Jamie jess jocelyn karen kate katie mary tiffany good to see you back hi robin everyone in the chat give us a little note on where you're tuning in from in the world it's always fun to see where you are i'm in san diego bindi's also in san diego but she's headed to the east coast.
Awesome nevada new york oregon texas ohio arizona michigan california welcome everybody all right we'll go ahead and get started my name is carly i am our director of community here at learn it and with me i have bindi delaney who is one of our senior instructional designers and is.
Who really is spearheading our new course offerings on health and wellness so thrilled to have bindi here and we are thrilled to have you here for our our our workshop on find calm and chaos relaxation and movement strategies for a hectic work day so thank you so much for being here with us and if you're new to learn it and new to these events a little bit of background on us we are a learning and development organization based out of san francisco california but really located all over the united.
States and all over the world and our goal through these short bite-sized versions of our full-length workshops is one to make learning and development more accessible to everybody no matter where you're at in your career where you're at in the world and two uh really to help us all learn the skills needed to thrive in the workplace of today and and really adapt and learn um as things start as things continue to change and evolve so again we're thrilled to.
Bring you this session uh and really showcase this new course we are offering um today with bindi um so a little bit of housekeeping just before i turn it over to bendy as well we are recording this session and we are live streaming on youtube so the recording will be available to you after the session in our free community called offsite which is a free community of 000 plus professionals there's a qr code right there on off site but i'll also share a little bit more about that and ways to.
And of course please chat me privately if you have any other comments or questions as well but with that i want to turn it over to our expert bindi bindi thank you so much for being here with us today thank you very much carly and welcome in everybody i'm watching all these locations from all over the world drop in um into the chat here which is very exciting it's wonderful to have such a global audience for our workshop this morning um but before we get started just a little bit about me um i'm obviously.
Bindi delaney um i'm a facilitator for learnet but i wear a couple of hats because i'm also a teacher for our course content but creating some of our courses as well and i've been spearheading our health and wellness section um so today is just a little bite bite-sized piece of one of our newest workshops um but about me i've been in education and health and wellness for over 15 years um i've been both teaching and developing courses both in soft skills like communication.
Emotional intelligence um and then in health and wellness as well which is obviously my specialty um both here in california and where i am located today um but also in australia you can tell by my accent um and my nickname there gives it away bindi that um i am australian but i'm a us citizen as well but one of the main things i i love is the journey of education and the empowerment that it brings to always be learning so it brings me great joy to.
Have you all in here today um maybe just to take away a little something um and maybe even ignite some interest in a little bit of further learning so with that let's have a look at what this workshop is about so this workshop finding calm in chaos i want you to close your eyes and picture after hitting snooze maybe as many times as humanly possible in your.
Morning you finally drag your tired aching body out of bed you have a busy day again actually when was the last time your day wasn't busy you look ahead at your packed calendar and at the endless to-do list and already your mind is starting to head towards chaos maybe breakfast is an afterthought and.
At the best of times you make yourself a copy a coffee maybe you're grabbing and walking out the door walking to your
Desk if you're remote and you maybe have just enough time to snap it at your dog your child your spouse you know they're breathing too loudly on your your hectic morning before you start and eventually you find yourself wondering is this really how my day is going to be does that sound familiar to people i know we're all over the world so maybe it's evening where you are right now but.Love to hear in the chat who's found that sort of a familiar imaginary story of a possible workday morning for yourself yeah regina absolutely right very very familiar we're all living this sort of chaotic head start to the day or many of us are which is why you would be here today dorothy i love breakfast yes always make time for breakfast so how can we find a way or many ways to.
Reverse that sort of hectic feeling in the morning and to help kind of hit pause on that chaos before we even start the day and a calm mind is actually the strategy that we're going to explore your calm mind and the power of your calm and relaxed mind is the ultimate weapon against challenges and it's said that to be calm is the highest achievement of oneself.
So that's what today is about giving you a taste um into this way of finding a calm mind and there's a really great uh great quote um by marcus aurelius who was a roman emperor so his ideals have been around for a long time but his idea and quote is that the nearer we come to a calm mind the closer we are to our strength just gonna let that sit with you for a moment the nearer we come to a calm mind.
The closer we are to strength so in our workshop um in the the full version of the workshop obviously getting a taste today um we would actually have a look at how to foster a calm mind and we look specifically at um how you can cause that sort of relaxation of your mind and there's lots of different strategies to help you reset and recharge um and we would be looking at some different relaxation techniques we.
