Hi there, 

Welcome to the January edition of the Satisfaction @ Work eZine.Well…

Christmas has come and gone.  How did you manage?  I live in Qld and had a camping trip planned for my Christmas break.  If you were keeping an eye on the weather you’ll be aware that I had a wet, windy and ultimately cut short camping trip.  Tents are just no fun in a cyclone.  While on my “holiday” I got to thinking about possible topics for this newsletter (yup, that’s how good my holiday was – I was thinking about work) and found that there were quite a few to choose from.  Whether it was the optimism of my group of friends that the weather would clear, the resilience of small children who had fun despite the weather or how flexibility adds strength to your tarps and tents.  The topic I chose is Flexibility.   

Flexible muscles are less prone to injury, flexible schedules are more able to cope with change and ambiguity and flexible buildings are more likely to withstand earthquakes.  Emotional flexibility is what I will focus on and it is a very important concept that influences many of our experiences including career fulfillment, interpersonal relationships and overall life satisfaction.  Let me try to explain. 

Lying in my dome tent I watched as the flexible poles bent and moved to absorb 30 knot gusts of wind and then return to the tent’s original shape.  Sometimes the top of the tent was moving up to 12 inches!!  What impressed me was that even though this tent was being blown completely out of shape and buffeted by very strong gusts of wind, it still managed to perform its intended function.  It kept me dry and warm. 

It’s probably common knowledge that bridges and buildings are built with an inherent degree of flexibility so as to absorb movement and not break and fall down.  My tent adopted the same principles to great effect.   

So...  How does this relate to you?  Well, in the Work Life Balance workshops I’ve run one of the topics I speak about is improved emotional flexibility as a great source of stress reduction.  Put simply, the tighter we hold onto something, whether it’s a concept, an expectation, a value, thought or belief then the more rigid we become.  As we become more rigid (less flexible) in our expectations (of others, of life or any given situation) then we expose ourselves to being increasingly disappointed (because we are unable to cope with any degree of variance).  Because we cannot consider other paradigms or perspectives we get locked into thinking that there is only one suitable outcome or course of action, we become fragile through our inflexibility.  This is limited and an individual who thinks like this will experience more stress and frustration as a result of things not going as ‘expected’.   

Here’s something to think about as you move into 2008.  The stronger an emotional reaction to a situation or event, then the more tightly held, and therefore less flexible, are the thoughts and beliefs of that person (you or others).  These emotional reactions are often stressful, disruptive and disempowering (think road rage for a perfect example).  If you want to better manage the stress in your life, first identify when these strongly held beliefs, thoughts and convictions are creating emotional stress and then practice letting go.  Sounds simple?  Well it is, but it’s not always easy.   

The first step is really about awareness.  If you find yourself having a strong emotional response to an event, that’s the red flag that tells you that a strongly held belief or thought is in play which has triggered the emotional response.  You then have a choice as to whether you will accept that thought or belief.  In many cases, better outcomes can be achieved when that thought is let go, and alternative methods of resolution are explored. 

Next edition I’ll talk about resilience, one of the cornerstones of optimism which has been linked to better health, greater satisfaction with life and even longer living.  It’s not whether or not we fail that matters… it’s what we do after a failure that makes all the difference.  This is resilience. 

NEWS FLASH!!

We’ve just launched our new website.  This site now better reflects the range of corporate work we do under the banner of Satisfaction at Work.  I welcome your feedback.   

Warm Regards

 Sean