Do you take a break?

I found this article from the BBC first published in June 2010 and thought that as people are feeling the pressure and strain more, how many more people are causing themselves problems and illness through not taking a break when at work. How much more healthier would we be and how often would we only have to do a task once if we did stop and take a break?


One in four 'works all day without break' – survey
BBC article – June 2010

One in four people in the UK often works all day without taking a break, a survey suggests.

More than half of the 3,000 people polled by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists said they went to work when feeling unwell or stressed. Staff shortages were cited as a cause of stress and why breaks were skipped.

While work can contribute to people's mental and physical well-being, overworking can lead to health problems, the CSP warned.

Back pain
While a quarter of those polled took no lunch break at all, a third worked through most of theirs. Half of those who did so said it was because they had too much work to do, and a third because there were not enough staff to do the work required.

Working in the same position for long periods at a time meant many complained of physical pain. The CSP warned that poor working practices increased the risk of chronic musculoskeletal disorders, like back pain - one of the most common reasons for long-term sickness leave in the UK.

Stress was also an issue, with more than 40% feeling stressed at least once a week. For many of these people, staff shortages and a heavy workload were at the root of their anxiety.

Last year, the health watchdog NICE urged employers to do more to tackle stress and anxiety in the workplace.

Alarm bells
Sickness absence and "sickness presence", when staff come to work feeling unwell, is estimated to cost employers and society about £35bn each year in reduced productivity, sick pay and benefits. At least some of this could be recouped through healthier working practices and helping employees access treatment for musculoskeletal disorders, the CSP said.

"Work is good for us and can contribute to our physical and mental well-being - but not when overworking means people don't have the time or energy to look after their own health or when staff are at work but not fit for work," said Ann Green, chairman of the CSP.

Ben Willmott, of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: "These findings should ring alarm bells for employers.

"A certain level of pressure at work is of course desirable. However when the pressure people face exceeds their ability to cope - in other words stress - it is likely to lead to time off work and is linked to conditions such as depression, anxiety and heart disease."


What are your thoughts, do you work through your breaks and if so why? I would love to hear from you!

Top Tips for planning your Wedding Day

I was recently asked to present at Ice the Cake's Wedding Fayre in Thame as to what my top tips were for starting to plan your Wedding Day. So I thought I would share them on here...

1. Spirit of the day
Together you need to think about the feel and spirit you want for the day. Build a movie of it in your mind, what can you see, hear and feel. This will help you be clear about what you want in the day and what you don’t want.

When you know this then you can start to talk to your wedding planner and suppliers and they can get a clear vision of the day as well

2. Know your budget
Be really clear about how much you have to spend and what the main areas are you want to spend it on. Have a 10% contingency for those unknown ‘must haves’
Remember to include the cost of your Stag and Hen do’s.
If other people are putting money in be clear about how much and let them know what it’s specifically going towards.

3. Relationship with Suppliers
Take time to build your relationship with your suppliers – give them the vision of your day so they can deliver it. Become their favourite client

4. Sticking Points
If you have a sticking point ask yourself and each other ‘What’s important about having/not having that?’ Keep in mind your vision and spirit of the day – does it add to it or take away from it.

5. Your decisions
Everyone’s got an opinion – listen to it, say thank you and then decide what you want to do. If you’ve got someone that can’t leave it alone then it can help to give them a specific job to do.

6. What skills are in the bag
Look at the resources you have available to you – not just money, what skills do friends and family have that you can utilise – what are your skills – Table decorations, dress making

7. Big Stuff First
Plan the big stuff first – no point in worrying about what colour nail polish to have if you’ve not sorted out the venue!

8. The Team
Have a team around you of family, friends and suppliers that want to deliver the day you want and will support you.

9. Wedding Free time
Have time out with each other that has nothing to do with planning, organising or even thinking about the wedding.

10. Remember 1
Stay strong as the day approaches, emotions can start to run high and you may start to second guess yourself - keep in mind your vision of the day and let that guide you.


How could a coach help?

A coach will help you with all of the above and how you start the planning and being really clear about your day. There are also many techniques you can use to help you manage family and friends as everyone wants to play their part in your day. A coach can help with preparing the people that are writing and delivering the speeches and help the bridal party be at their best and relaxed in order to have an amazing and enjoyable day.

The Essentii Club launch

Well what a week it's been. After months of work in getting the strategy right, planning and writing the website, setting up the members only areas and testing it all launch day finally came!

I had chosen the 4th July - mostly because I would have been back from holiday for a week and it seemed like a good start day. I already have some clients who had signed up early and are already benefiting from being part of the club.

So why set up a new part of the business.... I wanted to focus on whole health - mind, body and spirit, not just one aspect or area of someone's life. I felt this was missing, people might think about their fitness or the eating habits or wonder why they feel fed up often and I wanted to offer a way of taking all that we do (or don't do) into account. The focus is about finding balance in all aspects of our lives and not about being perfect. It is about learning from what we do and understanding how we do it, in order to keep what does work and change what doesn't work.

Within this I thought of 3 main areas were this could be most beneficial.

Business Owners - Having happy healthy employees provides positive benefits to the company - less sickness, less stress, less time off = more productivity and employees benefit in their health and fitness both physically and mentally.

Sports Groups and Sporting Individuals - From team work to individual coaching, help getting to the next level in their sport and perform at their best more regularly - learn techniques used by top athletes in all areas of sport.

Individuals - Be in control of their weight management and fitness levels. Find the focus they need to achieve your outcomes.

This then brings together all my passions around enjoying life, getting fit and having fun! This first week has been great and winning Highly Commended for Business Strategy 2011 before officially launching was the icing on the cake and I'm looking forward to a great year!

Essentii wins first Business Award!!

