How are you {doing} BEING?

Day 5 of 5 - Inviting in Calm, Choice and Creativity

Well, this is it, folks.

It’s the last day of this series on work-related stress and distress.

I hope it makes sense that five days of starting to try a new way of connecting with ourselves can’t change entrenched patterns.

But I also hope it’s encouraged you to keep exploring this very different way of relating to your experience, at work and beyond, and that it’s sparked some curiosity about how this might facilitate subtle but important changes towards improved mental health.

Starting to notice different parts of us, and then experimenting with “speaking inside” to them, is a fairly strange practice for most of us at first. And yet many people also find that it’s the start of positive change in patterns that have been stuck.

Final exercise

Today’s exercise continues to build on all the others and introduces the idea of the conference table (or campfire, depending on your preference) as a way of becoming more deliberately aware of three different parts at the same time.

What people find, practicing this kind of exercise regularly, is that they start to experience increasing amounts of what the IFS world calls “Self-energy”. That language can be a bit off-putting, rarified or “woo-woo” for a lot of us. So, if it helps, think of it as a downregulated nervous system, or the wisest version of you.

Like any significant psychological shift, some perseverance and patience are required. But if you’re willing to start noticing the very subtle shifts that happen at first, you’ll find that these become more pronounced over time.

As you experiment with the campfire or conference table exercise using the attached Worksheet, you’ll be invited to repeat the previous steps - which encouraged clarity, curiosity, connection, and compassion - and then expand the experience by inviting in calm, creativity and choice.

Repeated over time, you may even start to notice more and more courage and confidence in navigating workplace stress and finding even healthier ways of balancing out your “doing” with “being”.

Please do use the Comments section to share your reflections on this exercise and the whole series.

Thanks to everyone who explored these exercises and shared their reflections and questions in the Comments. Please feel free to share the posts and worksheet with anyone who you think would benefit. They’re offered freely and with enthusiasm – I simply ask that you leave the Header in place that attributes the work to my company, A Time to Heal Ltd.