Would be looking at some emotional well-being techniques and we would also be looking at some movement strategies as well that help kind of focus on stimulating some anti-stress effects so the workshop is suitable for everybody and anybody um especially those obviously who have sort of that chaotic workday start and and it will help you to discover some practical tools that you can use to foster that calm state of mind and so in the workshop um it's very very hands-on and practical so you would be.
Experiencing all of these takeaways rather than just learning about them and trying them out yourself later um it is a practical based workshop so in answer to a possible question that comes up straight away when we look at what the workshop um holds is will i be moving in the workshop and the answer is yes and don't worry cameras are optional you don't have to have your camera on when you're moving we're not going to move today but just so you do get a heads up there'll be a little bit of movement just to kind of explore um movement and how that helps you have a more relaxed.
Mind it's very minimal though so let's get into some of the content together um just to have a little brief look into some of these strategies and into what causes a chaotic mind as well so before we get started i do want to give you one quick takeaway and perhaps you're joining us you know from all over the world today rushing straight in from another meeting maybe you are rushing straight out to another meeting after this um maybe your calendar is truly packed so we're going.
To start with a focused relaxation activity and this is a really short practice i'm going to stop my screen share here um it's very short and designed to help you reset and refocus in preparation for learning of content ahead so i want you to take a moment to settle into your seated position and keeping your back up straight not rigid maybe your feet flat on the floor.
And your hands resting gently in your lap
And you might like to close your eyes in your own time take one long slow deep breath breathing in through your nose expanding your lungs.And breathing out through your mouth sighing it out letting go of any tension or stress in your body now allow your breath to return to your natural breathing pay attention what's going on.
You might notice the gentle rise and fall of your shoulders maybe your chest and belly expanding and deflating as you breathe or maybe the tickle of the air moving in and out of your nose and mouth bring your awareness into your body and your surroundings notice the feeling of the contact between your body and maybe your chair.
Hold in awareness just for a few minutes moments longer take one more breath breathe in and relax as you exhale and then when you're ready opening your eyes maybe do a stretch overhead focusing your eyes back to the screen.
For a little bit of learning ahead so again that's just a short reset and refocus practice just a really short relaxation technique to help you sort of reset um very helpful for something to do before a meeting or a presentation or some stressful moment or even just to start your day with just that moment of looking at your breath and recognizing.
Your breathing and to help you kind of reset in your mind so it's important as we start here in our content to start at the beginning with a self-reflection because i think i've said this in our last one right how do we want how do we know where we want to go unless we know where we've been or where we are so this self-reflection starts to kind of help you become aware of maybe where you are currently with um in your working environment and these you don't have to share um.
These are not you know chat responses these are for you just to kind of take a moment as i ask you these questions to answer them um and the answers are either not at all sometimes most of the time or all of the time so first question do you feel emotionally exhausted for many days not at all.
Sometimes most of the time or all of the time question two do you find yourself maybe getting more irritable sometimes more irritable than usual question three do you find it hard to focus and that maybe your focus is not as sharp as usual number four are you finding that you are becoming less productive.
At work at home than usual and then number five are you losing perhaps some satisfaction um in your job that you might have had before not at all sometimes most of the time and all of the time i can see some people sharing a few responses in the chat.
So reflecting on your day and the experience of your day-to-day especially in your job or your employment it helps to start help pinpoint right what's going on and where you might need some of the most support so after kind of reflecting on how you're feeling emotionally you know energy levels and i want you to have a consider of what might be causing you stress as well and this is something you can share in the chat now be general um what you can be specific if you'd.
Like but this is not necessarily a place for for very forward sharing but just more general if you think about that workday what is overall some of those things that are causing you stress and causing your day to be that little bit hectic so i'll give you a moment to find your keyboards and share so for example it might be an endless day of meetings children's and families mental health.
And work stress increased workloads when budget changes right it's hard to ask for additional help lack of direction changing demands less patience not eating healthy unorganized work life balance added responsibility oh wayne saying yes to all that comes up right too much to do without clear priorities.
Yeah brett not enough time in the day again lack of direction work stress unknowns and uncertainties i'm feeling stressed thinking about all of your stresses that you are sharing today so what happens with all of these stresses is we can look at them um in sort of a couple of patterns because you start to see some of the patterns that are coming out um in regards to work stress and what's really interesting if we investigate this a little bit further and take some of these examples that.
You've given us um we actually have a result here taken um a survey taken by a company from they're called compsyc and they're a us-based company that deal with employee companies psychology um and they're a wealth of information around stress um you'll actually find out this this particular company their their web that they're partnered with you they think they've done a lot of work on causes of stress at work um but this particular one um they had.
