The Game of Change

Geeta Ramakrishnan

Body and Language

Can sleep deprivation affect your personal and professional life?

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A good night’s sleep is recommended for the orderly functioning of the mind-body and soul. It is an important part of health and essential for our emotional, mental and physical fitness. Not having enough sleep can impair thinking, make us more accident-prone, and dampen our mood on a day-to-day basis. Sleep deprivation harms performance at work resulting in less productivity and quality. Relationships at home or work are also affected.

“Sleep is important for mental function: alertness, memory consolidation, mood regulation, and physical health,” says Phyllis C. Zee, MD, PhD, professor of neurology and director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Stop and ask yourself – are you getting enough sleep? Are you mentally fatigued, tired and feel drained?

If you are feeling constantly negative at work and home, it is time to understand if you are catching up on the right amount of sleep to rejuvenate and refresh yourself for the next day.

Get some good sleep

Getting good sleep helps enhance your mood and boost your mind to prevent health problems. An average adult needs about 7.5 – 8 hrs of sleep every night. Many people can go about the day with 6 hours’ sleep. You have to identify what routine works for you and aim to follow a healthy plan to prevent health problems.

Keep the environment comfortable

Keep television and gadgets at bay during sleep time. Try to avoid any sort of distractions that come in the way of falling asleep easily. Always try to maintain a calm and composed mood before going to bed. Some of the things to look into are to:

  • Avoid alcohol of heavy meals three hours before bedtime
  • For some exercising before bedtime or a warm bath right before bedtime proves to be a hindrance
  • Don’t exercise or take a warm bath right before bed
  • Avoid blue light of screens


Work and life balance

Work and relationship problems increase stress levels, which in turn can aggravate sleep problems. Strive to maintain a healthy balance to be able to keep the stress levels reduced. For Eg: plan your day well. Give yourself enough time for tasks. If you are a last-minute person and the adrenaline of achieving great things in less time gives you a rush, hold on. Although in the short term it looks all good and fancy, it comes at a cost to your health, mental anxiety, and affects your physical self in the long run. If you are dealing with stress, this is one point for you to consider.

Spend time doing things that make you happy

After a long day at work sometimes all you want to do is spend some quality time with your kids or pursue a hobby or take some downtime to unwind. Do that. A happy mood and a content heart are  de-stressors and accounts for keeping the mind light before bed.

Seek help

If you have any sleep-related issues or any aches and pains, do not refrain from asking for help. Treating your ailments at the right time helps keep you energetic and positive as you look forward to conquering another day head-on at work or home. If your sleep disorder is getting to you, you can contact the experts at Evolve Brain Training for better diagnosis and treatment.

Since many women have a lot to juggle between their homes and at work, they are constantly thinking about everything. As you consider changing your behaviours one of the things to include is effective ways of handling your thoughts.

Check out the resources on my website to learn about the 5 techniques to reduce stress as well as other informative articles on health & wellness that help you look after your well-being despite being part of a challenging business environment.

Walk Into a Healthy You!

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The recent COVID 19 pandemic has shed more emphasis on the importance of health and wellness in current times. Many of us are facing challenges that makes most situations stressful, overwhelming, and can cause strong emotions. Irrespective of all this, it is still important to focus on good physical health and mental wellbeing now more so than ever before. There is a recent article on how poor diet and lack of exercise affect women’s mental health more than men’s, read here. As you are busy juggling between many roles in your day-to-day life, you always need to motivate yourself to lead a healthy lifestyle. It can mean that you have to set physical and mental goals for you to achieve and look for innovative ways to achieve them.

Maintain Good Food Habits

Committing to a healthy behaviour is one of the most meaningful gifts you can give yourself.  As we are busy trying to steer through home and work every day, we need to stay mindful about our food eating habits. A lot of what we eat reflects our health directly. Consume healthy fruits and vegetables. During mealtimes, fill your plate with healthy foods and limit portion to one serving only. Gradually try to reduce your portion size so you are able to take smaller steps. Take into account the change in weather and alter your liquids intake as per that. Staying hydrated is one of the ways to keep yourself going. Keeping in mind challenges we face as woman; I have created the ‘Game of Plan’ app available on Android phones. This helps you keep a log of activities you do during the day, keep a tab on what you eat, the nutritional value of the foods you consume to create more awareness and bring consciousness to your day.

