Brendan’s’ interactions, his environment and how others engage (or don’t) with him to get a better handle on whether he’s just having a bad day or is it turning into a series of bad weeks?
In my experience it’s much easier to start a conversation with ‘Brendan’ early in the piece when you start to observe subtle changes…. “How are you doing ‘Brendan’? You don’t seem to be your usual self lately” or simply “R U O.K?” it really can make the world of difference to him and you.
So who is your ‘Brendan’ ? Make having that chat with ‘Brendan’ your priority, after all what could be more important that?
By Heidi Bishop, Senior HR Consultant
