3 TIPS FOR CREATING A WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENT TO ENHANCE CREATIVITY

Because creativity is such an important factor of success in business today, play should be part of every CEO’s mandate, and companies should be rated according to the level of playfulness in their culture in the same way as they are rated as a great place to work or as a socially responsible organization.  A number of practical steps can be followed to navigate this cultural shift towards play.

Think about what play looks like.  It is personal, engaging, and interactive.  It is often exuberant and messy.  It is filled with light, color, and sound.  When you think about play, you may instinctively think about a children’s playground or children’s toys.  Now, think about corporate offices, or, more specifically, corporate boardrooms.  There are lots of straight lines in boardrooms, (or perhaps an artistically, elegantly curved accent wall); there is typically an imposing table made from fine polished wood or sleek metal.  That table likely suggests a hierarchical seating arrangement that people intuitively understand: the boss will sit at the head of the table and the chief advisor will sit next to the boss or perhaps will anchor the other end.  The rest of the employees will fill in the sides of the table.  So, before the meeting even starts, everyone knows his or her relative importance.  And everyone knows that polite behavior is expected: sit up straight, papers stacked neatly in front of you, a pen at the ready, smartphone close by in case of an emergency.

These rigid boardrooms are where major strategic decisions are being made about innovation and the future of our organizations.  They represent a very logical environment geared toward conscious conversations that will unfold in a very linear and efficient way.  They appeal to the 20 percent of our intelligence that lives in our conscious mind with its wealth of creative ideas, and the intelligence that we can reach through play.

Dr. Marian Cleeves Diamond, one of the world’s foremost neuro-anatomists, advocates the establishment of “playful environments.” I too believe that we need to create offices, boardrooms, and activities that engage our playful nature—a corporate sandbox or playground.  We are playful by nature and efficient by necessity.   So let’s embrace our nature, and less effort will be needed for the same, or better, results.  When we do this we can break through the mental barriers that are keeping us stuck. Certain corporations are already doing this.

Three key things that you can do to create a play-friendly atmosphere include:

–      Allocating significant time in which employees are explicitly encouraged to play

–       Creating, or giving employees access to, physical spaces that are conducive to play

–       Giving employees implicit and explicit permission to “fail” or be “unproductive” in their pursuit of innovation.

Try these and notice how the implicit culture change affects your employees’ levels of creativity and innovation.

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10 HACKS FOR MAINTAINING A HEALTHY, BALANCED DIET

There are some things us blokes just don’t enjoy doing. It’s fair to say that shopping for, preparing and cooking food rate highly on the list for most. And unlike arguing over furniture layouts with the in-laws, it doesn’t have to always be this way.

Truth be told, it can be really simple to maintain a healthy, balanced diet by making a few savvy choices when it comes to food. Some require a little planning; others just require a little willpower. So here are 10 quick, easy and effective hacks to ensure you stay on track with your eating habits.

1. Do Some Reading

Make it a habit to glance at food labels when you are buying goods. Unsure of what some of the ingredients are? There’s a good chance it’s not great for you. Ingredients are listed in order by amount or weight, so if you see things like sugar, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable oils and preservatives high up on the list, leave it on the shelf.

2. Go Slow And Go Low

Too busy to cook? This is where the slow cooker can become your new best mate. Chuck the ingredients in before you head to work, and they cook all day in time for dinner. A good pick for the slow cooker is a lean Lamb leg steak or a trimmed half leg of lamb – packed with protein and essential nutrients like iron and zinc. Add in three different types of chopped veggies, a splash of stock, red wine and some herbs and spices and you’re done. Another benefit of the slow cooker is that you will have more than enough left over for lunches during the week. Try starting a “slow cook Sunday” tradition with Lamb as the key ingredient for a healthy meal option.

3. Add Some Spice To Your Life

Make an initial investment of US$40-50 into a huge range of herbs and spices, and with a cupboard packed with pink sea salt, pepper, cumin, paprika, cayenne, turmeric, oregano, garlic powder, thyme and basil, you can easily transform any meal into a totally different, flavourful dish.

Real men cook with beef (legit scientific fact) – it’s a very versatile protein and comes in a wide variety of cuts to suit your taste and budget. It’s also chock full of amino acids for muscle building, as well as zinc, iron and omega-3. Add seasonings like cayenne, paprika and cumin to give it a punchy, spicy Middle Eastern flavour.