Opt for an alternate recipe

Healthy food does not necessarily mean boring / bland food. These days the internet is filled with healthy alternatives to the otherwise oil-filled curries and biryanis. Follow healthy recipes on YouTube or look at instant recipes that focus on creating healthy wholesome meals.  Replace fried food with steamed food while keeping the spices intact. In baking you can replace all purpose flour to nut flour etc to enjoy guilty treats with a healthy nutritious spin. If you have cordial neighbours you can also alternate cooking in each other’s kitchen and share the food on a daily basis.

Take a walk

There is no alternative to walking outdoors in more natural surroundings. Maintain a daily/weekly routine where you allocate time for yourself and engage in walks. If you are at office, you can probably use the stairs, or take breaks in between. These short activities increase blood flow and releases hormones that help us manage stress, increase alertness and burn calories. The happier you are the more energy is positive in your surroundings. You can look for interesting ways to  promote wellness in the workplace. If you have downloaded any fitness app, your walks will be automatically logged in and so will your sleeping patterns.

Physical routine

Having a physical routine is very important to bring about lifestyle change. Is getting out of the bed and fetching your gym clothes in the morning is refraining you from hitting the gym? Keep your clothes right next to your bed. This makes it more accessible and likely for you to remember. You don’t necessarily need to keep hours aside to go to the gym. Just try to fit it in your daily schedule. For example, you have a set routine of (5 push ups, 10 jumping jacks, 5 burpees) before you get into the shower. Slot in time to move the way you enjoy. You can replace your gym with dancing or pilates etc. You can check for five daily exercise you can do here on my resource page here. Any form of exercise is also proven effective to protect your brain against depression and anxiety. Read here.

Wearable technology

While you continue to focus on the traditional methods, technology has made progressive strides in the health and wellness industry. A large spectrum of innovative tech involves wearable tech, where you are able to understand your bodily functions in a customised manner. You can use devices to track your health, physical activities and sleep. The use of wearables is to track and analyze your fitness patterns and closely monitor it yourselves. Keep a goal to achieve 10,000 steps a day or get 7 hours sleep daily and try to achieve them. If this is too much, you can start by creating smaller milestones and strive to increase them as you reach these figures. These are measurable goals and are easily trackable.

Staying healthy is no more an option but a necessity. It is something that you need to start taking charge of today and be a role model for yourself and those around you. Once you have created these patterns, be sure to follow them. This creates a habit and we are able to sustain these activities for longer periods.

Managing Stress: A Woman’s Perspective

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A Competitive World:

We live in a competitive world that leads to stress. You have to compete in school, to do your best to get into a better University. Then you have to compete for your dream job. If you think you arrived, then you are wrong. With work comes pressure and more struggle, with now also with managing work-life balance. Whether one likes it or not, I believe women work twice as hard as men in many aspects of life, be it professional or personal. What is your motivation to success?

Women wear multiple hats, and to juggle them successfully is an acquired skill, being daughters, mothers, professionals, managers, homemakers, dreamers, achievers. You want to be seen as strong and confident in all that you do. It comes with a cost. It will cost you anxiety for sure and can also cost your health. It dents your self-esteem. Soon resentment sets in, and stress becomes a habit, an accepted way of life. What you need is to learn to step back, pause and introspect. It would help if you gave yourself the time and much earned self-validation to feel confident, which usually takes a beating as you navigate these multiple roles in life; more is stress than in choice.

How do you Identify the Problem?

So how do you identify the problem when it has become a background default and unconscious habit? You have been conditioned over generations with an image of how women should be. When you are young, your mothers unconsciously feed to your image as someone who must not argue, fight, or talk too loud. You grow up accepting a lot of ‘inequality’ or have to work hard and fight against such ‘norms.’ Men have different qualities than women, both important and useful.

As a motivation and wellness coach, I have seen times over and believe, you bring your unique attributes to this world, your society, your family. You can be better nurturers, being emotionally stronger. You are more focused and better managers than men, with greater attention to detail. You need to believe in you and your yet to blossom abilities. Being aware of and focusing on your unique strength rather than complaining or resenting is a significant first step to a confident you.

How to change the Attitude?

What will help you in your quest to be the ‘ideal woman, be seen as an achiever, and follow your big dream? Does multitasking bring overwhelm instead of effectiveness?  Can you change the male-dominated trend in this world by being aggressive or by complaining? Maybe you are devoting more time to your family, your children, much more than your spouse, perhaps. Are you giving any time, value, and self-love for yourself? Are you unwittingly putting yourself in constant stress?

