Building your Career Resilience with Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness

During Mental Health week, we invited speaker Hugh van Cuylenburg from the Resilience Project to our client morning tea event. We wanted to understand what the Resilience project was about. We also wanted to give our clients the opportunity to apply the concepts it teaches to their lives.

- 8 Australians take their lives every day.

- 1 in 4 adolescents have a mental illness

- 1 in 7 primary schools kids have a mental illness

Experts believe the increase in mental health issues in our society are a direct result of the brain being bombarded with information. The brain of a child and adolescent is being smashed with information. It receives 52 times the information we would have been receiving growing up. Anxiety disorders and panic attacks are particularly prevalent in our young children.

Hugh was particularly interested in learning about happiness during his travels. This is in part due to his experience with his sister. His younger sister suffered from Anorexia Nervosa. It devastated her body and her family from the age of 13 to when she was 29. Hugh wanted to understand why, when she had everything was she not happy with herself?

During his travels, Hugh met a young boy in the far north of India. This boy went to a school that did not have running water, it had dirt floors, very few resources and it did not have electricity. This boy was one of the happiest people he had ever met. Yet he slept rough. He ate rice for lunch with salt. He wore shoes with toes cut out. He had no family to speak of. Hugh set out to discover what made him so happy. He discovered that this child was instinctively practicing 3 things every day.

These were:

Gratitude:

At its core, the concept of gratitude is the ability to focus on what we've got, not what we don't have.

In the Australian culture we can be quite materialistic. We upgrade items whilst they are still functional. We set after the newest IPhone or the latest model car. We often think things like "If I buy this then it will make me happy".

Gratitude makes you pay attention to what we already have.

Hugh suggests taking the time each day to be grateful. He suggests writing down 3 things you are grateful every day. You will find that after 21 days your brain will start looking for positive things in the world to be grateful for. It might be a “thing” like food, shelter, family. It might be a moment that you had that day. Once you have done this exercise for 42 days, you actually decrease your levels of depression. You decrease your levels of anxiety and you increase your overall happiness levels.

The brain is sadly 7 times more likely to respond to a negative message. That means they are 7 times more powerful than a positive message. You need to notice 7 positive things to outweigh a negative. By practicing gratitude you are 3 times more likely to notice the positive messages.

Empathy

When you help other people it makes you feel good. When you take the time to understand what another person is feeling you increase your emotional intelligence. When you feel good oxytocin gets released in your body making you feel happier.

Hugh suggest practising empathy and doing something every day for someone else.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the ability to shut off disruptive thoughts. It allows you to enjoy the present moment.

It is taking an opportunity for stillness. Meditation is a great way to practice mindfulness. When you are truly present in a moment you have no concept of time.

The Legal Industry in Melbourne can be a stressful environment. We could all do with help managing our mental health and stress levels.

There are some great apps that can help you with mindfulness that are available for your devices via the App store:

Smiling Mind.

This is a free app developed by psychologists and educators. It has age specific and ability specific modules that start at age 7. Hugh suggest using the section labelled Mindfulness 101

Buddhify

This is a great app for adults. It teaches mindfulness mediation on the go.

It has a daily check in to keep you in the present moment. The app costs around $8 to download to your device.

Headspace

This is a free app offering guided meditation that is suitable for all levels.

We thoroughly enjoyed the event and thank Hugh for his time. We found him to be an inspiring speaker. By taking time to learn about and implement these concepts you can increase your levels of happiness and well-being. You can become more resilient and reduce the chance of anxiety or mental health issues. We encourage you to give it a try!

In our next blog, we will be talking about ways to implement these concepts into your workplace. Stay tuned!

To learn more about Hugh you can connect with his company online at http://theresilienceproject.com.au/

Facebook www.facebook.com/resiliencep

Twitter: @resliencep

Instagram: @theresilienceproject