Highly Commended for Business Strategy Award 2011.

I am delighted that Essentii has received it's first Business Award.

I had put the business forward for the Business Beacon Business Strategy Award 2011 for the strategy in setting up a new arm of the business - The Essentii Club (launched on 4th July 2011). I knew I had been short listed and attended the awards ceremony on the 30th June and I was so pleased to receive Highly Commended for Business Strategy Award 2011.

Made all the work over the last few months very worth it!

What the 7/38/55 communication rule really means

I have read many books and articles on communication and how it works and in many of them they quote the work by Albert Mehrabian and the 7/38/55 rule on communication. A lot of them state that in ALL communication these figures mean

7% of our communication is the words we use
38% of our communication is the tone we use
55% of our communication is in the non verbal (physiology)

NO THAT IS NOT WHAT THEY MEAN – sorry for shouting but in the words of Peter Griffin (Family Guy) this ‘really grinds my gears’. The research by Mehrabian was around how we communicate feelings and attitudes only.

It is emphatically not the case that non-verbal elements in all senses convey the bulk of the message. So what do the figures mean….

An example of when we are communicating feelings and attitudes could be

• Verbal: "I'm Ok with that"
• Non-verbal: person avoids eye-contact, looks anxious, has turned away slightly, etc.

It becomes more likely that the receiver will trust the predominant form of communication, which to Mehrabian's findings is non-verbal (38% + 55%), rather than the literal meaning of the words (7%).


An example of when the words are 100% of the message

• You are at work when the fire officer comes into the room and shouts "Everyone evacuate the building because there is a fire," I would suggest the meaning of the words carries 100% of the message i.e., 1) there is a fire, and 2) get out of here. You are very unlikely to be worrying about the tone of voice and physiology of the person issuing the instructions and are more likely to grab your stuff (despite being told on numerous occasions not to) and get out. You'd get the message fully through the words without having to be an expert in body language to unravel the meaning.

The value of understanding the 7/38/55 rule relates to communications where emotional content is significant, and the need to understand it properly is great.

OK rant over!! What are your thoughts?

What's the opposite of guilty?

I was recently asked a great question ‘What’s the opposite of Guilty?’ I immediately took the context to mean when I feel guilty about something what’s the opposite of that – after a bit of thinking I came up with Contentment – which didn’t really feel quite right and encompassed a lot of other feelings, happy with my decisions, knowing I was doing the right thing, understanding why I was doing what I was doing.

Then the question put to me was ‘isn’t innocence the opposite of guilt?’. Which I couldn’t disagree with and it got me thinking about the difference between being guilty and feeling guilty. The first one could be said to be quite simple – in a court of law it works that you are either one or the other. However, being that us Human beings are complicated creatures, all that changes when we start thinking about how we feel. How often have you gone through a customs check, knowing that you’ve not gone over any limits and yet still walk through feeling guilty!

Feeling guilty can come about when we start living by our should, shouldn’t, must, mustn’t rules which normally means we are looking for someone or something to blame for what is happening, or not happening, around us. As with all our feelings they are manifested by us, we choose how we want to feel, so why would we want to choose to feel guilty if it’s not useful to us?

I think the first part of changing how we feel is to take responsibility for our own actions and understand that in each moment we make the decision and act in a way that feels right in that moment – we may learn afterwards that it wasn’t the best decision and we can decide to do things differently in future, surely this is all about us growing as individuals and blaming ourselves or others will only keep us in the same place – is that useful?

So the next time you feel guilty about something, what are you going to do to change how you feel, what feeling would be more useful to you?

And good luck next time you wander through customs!

Expectation Vs Ability

There are those times that we raise our expectations and then realised we perhaps don’t have quite the ability to get our outcome and we then know what we need to do, learn or work on to achieve that outcome. Well what happens when it works the other way round.

I was racing the other day when my brain was telling me what I was capable of and the minutes per mile I should be running. Training had been going well and I was going to feel happy to keep an even pace throughout the 10 miles. Well one mile in and I’m feeling good and check the time and I’m nearly a minute quicker than I was planning. ‘Oh dear – I’d better slow down or I’ll never last!’ So slow down I did, or so I thought and the next mile was a few seconds quicker again. I felt fine and yet over the next 3 more miles I continually told myself to slow down and that I would never last the distance, and yet I stayed within a couple of seconds time on each mile. I was supposed to be doing the first half slowly and seeing what I had left for the next couple of miles before upping the pace for the last couple.

But ability had other ideas and decided it didn’t care what expectation thought it was going to run as it felt – not following a timetable and I decided a change of plan was needed and I would reverse what I was going to do and run the first half quicker and then I could slow up in the second half and still hit my expectations….. Ability had a good giggle at this and continued to run as it felt. At around mile 6 I decided it would be more helpful to stop arguing between expectation and ability – I could put the energy I was using up to much better use!
And so I continued on and enjoyed the fact that I was running better than I expected and congratulated myself on an excellent training plan for this year as taking it slowly and building back up from injury was most definitely working. I crossed the line about 9 minutes quicker than expected.

One Nil to Ability!

A few days later was the first cross country race of the season and having run all three days from the race above to this one I was looking to run evenly and easily – and obviously expectation was putting some limits in - did my legs still feel heavy from the previous race? Had I recovered enough? Should I have run each day since…...? Luckily for me ability had an ally in that my friend Becs was running alongside (normally much faster and had done 20 miles the day before in preparation for the New York Marathon) and kept me going all the way round and I finished again much quicker than I expected especially for a cross country. So the stamina is there to keep going even on tired heavy legs and we even had enough for a sprint finish!!

Two Nil to Ability…..

My question now is how often do we let expectation talk ability out of performing and what would we achieve if we gave ability a free reign?