Where is the Balance?

As a woman, you constantly struggle with work-life balance, to give your best to the different roles. You often think you can handle the children better and allow the strain of child-rearing to rest more on your shoulders. You also do not expect, let alone ask for help in household responsibilities. To be seen as equally efficient in the office, you take in more work, more working hours perhaps. If there is physical or emotional abuse, you sometimes accept it due to a lack of better options. If you choose to fight, you can be termed aggressive. Where is the balance? By the way, work-Life balance is not just a woman’s issue, as seen from the research in this article:

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/23/living/work-life-balance-women-men-parents/index.html

How do you cope with this Overwhelm?

How do you cope with all this stress and overwhelm? You cope with stress by procrastination, denial, or ignoring the problem at hand, playing the blame game. ‘My maid is always late and irresponsible; my office staff never gives the report on time, why can’t my children be more responsible… The list is endless. You often go into denial mode. Or you use the escape mode. While smoking and drinking within limits may not be harmful, it can give short-lived results, increasing addictive dependency as an escape from stress.

Stress shows up in your Body:

Your body needs the rest when the symptoms are shouting out there. It could be the aches and pains which doctors have no remedy for; it could help with some gyne issues or just that niggling headache. How many times are you in denial when there is a physical or emotional abuse? You might want to ignore and wish the problem away, as you have no time or energy to deal with them now. Yes, it takes courage. I know from my personal experience and struggle with realizing the problem. It took me time to accept there is a problem in the first place, especially when my body could take it no more and effected by mental wellbeing.  It takes courage to say ‘No.’  and make the effort to change. Yes, there is fear. But everything you want is often on the other side of fear.

All the Solutions are within You:

Now that you recognize the problems and pitfalls, you want to change your attitude, create new habits. But you do not know how to bring about this change. Often all it takes is to physically take the step back, take a deep breath, breathing out slowly. Sounds easy yet powerfully effective. These few seconds are enough to allow your brain to move from its default 24/7 ‘stress’ mode to a ‘creative’ window. When I first reading on this research, I thought to myself, how can it be that easy? We like complex solutions and think only those work. This in nothing but a misapprehension.

I started practicing some breathing techniques, slowing down my breath when I am at it. I soon noticed, when I was stressed, I could bring myself to slow down my breath and this in-turn made my mind calmer, allowing me to handle that stress. My health started to improve, and I felt lighter, with more energy and enthusiasm. All the solutions are within you, right there inside the creative side of your brain. This stepping back and observing ourselves helps.

Other Tools:

What other tools help you access your creative side, other than a few slow breaths? If you want to give your best in all the multiple roles, you first need to provide yourself with ‘Me Time and Me Space.’ If you don’t pace yourself, take a pause, validate yourself, celebrate your small success, give yourself self-love, how can you add value to others, be it in your personal or professional life? Take time out for coffee-breaks with friends, a movie perhaps. It is an excellent platform to share, even bitch a little and laughing your heads off. 

Learn to let-go, to forgive. Forgiveness is only complete when you forgive and forget. It lets the enormous burden off your shoulder. Empathy helps one look at issues from another perspective while not necessarily agreeing with it. Try to understand a colleague’s problems, sometimes beyond work. It will lead to healthy conversations, even if it is a difficult one. Looking for and focusing on even the slightest positive aspect in your spouse and your children and appreciating them is a significant step toward building that solid trust. All these steps help define your boundary better and make it easier to say ‘No’ and be assertive and confident. It boosts your self-esteem and self-worth.

Practice makes New Habits stay:

The more you practice these mindfulness exercises, the more you will access your creative brain and find that perfect balance. It helps you choose, from resentment and stress to happiness and excitement, seeking opportunities in challenges. It allows you to blossom into a strong, confident woman with abundant energy. It enables you to manage your stress and work-life balance, be in choice, and be happy. You can share the happiness while nurturing others and be present for others without compromising you in the bargain.

For more related articles on managing stress, wellness and work-life balance, follow my blogs on https://coachingwithgeeta.com/blog/

The is Coachgeeta signing off…

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Winning Mindset for Women

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How we Build our Perceptions:

We learn from our surroundings, our parents, friends, workplace, and culture. We start adding our meaning to these learnings and start building our assumptions and perception of life. It becomes our reality and gets ingrained in our heads, acting as a background filter.  Many of us picked up that women are meant to stay at home and men to work.  While this may have been a social model a few centuries back, but the women of today are working. They work not only for the income or for the family, but they also work by choice to achieve and enjoy it. Unfortunately, the residue of the past image of women, in men’s heads and even in women’s, comes in the way of achieving success and happiness for women.

