CWO Diary, March 2024

Hello and welcome to the March edition of the Chief Wellbeing Officer newsletter on LinkedIn. If you have some extra reading time to enjoy over the Easter weekend/Spring break, we have you covered :)

This month has a number of practical guides to improve personal and team wellbeing -- on music, breathing and mobile device control. In community spotlight we look at an inspiring group of women wellbeing leaders in the DACH region while back catalogue reflects on some of my podcast appearances over the years. A short recap on CWO programs rounds us off as usual. Ok, ?vamos!

New Writing

I present a number of tools and methods in my talks and workshops. In fact The Daily Reset has hundreds of them. Music has tremendous power to improve our wellbeing and a BBC radio program offers us a fun and impactful method to try.

Desert Island Discs is a radio programme broadcast by the BBC since the 1940s and is one of the world’s longest-running radio shows.

Each week a guest, called a ‘castaway’, is asked to choose eight recordings (usually, but not always, music), a book and a luxury item they would take if they were to be castaway on a desert island, and then discuss their lives and the reasons for their choices.

Think about your own Desert Island Discs. Eight songs that represent your life so far.

• Begin with your young life as a child, maybe it’s your earliest memories of music.
• Next, think about your teens, often a hugely important time for one’s relationship with music, identity and companionship.
• Moving on then to young adulthood, relationships, family, special moments, perhaps even difficult moments through which you made it to the other side.

What are these eight songs?

Breathing is another powerful tool. When we stop breathing we stop thinking, which can lead to living our days in constant fight-or-flight mode. I've taught and used a number of techniques over the years and have found personal benefit recently in physiological sighing.

In spite of how it sounds, it's very simple — just a double inhale followed by a longer exhale. Sighing is often done involuntarily to manage stress. It also helps clear out carbon dioxide from the lungs and so resets lung function to get optimum oxygen. Try it as follows:

• Take a deep breath in through your nose and hold,
• Instead of exhaling, top it up and take another inhalation and hold,
• Exhale slowly through your mouth.

Repeat 3 times. I guarantee you will feel the benefit.

A final practical area this month is regaining control over our mobile devices. Changing your phone to grayscale can help tremendously with reducing the attraction and triggering power of your device -- instructions are available via the link. Something else you can do is take time to reconfigure your apps, folders and screens. Try the following:

Cover the basics

Turn off all notifications. You use the app when you want to.

Tidy up your apps

Try putting similar category apps into a folder.

Create friction

If you spend too much time on an addictive app try hiding it, away from the home screen and in a folder.

Home screen Zen

Try moving all apps away from the home screen so you just see the background image. Use a background image/photo that gives you peace, joy and happiness (alternatively, use an image that is not attractive so you don’t use the device).

Community Spotlight

A slight departure this month in not highlighting an individual or team, rather those who share a similar mission and tackle it from different perspectives. I've been more aware in recent months of a group of super smart and inspiring women wellbeing champions in the DACH region, including Dr. Miriam Baumg?rtner, Elvira H?usler, G?zde Imamoglu and Natallia Zaremba.

A mix of big corporate roles, wellbeing passion projects, boutique consultancy and hospitality, just the blend we need for wellbeing to advance. The DACH region, and wider wellbeing community, is in good hands.

Back Catalogue

I've been reflecting on my podcast (guest) journey recently. I vividly recall my first appearance on the Innovation Ecosystem podcast in 2016. I guess it fed the ego in the short term but I began to value the conversation and the way it shaped my thinking. First appearing as a guest was one of the drivers in creating my own show in late 2017 with the Chief Wellbeing Officer podcast the main public forerunner to the book which was published the following year.

I think there's great value in an audio-only channel though the addition of video to many podcast interviews in recent years adds another dimension. This has led me to start looking for bite-size messages in some of my guest appearances -- evidence of that thinking which rises to the surface in a good conversation.

Click below to watch a short segment from my appearance on the Leadership Enigma podcast regarding how teams can flourish. Here's another from my LinkedIn feed a few days ago on culture and leadership behaviour.

CWO Programs

• I’m touring Asia-Pacific in May — Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong. If you’d like to find out more on my dates and discuss possible engagements with your team or organisation please DM or email me ([email protected]).

• I’m thrilled to roll-out the Sustaining Executive Performance half-day workshop that I delivered mid-March to European Broadcasting Union directors, to the whole organisation. Excited to get back to Geneva again over the coming months.
• I'm excited to talk on Thriving Amidst the Turbulence at the Global Leaders in Law Forum in Puglia in a few weeks time.

Thanks for reading everyone. Have a wonderful Easter or Spring Break and see you on the April digest. Keep well.

Steven