December is a busy time of year! All of the normal things that take place across the year, still happen in December; work, family, hobbies, but then we've got a whole load of new things on top to contend with too! Christmas parties, homes and trees to decorate, presents to buy and wrap, family get togethers end of year celebrations to attend... We've just come out of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales cycle (I've still got no idea why we get sales which are attached to Thanksgiving, in the UK, where we don't celebrate Thanksgiving!) and are being bombarded with adverts and signs and emails and messages about things to buy and we're about to jump into the Boxing Day sales cycle (which inexplicably now starts BEFORE Christmas!) where it starts all over again!
There's a real sensory overload and a lot of demands on our time, which can be a catalyst for us falling into bad habits and out of good ones, which can have a detrimental impact on our abilities to perform well and, crucially, to enjoy all of the fun things that the season brings us.
In a coaching session a week or so back, a senior leader shared with me that they work at their best or perform at their highest, when the lights are at their brightest. They love the feeling of being under pressure to perform and knowing that they need to bring their A-game to the table to solve problems or deliver solutions. However, when probed, the leader recognised that this A-game only emerges when they create the right conditions for it to do so. The most important of which, was being well rested.
I ran a session this week, face-to-face, with a room of about 100 leaders, and as I moved around the tables, almost every single table had someone at it who was feeling under the weather. Colds and flus, sickness bugs and other ailments were rife within the group. And that's not unusual in other areas of my life too. Kids in Harper's class (including Harper) who have had days off in the past weeks due to sickness. Guys in the American Football team who were unable to take part in our pre-season practice due to being unwell. As we love to say in the UK, "there's a lot of it going about right now!"
It's pretty common for people to have time off over the Christmas and New Year period, but how often do you find that you work so hard in and out of work in the weeks running up to a holiday that you limp across the line, worn out and physically exhausted and rather than being able to spend the time away from work doing things you enjoy with people you love, you spend it having to recuperate, to muster the strength and get ready to go back to work and do it all again? I've seen this over and over.
The weather doesn't help us either - we're approaching the shortest day of the year (December 21st) in the northern hemisphere, where we get the least sunlight, thus producing the least vitamin D, we feel the least inclined to go outside into the cold, damp air and stretch our legs with some exercise and we can fall into the temptation of snuggling up on the sofa with an Oodie on and a tub of Celebrations, rather than eating healthy and staying active.
All of this is precisely why it's worth taking five or ten minutes to reflect on how we look after ourselves. Sleep and rest breaks, (reasonably!) healthy diet, decent level of activity, sunlight. Those should be the cornerstones of our self-care routines. Mindfulness and meditation, journalling, coaching and therapy, reframing, finding our purpose, being in service of others; these are all great and can really help to restore and revitalise us, but if the pillars aren't attended to first, those things will not be enough to paper over the cracks.
How is your sleeping pattern right now? Are you getting enough? Are you fuelling your body with the right things and managing to avoid too many of the wrong things? Are you doing something every day that tires you out physically? Are you getting outdoors when the sun is up? Take a little self inventory by looking over the past week or and finding things you've done well and areas for improvement. Now look ahead to the next week. What needs tweaked and how can you do it? Looking after those around us all starts with looking after ourselves!
Comments