What we Think becomes our Reality:

If we think of ourselves as capable, able to manage our family, and have a successful career, then we can achieve it. But if we look at work as a burden, life becomes stressful as something we are just doing for monetary gains. If we want to be career women on the one hand but keep telling this story in our heads that it is a man’s world, and life is unfair, you build on your perceptions and may struggle as a result. I am leaving you with a link to an article on perception vs. reality concerning working women. Enjoy the read. https://wearethecity.com/perception-vs-reality-powerful-women-in-business/

A Winning Mindset:

Maybe women have to work twice as hard to prove a point. So be it.  If you start adopting a positive attitude,  you may still have to work twice as hard, but you will enjoy it.  It is finally about our philosophy in life and accepting life and then taking it up as a challenge and driving it forward. That is a winning mindset. It makes you more enthusiastic and makes you feel light and happy and capable of tackling all the stress and challenges in life. Who said life is easy. But you can still be happy and be successful. It is the attitude you wear that counts.

Is that Easy:

I also grew up almost automatically thinking that men are the providers and women don’t necessarily have to pursue a career.  I am talking of this perception when I was just in middle school. Thankfully, my parents helped me see otherwise, provided the support and love, and cared for me to nurture my career path.  Later on, my husband and children being the most significant support in my journey. I learned to face any challenge that came my way with a ‘Yes, I can’ attitude. I, of course, failed many times, got stressed out, had trouble balancing work and family, but I kept up my curiosity and learning attitude to find my success and happiness.

Are you Stressed out with Work-Life Balance:

So are you successful at work, and then your other priorities like family or social life take a hit. Or are you the type that gets so engrossed in your day-to-day mundane things and can’t focus on the bigger picture?  Are you getting overwhelmed doing so much yet unable to achieve?

What are your Boundaries?

Here is one place to start. How good are you at setting your boundaries, at saying NO? Do you say yes many times, at work and home, and then you feel so stressed doing that work which you didn’t want to do in the first place.  Maybe at work, you said yes because you don’t want to be seen as being less efficient. At home, you say yes to your children and your spouse because either you feel guilty as you assume as a woman it is your job to cook and clean and help with your kids’ homework, and you didn’t even think you could ask your husband to help out. Sometimes you can say no to work in the office if it is more than what you can handle.  You can either ask for help, ask for extra time, or say that you just can’t fit it in.  Same at home, you can ask your children to help you out or your husband to help you out.  Sometimes if you cannot handle it, you can say no in a friendly way, and it’s OK. People will respect you more only if you respect yourself, your time, and your dignity first.

Time Management as a Confidence Booster:

Time management is another area to help with stress and work-life balance. It is a great confidence booster.  I take an hour or two of my weekend to plan my week.  I make a list of crucial and urgent things that have to get done, and I allot them to time slots in that week. I also make a list of things that are not urgent but important. I put them second on my priority. I also leave time slots for surprises like urgent emails that suddenly crop up and need to be answered. Remember, your boundary management also helps you here.  My list also contains what I would love to do but are not helpful. So put them as ‘pending,’ and I may do it if I have time or may not do it.   This exercise makes me less overwhelmed and more confident when I know my week is all planned and sorted out.

Appreciate More:

One easy tip to be a stress-free 2.0 Version of you: Learnt to appreciate more. It just lifts your mood as the other person is happy, and it makes you happy. We are always misers with appreciation and keep looking for blaming others at work and home.    Also, appreciate yourself for your excellent work with small rewards. For example, every 2 hours of focused work, give yourself a coffee/ chat break with a friend as a reward. It helps excite your brain to do more. 

Focus on the Learnings:

To change our perceptions we have built over the years, we have to practice these new behaviors, new ways of being, till they become the new useful perceptions, helping us handle the stress in our life with ease and achieve success in whatever we seek.

Interested in the transformation into 2.0 version?

Have a look at  ‘5 Tips to reduce Stress’

Available from my resource page :

Free Resources

Anxiety and its effect on Health

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Do you live in Fear and Anxiety?

