There is no denying that the past 18 months have been challenging for us all. As an organisation that specialises in delivering remote online, personalised coaching, we were becoming increasingly aware of our clients’ struggles to remain positive and in strong mental health whilst navigating such a turbulent change. This change has been a Critical Moment™ for everyone and based on our values, we wanted to support our clients to ensure you achieve the best outcomes.

We began by hosting 30 minute free Resilience Reboot sessions, to equip individuals with the mindset, skillset and toolset to manage their wellbeing and feelings of being stressed, anxious or overwhelmed as a result of the pandemic. We know that resilience is a critical skill which helps you develop habits to weather the storm and despite what many think, it’s not enough to just be self-aware.

The pandemic has shone a light on how important looking after your mental health is. And although some people have a greater capacity for change than others, dealing and reacting to change is an individual sport and has many contributing factors. Our goal was to take people from self-awareness and to not only having the knowledge to recognise stress triggers, peaks and troughs in their mental wellbeing, but empower them to manage those feelings. Stress can be viewed as helpful, not harmful, if we can reframe how we perceive it.

Before the pandemic, the HSE (Health and Safety Executive) reported that in 2017/2018 work-related stress (including anxiety and depression) accounted for 50% of work absences, which equated to 15.4 million working days lost due to poor mental health management. According to the Deloitte Monitor Report 2020, the cost of mental health to employers has risen by 16% in two years to £45 billion alone. Meaning there is an evident need to invest in mental resilience in and outside the workplace to ensure the mental wellbeing of each individual within an organisation.

We want to share 5 quick and easy techniques to help you on a day-to day basis manage your mental wellbeing and becoming more self-aware of your stress triggers as we move into this post-pandemic era:

Self awareness

Become aware of what your stress triggers are. We often ignore when we feel stressed and as a result, we don't act on those feelings soon enough. Something you can do to manage this is to ask yourself:

• What are my stress triggers?
• When do I first begin to notice feeling stressed?
• Does it affect more than just my mental health?
• What physical symptoms am I noticing? Maybe a back ache, headache or a low mood, lack of concentration and finding it hard to focus?
• Has it changed my quality of sleep?
• Check in with yourself on a daily or weekly basis to see where your level of physical and emotional symptoms are. For example, snapping at your other half or getting frustrated/short tempered with work.

When we’re able to recognise our stress symptoms, and then act on them, we're more likely to keep ourselves in those healthy zones. But it is also good to acknowledge that for some people, stress can be motivational. Some utilise the adrenalin of stress to mobilize themselves, to lean into the problem rather than running away from it.

Try and ask yourself those questions regularly and learn to identify what triggers your fight or flight response. Can that response be channeled into motivation or do you need to step away and regroup?

Plan your day

Evidence shows that people who structure their day with a to-do list are not only more productive but end their day feeling more positive from the gratification of ticking things off. For many, this can be translated into managing their diary.

We instinctively tend to electronically put appointments in and fill up our days with endless calls but if you’re not managing your day, we often find the day can, before you know it, run away with you.

So often in NeoOptima coaching sessions, we hear “I can't get through everything”, or “I'm in meetings all the time, and I've not got time to do the work”. It is key to take back control of your day by organising your calendar to make time for your to-do list and priorities.

This includes blocking out “working time” in your diary - make it difficult for people to fill your diary with appointments and take back control of your day. Within your planning, consider your energy dips and peaks. If you're a morning person, you might find it better to plan your day and crack on with that weighty spreadsheet first thing as opposed to an evening person, who might need to put it later in the day.

Step back and plan your week and you will start to feel more in control.

Take regular breaks

Humans are not designed to sit. Movement actually stimulates blood flow to the parts of our brain that help boost creative thinking and problem solving. So make time to move throughout the day, ideally every 90-120 minutes. Physically step away from your desk, move and help your brain to refocus and recharge.

Get some sleep!

Get yourself an inexpensive alarm clock so you don’t have to look at your phone before bed and try and put the phone down at least 2 hours before bedtime. Switch off email notifications so you don't see those emails at 9pm that then put you back into work mode.

The 5-4-3-2-1 Practice

This is a technique commonly used to combat feelings of stress, anxiety or just feeling overwhelmed. It works by intentionally removing your panic away from your focus and instead, focusing your attention on your immediate surroundings. It works like this:

1. Start with listing 5 things you can see immediately surrounding you
2. Then 4 things you can feel
3. 3 things you can hear
4. 2 things you can smell
5. And 1 thing you can taste (we find this is usually coffee!)

By simply working down your senses, you switch off your fight or flight response, which is your anxiety, fear and worry. Instead, you switch on your rest and digest which is your parasympathetic nervous system.

This is a quick and private technique you can use in the moment, wherever you are, to centre and slow yourself down. This allows you to regain control of the emotional part of your brain and focus on the logical side of your brain. You're giving yourself the time to catch up and go, “right? Do I really need to panic now?” and then move forward in a calm and logical manner.

It's simple tools like these that make all the difference, no matter how obvious they seem. When you look back on your last week, ask yourself, ‘Did I get up, go to my computer and then just sit at my desk for the entire day?’, ‘Did I really, properly, talk to anyone?’, ‘Do I actually know how I feel today?’.

For us, the key takeaway from the Resilience Reboot sessions focused on people ‘existing’ through these last 18 months, desperately hoping to just get through, without paying any attention to their mental health.

Now that restrictions are easing within the UK, give yourself the space and time to reconnect with one another and truly talk about what's on each other's minds. More often than not, people just need the space to talk it through. As humans, we tend to wait until we've fallen over to address the issue rather than put in steps to prevent it. Give yourself permission to just ‘be’.

So when you next speak to a friend or colleague, and ask ‘how are you?’, why not take the time to ask, ‘how are you really?’. Use these 5 tips to help balance your day-to-day mental wellbeing and if you’d like to learn more on how we can help, contact us at hello@NeoOptima.com.