4. Bulk Up

Buying in bulk will save time, money and a headache. Meats can be portioned off and frozen so you will always have some on hand when you get stuck for time and have to whip up something fast. Buy nuts and seeds by the bag for healthy toppings for salads and yoghurt. Also, keep a wide variety of fresh, seasonal, fruit and veg on hand, and consider long life bags so they maintain freshness for longer.

5. Make Better Takeaway Choices

We are never perfect, but we can all make better choices. Nobody is forcing that Big Mac and fries down your throat, son. It’s time to take control again and make better decisions. It can be as simple as avoiding heavy, fatty foods like pizza and chips that will drain your energy and make you fat, and opting instead for salads, or a steak and veg at the pub. Ask for extra meat and veggies at a Thai restaurant for example, and avoid eating the huge portion of rice that comes on the side. Make the right choice more often than not, and that decision-making part of the brain gets trained just like a muscle, saving you from bad choices down the track.

6. Become A “One-Pan Meal” Master

This is something you should already be familiar with, from when you first left home and had to cook for yourself for the first time. Adopt the same mentality you had back then: if it can’t be cooked in one pan or pot, it doesn’t get cooked! Do this and you’ll keep coming back to one key ingredient: Beef mince. The possibilities are endless. Make chilli con carne, burgers, tacos, healthy stir fries and meat balls all a standard part of your one pan rotation. Choose lean Beef mince – this will keep you well fed, energetic and smiling all day long. Bachelor cooking never goes out of style.

7. Send The Snacks Packing

If you are getting the right amounts of protein and healthy fats in all of your main meals, you will remain satisfied and resist the urge to snack (because let’s face it, when was the last time you chose a healthy snack option?) If you are looking for a foundation food for your eating plan, choose Lamb. Aussie Lamb, like Beef, provides a healthy wallop of protein, is lean (when trimmed of fat!) and provides twice the iron of chicken or pork. Aim for 3-4 palm-sized portions of red meat like Beef and Lamb each week, prepared in a variety of ways – slow cooked, on the barbie, minced in burgers – to keep things interesting.

8. Stay Hydrated

This one seems obvious, but it’s actually one of the most underrated hacks out there. Being dehydrated affects everything from physical performance to concentration and energy, and also has a key effect on hunger levels. Make sure you’re guzzling 2-3L of water each day to reduce food cravings. Craving particular junk foods throughout the day? You may just be dehydrated. Smash 500ml of water, wait 20 minutes and you’ll find most of those cravings will disappear.

9. Don’t Drink Your Calories

Hear us out on this one. Food is so enjoyable, so nutritious and so delicious that why would you waste your daily caloric intake by drinking empty, nutrient-devoid drinks? Things like soft drinks, flavoured water, sports drinks, fruit juices and flavoured milks (sorry to all the kids at heart out there) are all way too high in sugar and should be avoided. Limit beverage consumption to water, tea, coffee and the occasional alcoholic beverage (save room for the good stuff!)

10. Be Accountable

This last one is more of a mindset than a hack. If you are really going to maintain a healthy, balanced lifestyle, you need to put yourself on the hook for it. Tell your wife/girlfriend/significant other the changes and rules you are putting in place and get them to hold you accountable. Tell the boys at the pub you will be going at your own pace (and to hold the sugary mixed drinks). Having people around you to keep you in line is the most effective way to make these consistent changes.

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AIRPORT STRESS: HOW TO TRAVEL WITH EASE

Stress management is something that everyone knows is necessary, but when a stressful situation occurs, it can be hard to find a response that actually reduces the stress. Air travel is filled with more anxiety-producing situations than ever before. There are long lines for screening, delays, overbooked flights, and lost luggage to name a few.

Let’s say you’re at the airport and find out that your flight has been cancelled. The airline won’t bring another airplane into service right away; instead, they may tell you that you must wait five hours until a flight arrives to accommodate you. With no alternative except to comply with the airline’s mistreatment, passengers look passive as they sit and wait, but on the inside many people will react (perhaps you) with the following responses: worry, anger, complaining, and pessimism. All are self-defeating.

·         Worry is self-induced anxiety. It solves nothing and blocks the possibility of dealing with things more positively.

·         Complaining increases tension and anger. As a display of hostility, it encourages other people to act hostile in return.

·         Pessimism induces the illusion that a situation is hopeless and fosters the belief that expecting a bad outcome is always realistic when in fact it isn’t.

If you see yourself in any of these behaviors and attitudes, you are fooling yourself into believing that you are coping with the stress . As your body experiences it, you have become the stressor yourself. That’s because an external event (cancelled flight) must go through an internal interpretation before it triggers the stress response. Worry, complaining, and pessimism are unconscious responses. People who are stuck in them have become the victims of old reactions that became stuck in place because the person didn’t re-evaluate them.