Do you fear what will happen in the future?  Do you live in resentment about things of the past, and you had no control over it. This blog is about how to face the fear and anxiety of the uncertain future.  It is about how to move away from resentments of the past. And how to meet the Stress of today with confidence, so you feel empowered to create success and happiness at the same time.

Let’s Dive In:

Let us start from the beginning. What are your fears, and what are you afraid of?  Does it create anxiety in you?  Let us examine these things first. As we navigate through life, we build perceptions around us. They are based on our understanding of the experiences around us, and we add our meaning to them, coloring them through our eyes.  For example, ‘I am a mother because I have two kids’. This is a ‘fact.’ I am a bad mother’; on the other hand, it is my perception I have made myself to believe. And over time, it becomes my ‘fact,’ my background operating system, and puts my under stress. So that may lead me to react by spoiling my children to be a good mom.  Anyways we all make such assumptions and get bogged down by them.

We live in the past:

Now, look at the other scenario.  Since we live in the past a lot, we continually think about the past incidences in our lives.  Especially those that didn’t go well and left a mental scar. Based on this, we fear our future. We then think, what if things do not go well just like the last time, what if I will fail, or what if I can’t pay my bills, what if I fall sick, and the ‘what ifs’ never ends.  We live in fear and anxiety and Stress.

So What Can You Do About This:

 Let us start by assuming that you had this big fight with your close friend. You can’t believe that she said such mean things about you after being friends for so long.  So you just shut her out.  But this incidence plays again and again in your mind in loops.  And you can physically feel this burden on your shoulder.  Well, that’s how your mind and bodywork. It attracts past negative thoughts and replays them in loops, equally affecting your body and mind. And now you live in resentment as you cannot let go of that incident from your mind. Have you had a calm conversation with your friend, conveying that you were so angry and explaining why? Did you ask for her point of view? Did you give her a right ear even if you disagree with her beliefs? Sometimes it’s OK to let go and agree to disagree. Sometimes it’s OK to forgive. When you forgive, you bring a lot of peace to your mind, to your heart, and maybe your friendship will become better or perhaps it will not. If it does not, at least you tried, and it is time to place a full stop and move on. I call this acceptance. Once there is an acceptance, there is so much peace instead of Stress. The self-awareness is a good place to start, to make the positive change.

While it is easy to talk about forgiveness and to let-go, let me tell you it was not easy for me. There was a situation in the past, and initially I couldn’t forgive this person. I kept repeating the incidence again and again in my mind. Even during meditation the thoughts kept re-playing itself, making me more upset and stressed. One day when I was walking in the garden, in a relaxed mood, I recalled the troubled event.  I concluded that I tried, the other person cannot see my point, and being an moral issue, I could not agree and I decided I was ok this way. That moment of acceptance just hit me. It gave me immediate peace and I could feel it in my body. This feeling is well worth letting-go rather than holding-on to a negative thought. It makes you feel lighter and attributes to your good health.

Self-Talk of Confidence and Self-Esteem:

As I said, it is always the fear that holds us back from trying out new things, from experimenting.  It is mostly the fear of failure, and especially you will notice, ‘what others think if I fail ‘is somehow very important to us. We are looking for external validation again. If you change the language in your mind and tell yourself, what is the worst that can happen to you if you fail, and say that ‘you can handle it.’ Once you give that self-talk of confidence to your mind, you will be better prepared to take the risk. Now take a calculated risk and try out something new. Maybe you will succeed, then wonderful. Maybe you will fail. That still means you have an ‘opportunity’ here. An opportunity to learn from your failure. Look back and see what made you fail. Check on what your assumptions were and how you can now change things to make them succeed.  It could also happen that what you wanted to achieve needs to be tinkered within the first place. Maybe it was not realistic to start with, and you need to readjust it.  This whole process of being open to change, being flexible, being curious add a lot of excitement in achieving or reaching that goal. It is a good confidence building tool, which adds to your self-esteem as well. This state of positive mindset leads to good health and prevents ‘lifestyle diseases’ like obesity, diabetes and many more.  Since I like to focus on science based research and statistics, I will share this link to check it further of the relationship between confidence and good health.  https://www.successconsciousness.com/blog/inner-strength/increase-your-confidence-to-improve-your-health/

Focus on the Process:

You can easily change Stress and positively impact your health and wellness. Focusing on the process rather than the result is an excellent way of going forward and moving from a stressed way of living to a happier way of living where you are excited about doing things.  You are no more resentful. You don’t have that much fear or anxiety because you now know that no matter what happens, you can handle it. And that enthusiasm comes from within. It is an excellent confidence-building tool. And like Elon Musk says, ‘you fail when you do not take a risk.’  This process of being the positive change, in itself leads to a robust physical and mental health and wellbeing.