Categorized stress into four main areas and those areas were workload people issues work life balance and that juggle um and job insecurity what do you think is contributing to the highest cause of this stressful and chaotic work day and it is 39 what do you think is 39.
And just having that reflection of what you've already shared those categories being workload lack of autonomy people issues work-life balance job insecurity yeah some interesting thoughts coming through what's really interesting is a lot of you had some um comments there around like what's contributing to your workload and it is actually uh workload is the 39 it's that lack of autonomy it's the tight deadlines it's the long working.
Hours right it is all of those things that you shared in there where changing priorities lack of priorities not enough budget right the workload is one of the highest causes of a stressful day and then coming in at a close second um is people issues at 36 not really that much less than than workload and then you have work life balance then you have job security and then of course uh none because some of the people in this survey actually had no stresses.
But this sort of always-on work culture right and it's really accelerated for all of us by smartphone use right by workload around lots of covert restrictions by now suddenly working from home for many of us as well it's becoming really entrenched um into our work lives so we want to have a look at what we can do about it and how we can kind of detach it and help our mind sort of become that little bit calmer in the face of all of these causes.
So i don't want to give you an answer here of uh how to avoid work but how do you think we could avoid work is don't go to work right how can we avoid the stresses don't go to work um but i want to highlight this one because it's quite funny um that well if we don't go to work we won't have any stress but it's actually um shockingly true that absenteeism um in work-related.
Stress has escalated and this is a study that over a million people um call in sick i think this is a us-based study but call in sick daily tied to the costs of stress and so you can start to kind of think about like absenteeism if you're a business owner if you are an um you know a manager or an employer or even an employee how heavily the workplace is affected um and how our economy is affected by.
Stress with over a million people absent so of course not going to work isn't the answer but it is interesting to see how much it is causing that and if you wanted to have a look i know we are a global community but this one is just a little bit interesting on how it's impacting um the general u.s economy as well and i can see how this relates um to some other countries but stress-related illness statistics um reveal that this is in 2013 that the.
Cost of lost productivity due to being away from work was over 84 billion dollars and then in another study and they found that excess healthcare costs because of high workload high job demands had a total of an extra 46 billion dollars in healthcare costs so it's just almost becoming out of control some of the stress um and and the causes that are happening.
So of course now that we know we're feeling stressed we've self-reflected we've looked at the statistics and they are stressful says mg right it's adding to the stress so at this point in the workshop we then would take and switch gears and we're looking at okay it's important right to address this so we'd switch gears and look at well how does calmness there's lots of strategies um for combating chaotic work days but how can calmness help with that.
Chaoticness and because being calm is a super power it's an incredible strength to have when the going gets tough if you have a peaceful and calm mind you have the ability to stop an automatic response and that sometimes can be a reaction you're kind of creating that space right between the situation that's causing chaos and your immediate reaction.
And you can kind of then decide on a course of action to take so it's creating that pause in that space and according to a study by talent smart i'm 90 of top performers in the workforce um demonstrated their ability to manage their emotions and stay calm in the stressful times so not only is it something helpful for yourself under pressure um but it's also something that is more closely looked at as well with a leader or someone who you want to follow.
So people who don't lose their cool is the one that's remembered right in a positive way as opposed to to maybe not those that do lose their cool so it's a very powerful superpower to have a calm mind so at this point in the workshop i love that you see the rainbow after the storm at this point we would then actually head into our strategies and we would spend over 90 minutes um in in the two-hour workshop having a look at these three big categories so.
Relaxation it's a state a state where you feel calm and you're able to manage your day-to-day so if you have sort of that busy life this can be quite difficult um but relaxation then has those sort of mental and physical benefits um and the techniques that we would go through would go three techniques of relaxation and they would be short techniques that you can implement into your day a little bit similar to our opening one today um but each of them have a different sort of component to them we.
Would then head into some movement exploration and movement is an exceptional way um to gain access um sort of at the the back fence to the mental changes that you desire without having to psych yourself into it anyone ever go for a run or a walk and then suddenly feel maybe a little bit mentally clearer anyone ever experienced that yeah you says yes you might have heard of like runners high sometimes that's a term that's used.
So when you have that movement and you're actually pumping more blood around your body you're actually helping your calmness and the endorphins yup you're helping the calmness of your brain without having to use sort of mindful techniques so movement can be a really great way when you can't cognitively focus on breathing or something like that to actually help you reap the benefits of stress reduction as well and then the last category that we would go through would be emotional um emotional wellness and that's looking at.