Here’s a set of choices that will actually help you cope with stress.

The “Airport Solution” to Chronic Stress

The following are some tips to reducing stress while at the airport:

·         Detach yourself from the stressor. At the airport, try reading a book or finding a place to be alone.

·         Become centered. At the airport, try shutting your eyes to meditate.

·         Remain active. At the airport, try walking around instead of slumping in a chair and waiting.

·         Seek positive outlets. At the airport, try shopping, getting a chair massage, or going to a restaurant.

·         Rely on emotional support. At the airport, the usual way to do this is by calling a friend or family member on the phone. (This doesn’t work in a short call announcing that you’ll be late. The key is a conversation with someone meaningful in your life that lasts at least half an hour.)

·         Escape if you must. Look for a relatively empty seating area or the airport chapel/meditation room to relax and rest.

These things are positive ways to handle stress rather than succumbing to the negativity of worry, complaining, and pessimism. They bring awareness into a situation where falling back on passive acceptance isn’t the right answer. Beneath the attitude of “I have to put up with it” lies stress. A cancelled flight is usually not fixable by you, and it can happen anytime without warning. Therefore, it fits the two conditions that make stress worse: unpredictability and loss of control.

But you have the option of turning the situation around by interpreting it not as bad luck but a non-stress, to which you respond by doing things you actually want to do, like meditating , connecting with a friend, or shopping. When you become adept at this turn-around, chronic stress is nipped in the bud. You cut short a process that otherwise would have affected your body like Chinese water torture, drip by drip. Handling stress in the moment is essential to your well-being because if you let it build up, it becomes chronic stress that causes real damage to your health.

Chronic everyday stress gets overlooked because people don’t realize that there’s a slippery slope where stress is concerned. It takes time for everyday stress to create damage. Dealing with it early is the best way to prevent long-lasting effects. The cumulative damage occurs on three levels.

Psychological and Neural
These begin with minor things like feeling mentally tired and under pressure from deadlines at work. You may feel like you’ve run out of energy, which can mask mental states like being depressed, anxious, or even panicky. Because the brain is being affected, there’s interruption in normal sleep rhythms or the nagging feeling that time is running out. With mental fatigue can come flawed decision-making, memory lapses, and the ability to focus. Emotionally, stress may make you retreat to infancy, becoming prone to outbursts of anger, distress, and irritability. The more the stress mounts, the shorter the fuse gets on your negative emotions.

Behavioral
Negative changes in behavior are likely to manifest in two major areas: work and relationships. Stressful jobs may make you respond with all kinds of behaviors, from office gossip to going out for a drink after work. As stress mounts, the need for distraction and numbing is more acute. Inevitably, you take your feelings home after work, where friction easily follows. Stress can make you lose your appetite or overeat. Sleep often gets disrupted, and in some cases chronic insomnia is the outcome.

Physical
When the body can’t adapt to stress, the cumulative effect typically shows up as physical fatigue. Stomach aches, bad digestion, and headaches are also likely. So is reduced immune response, leading to more colds and worsened allergies. After that, the problems will tend to be associated with inflammation, whose effects can travel anywhere.

Even though this has been presented as the” airport solution,” it can be adapted to most everyday stressors. This allows you to keep daily stressors from accumulating into chronic stress that damages your life physically, mentally, and behaviorally. These stress-releasing techniques bring relaxation and a sense of control instead of tension and a feeling of helplessness. Those are the hallmarks of a coping strategy that actually works.

By: Deepak Chopra, MD

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A BREATH OF FRESH AIR – EVEN A FIVE MINUTE WALK CAN DO WONDERS FOR YOUR HEALTH

These days it’s common to spend a good portion of each day in front of a screen. We go from our computer screens at work to TV screens at home to phone and tablet screens in between. Our minds are constantly engaged, and we don’t realize how important it is to disconnect from time to time. One great way to unplug is to go for a walk each day.

Health experts recommend at least 2 ½ hours of moderate activity each week. To get started, go for a simple walk around the neighborhood for 5 or 10 minutes. As your body gets used to the exercise, you can set a longer goal or work your way toward the goal of 10,000 steps per day. Tracking your progress is easy: use a pedometer or download an app to your phone.

Important Tips to Remember

Walk on the sidewalk in well-lit areas.

Wear comfortable shoes and socks.

Drink plenty of water before, during and after your walk.

Keep your cell phone with you in case of an emergency.

Walking is a great form of exercise and also gives you a moment to connect with the world around you.

By: Florida Blue

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