Wellness Brain Hacks:

 I want to leave you with some easy brain hacks which will help your mind be more comfortable trying new things, experiment with the change, and transcending your fear.  It will take you one step closer to your overall wellness.

1.        Brush your teeth with the non-dominant hand.

2.        Solve crossword puzzles.

3.        Try doing Sudoku.

4.        Learn a new language

5.        Take up a new skill like gardening, cooking, or any handicraft like crochet, knitting.

What these activities do is, fires different parts of your brain. Especially those areas which we rarely use, being busy making the same old, same old habits.

In Conclusion:

I hope you now have a better idea of handling your fears and anxiety to navigate your life more towards excitement. It builds up your confidence level,  empowers you to be successful in whatever you seek. This mindset change from Stress to enthusiasm positively impacts your work output and your professional life. In turn, your personal life, your health, and overall wellness are also positively impacted.

Practice, practice, and practice your new learning till it becomes a part of you.

This is Coachgeeta signing off.

To learn more about Winning the Game of Change, you can schedule a complimentary coaching call from my website:

Book a Session

Claim your power on Life.

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Do you struggle with work-life balance?
Are you successful at work and your other priorities like family or social life takes a hit? Or are you the type that gets so engrossed in your day-to-day mundane things, that you are unable to focus on the larger picture.

My Personal Experience…
I can tell you from my own personal experience of being in a family business, of bringing up two children, being a wife to an ambitious husband and… I also want to be very confident and hands on at work and at home. It all sounds good but in practice I realized that the balance was not so easy. Meaning when I used to focus more at work, at business, I realize it was at the cost of my attention at home and to my children. And being a very protective mother, it took a big toll on my emotion. And then when I decided to focus more on my children and my house, I notice that it took a toll at work and on our social life. When I say it took a toll on me, it affected my confidence level and at some point, it started affecting my health because I was feeling stressed and unhappy most of the time. I was living in resentment and started playing the blame game, blaming others for my unhappiness and stress. And believe me when you are in that circle it is very hard to objectively see things in perspective, as I can see it today.

Work, Family or Me, what comes first?
Many times, when I ask people to rate in order of priority: your work, your family and you, the most common answer is work of course because that is your bread and butter and then comes family and then if you have some time let over then it is you. Now look at it this way. If you start from ‘me, then family and then work’ what does that entail. What I mean by that is, if you start with focusing and taking care of yourself first, taking care of your physical fitness, of your healthy eating habits, your mental fitness, so that you feel strong and physically healthy and mentally alert. This way you show up more calm and less stressed and more present at work and to your family. You will find yourself less likely to be snappy, to be irritated and more likely to be pleasant often.

Getting your Best:
This general mood that you wear allows you to get your best done. And it increases your efficiency at whatever you want to do. It is a great idea to start by taking some time off and focus your attention and your thought on what you really want from life, what goals you want to achieve, say one year down the line. Now spread these goals into professional goals, into physical fitness goals, into family goals and some social type of goals. Then work backwards, prioritizing your every-day. You will soon realize that you must let go of certain things because they were not so important now and you have to give more of your energy of other things that work towards you achieving your goals. This will help keep your day more organized and you will be able to handle stress with calmer.

Positive Frame of Mind:
Another great aspect that I realized, something that is very easy to do and yet so important, is being in a positive frame of mind. Now you can ask, if things are going so bad around you, how can you be in a positive frame of mind. Now think about this fact … there is always a 50% chance of things going the right way, so why not give your focus and attention to the positive side of things. For example, if you had to work with the team and you thought the team members were so bad at organizing, instead of getting annoyed at them, try saying this. ‘I like your effort and I like that you’re also enthusiastic and want to make it happen’. You will notice a sudden happy change in mood of the team members. When you start appreciating more, people try to make that extra effort for you.

End Result:
So how does all this go with the Work-life balance. You are in a lighter frame of mind. You can give more of you to the family and to your work, and you are able to achieve more because you have converted that stressed and unhappy self to a very enthusiastic and positive person. This forms a good backbone to a work-life balance. You can life to its fullest, enjoy life, achieve your goals, and ace your professional and personal life and claim your power back from life.

