Do you have a career plan ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’?
I strongly recommend that you action this now.
How’s your head space?
This bulletin is about head space. We all have a head.
But we don’t always have head space.
Do you?
Definition of head space
‘A person’s state of mind or mindset.’
‘The ability to enable and understand how to control our thoughts and feelings to affect their impact on ourselves or others.’
Head space is very important in life generally and especially at work.
Your head space
- How much head space do you get each day? Each week? Each month?
- How much head space do you create for yourself?
2 simple questions, aren’t they?
For some people, the only time they get head space is on holiday or when they are asleep.
Are you one of them?
Tips to create head space
- Switch off your Iphone, tablet and computer
- Choose a quiet environment that you like e.g. a quiet coffee shop, park or garden
- Ringfence time in your diary by having coaching sessions
- Take a dog for a walk – yours or someone else’s
- Spend time in nature
- Go on a train or bus journey into the countryside when it is quiet and look out of the window
My head space
Favourite places for me to create head space are:
- Our allotment
- An off-peak train journey going the opposite way to commuters
- House sits
- A quiet spacious coffee shop
- By coaching myself
- Looking at the flames in a wood burning stove
What are yours?
Benefits of head space
- ‘Check-in’ with your thoughts and feelings
- Make sense of what is bothering or frustrating you – head space allows thoughts and feelings to surface so that they can be addressed.
- Write down your ‘not getting around to list’ so that it can be tackled.
- Time to list progress, achievements and learnings.
- Allows you to ‘decompress’.
- Reclarify your priorities.
- Purposefully reflect.
- Time and space to coach yourself.
- Remind yourself of what you already know but had forgotten.
- Enables new insights and ideas to form and emerge.
- Give yourself a ‘body scan’ to notice any pain or discomfort.
- Monitor your inner dialogue/head chatter.
- Notice any negative unhelpful things that you are saying to yourself.
- Brainstorm how you could work more expediently.
- Time to think clearly without any pressure.
- Peace/time to reflect and process thoughts and feelings.
- Make sense of difficult situations and what to do next.
- Read ‘between the lines’ of what someone is expressing but not saying explicitly.
- To prevent impulsive unhelpful reactions to what someone is saying or doing.
- To manage stress and recharge.
- To contemplate important things that you don’t usually get time for.
- Reassess a project, task or relationship.
- Think about how you could simplify or improve a process.
- Think of solutions to problems.
- Make goals smarter and more compelling.
- Reframe boring tasks so they feel more motivating to tackle.
- Identify causes of overwhelm.
- Pinpoint the cause of why you are procrastinating so that you can get started and not waste time.
- List causes of tension in a relationship.
- Develop a strategy to tackle a difficult conversation.
- Review the mix of your portfolio career.
Which 3 of these do you most relate to?
Self-reflective questions about head space
- What’s stopping me from creating head space?
- When is the best time to create head space in my week?
- Who prevents me from having head space?
- What could more head space enable me to do that I don’t have enough of?
- Where is my ideal environment for headspace?
- What action will I take to give myself more head space?
What is a good question for you to ask yourself about head space?