Need more ideas to deal with Stress?
For more inspiration and ideas on handling stress and achieving success in what you seek, you can read through all my blogs.

Interested in taking this Further?
Curious about my coaching methods and easy to follow tips and tricks in managing your stress and achieving success in professional and personal life?
To learn more about Winning the Game of Change, you can schedule a complimentary coaching call from my website : https://coachingwithgeeta.com/book-a-session/

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Health and Wellness of the Body and Mind.

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Wellness Factor in Health:

When we talk of being healthy, it is not just being physical fit and able, it is also about being mentally fit and able to handle the stress and pressures of life. Many of us go through the daily stress of life , hoping to get the best out of life. I have notices for many of us, the prime focus is our profession which then translates to money needed to maintain and manage our standard of living needs and to take care of our family. It can also be the passion and enthusiasm at work that is our driving force. Either ways we cannot escape the stress and pressure around it. Does it affect your physical health? Are you suffering from life style diseases ranging from food intolerances, digestion issues, frequent headaches, even random aches and pains, obesity, PCOD, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Are you feeling burnt and constantly feel tired with no energy to handle the stress of life, instead of feeling confident, successful and happy. This you are in the right place…read on…

Physical Fitness:

Having a fit and active body helps by supporting us pursue our goals and follow what is important to us. While we tend to get busy and buried in these goals, which mostly consist of a sedentary and indulgent lifestyle, making time for physical activity is important. Many International organizations recommend about 150 min/ week of moderate cardio exercises for an adult to remain fit. Now we can translate this into 3 one hour cardio activity per week like walking, cycling, swimming or the likes. It can also add up as 5 half hour walks per week, which is achievable. Now you can even split the half hour walk into 3 ten min brisk walk in the day. I am mentioning these recommendations, to help one realize how doable and easily to include these activities are. A walk up and down the house, or the office area, or a park. Leaves hardly any excuse option open.  I set up alarms in my phone to remind me for my 5pm daily walk. I know of some people who keep their gym clothes near their bedside, to make the morning walk more possible.

Mental Fitness:

I have noticed people pay little attention to mental fitness. They think it is natural to feel tired, drained, fatigued and frustrated. They think what choice do they have, as the stress of life is not going to go away.  Having a strong body goes a long way to strengthen our mind, to be able to deal with the stress of life. You will notice that if you feel tired easily, are working long hours, you are more prone to falling sick or catching colds easily.  On the other hand, if you work out regularly and have an active lifestyle, you are less likely to fall sick that often. Similarly being mentally fit to handle all the stress of life, makes you a happy and more confident. And this mental confidence supports your physical wellness, makes is less likely for you to fall sick as often, and not fall prey to lifestyle diseases.

Brain Gym:

I have some across many recommended brain gym and am sharing some of them. They are easy to try fun activities.  Brush your teeth with your non dominant hand for a few days. Cooking and playing the piano are other great brain gym activities, stimulating different sides of your brains. Spending time in relaxed and fun activity, opens up the creative problem solving side of the brain that shuts down under stress. Make time to having more fun, laughing more and taking the break from work once in a while, even if it for an hour or less.

Seeking Help:

Sometimes, when you just feel sad, feel like crying for no apparent reason, feel a sense of hopelessness and lack interest in life, you sleep for really long hours, often feel fatigue, loss of appetite or anything that does not feel normal, these are few signs of mental ill-health. The best option is to seek help. Consult with your doctor or reach out for professional help with a phycologist or a psychiatrist. Seeking help is a sign of strength.

In Conclusion:

Happy body = Happy mind and Happy mind = Happy body. And having a physically and mentally fit body and mind allows us to use our own internal strength in pursuing our goals, our plans, allowing us to write our success stories despite the stress and tough life and surroundings.

Need more ideas to deal with Stress?

For more inspiration and ideas on handling stress and achieving success in what you seek, you can read through all my blogs .

Interested in taking this Further?

Curious about my coaching methods and easy to follow tips and tricks in managing your stress and achieving success in professional and personal life?

To learn more about Winning the Game of Change, you can schedule a complimentary coaching call from my website :   https://coachingwithgeeta.com/book-a-session/

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How to Ace your Professional Life.

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New Year Goals are Ready. Now What!

January is usually a time when everyone gets enthusiastic discussing and planning New Year’s goals. Once we have invested our time in building goals and action plans, we need sustain it. Not just for 1 month or 2 months, but for the entire year. Most of the time we know what needs to be done. We have beat the colleague to that promotion, we must eat healthy. We must reduce online social garbage. We must stick to healthy work time. We must drop a few kilos. We even know how because we have a full-fledged plan ready. But the question is to take that first step.

4 Quadrant: Time Management Matrix

If we were to write our ‘to do’ list for the month, we could easily fit it into this famous four, a well-known and well researched Time Management matrix. Quadrant 1 : Urgent and Important,

Quadrant 2 : Not Urgent but Important,

Quadrant 3 : Not Important but Urgent and

Quadrant 4: Not important, not Urgent.

Quadrant 1: Urgent, Important: Do it Now

These are jobs that need your immediate attention. All the items in our ‘to do’ list that has to get done now comes in this box and the faster you plan a date to get it done the better. An ASAP or the first weekend can be devoted to these sometimes unpleasant sometimes boring jobs. Once it gets done and dusted, you will feel that relaxed sigh of relief. Your mind is cleared much like that of a computer when it is freed of wasteful memory and trash.

Some Examples: Clearing that huge laundry pile, taking your sick child to the doctor, the collection of documents that need filing, the pending project long overdue, preparing for tomorrow’s review meeting, responding to boss’s email.

Benefits: These tasks linger more on crisis management and emergencies and causes a feel of overwhelm, stress and burn-outs. Prioritizing these helps relax and feel more confident.

Quadrant 2: Not Urgent, Important: Schedule.

These constitute of work that does not have a specific deadline, but if you do not peg it down, can just pile up. Now take out your planner and spend every once a week, say every Saturday to plan and organize your week. Prioritize and time slot activities, meetings, and chores for that month, taking into consideration those that reoccurs in a daily/weekly or monthly manner. And prioritize the important ones first. When organized you will feel more on top of things, even if the week throws some surprises, you can handle it.

Some Examples: Attending an optional zoom sales seminar, remitting money to start a weekly gym routine, booking a dinner date, finding time for the IT class.

Benefits: This planning allows you to be more in control, be more organized, more efficient, get better and quality work life balance and helps with your perspective vision.

Quadrant 3: Not Important, Urgent: Delegate/Delay

These are time eater. They are tasks that do not majorly contribute to your work yet needs to get done. Delegating some work to your team adds trust and value from your team members, especially that which offer them flexibility in decision making. It empowers them with confidence to work more efficiently. Same with your children for that matter when your delegate some home tasks. While some other work just needs to get done.

Examples: You child calls you during work hours to clear a difficult doubt in her homework, your boss decides to have a casual team meet with no particular agenda, or your colleague needs IT help and knows you are good with it, your electric bill is pending and today is the last day.

Benefits: Helps you learn to say ‘NO’ sometimes, to delegate and understand what it is to let go sometimes.  While they are ok for short term focus, not handling them can easily lead to overwhelm and not being in control.

Quadrant 4: Not Important, Not Urgent: Declutter/Delete

They are what I call then ‘nani-nani’ activity. It keeps you engaged but not gainfully, especially if you are focused and an achiever. But it does give one the joy of procrastinating. While these are great activities to chill and relax our minds, planning them for later or defining that chill time helps. So, either keep the task for a leisure date or eliminate it from the list.

Examples: Working on the unfinished jigsaw puzzle, that addictive soap opera on Netflix, silly WhatsApp and Facebook forwards, clearing unwanted pics and re-organizing them in your computer.

Benefits: Dwelling in this quad, hovers around procrastination where you know you have a bunch of things to do but are giving it a blind eye. It does give a temporary happy feeling, relaxing a stressed mind. It is in fact a great ‘stress-buster’. But the problem is when we let it linger longer where it eats into our productive time.

Need more ideas to deal with Stress and Time- Management Tools?

For more inspiration and ideas on handling stress and achieving success in what you seek, you can read through all my blogs.

Interested in taking this Further?

Curious about my coaching methods and easy to follow tips and tricks in managing your stress and achieving success in professional and personal life?

To learn more about Winning the Game of Change, you can schedule a complimentary coaching call from my website : https://coachingwithgeeta.com/book-a-session/

Keep a watch….

Uploading some complimentary resources..coming soon…