Category Archives: corporate health

by | May 29, 2018 · 2:44 pm

Emotions running wild?

A common thread in the teachings of the great sages is the ability to regulate one’s emotions, thoughts and behavior as a means of avoiding pain and suffering.  It is one of the easiest and hardest things to do. In the age of social-media and political demagogues “the right to vent” has become the norm.

A single uncontrolled outburst of anger so often ruin a long-term relationship, destroy a team or scuttle a business deal.

woman covering her right eye using her right hand during daytime

Photo by Pham Khoai on Pexels.com

Toxic emotions are poison. They weaken our immune system and can spoil our day as soon as we get up and open a social media account. We are being manipulated 24-7 with emotions that have a detrimental long-term effect on our mental health.

Negative emotions get attention and attention generate “likes” and advertising revenue. It is human nature to focus more on the negative than the positive. Why do otherwise so many people follow the herd in the next shit-storm?

How you start your day will determine your day. It is important to immunize yourself against negativity. Anchor yourself with a positive meditation, visualization, or exercise routine before you do anything else. Negative thoughts and emotions have the habit of drawing more negativity into your life. It is therefore crucial that you exercise emotional shifting that will center you into positive mindset whenever you are confronted with something that disturbs or angers you.

Practicing “emotional shifting” can immediately pull you out of the maelstrom of negativity.  You will become a negative person if you occupy yourself with negative thoughts and you will bring positive things into your life, if you focus your mind on the good and nice things in life. It’s that simple.

Here are some typical emotional shifters that can change your mindset from the negative to the positive in an instant:

  • Take a step back and count your breath – inhaling and exhaling
  • Focus your mind on that beautiful beach you remember from your last vacation or other special moments. Freeze those moments in your mind and recall them when you need them.
  • Laughing is probably the best antidote to negativity.
  • If its been a bad day, try walking it off with a brisk walk in the park, training your mind to focus on that special bird song or the scent of a herb along the path. Open your senses to the natural healing effects of nature.

There are many more emotional shifters you can use, anything basically that will make you feel that life is good and good things are flowing your way.

In my book “Walking on Edge: A Pilgrimage to Santiago” the main character Jake is tutored by fellow pilgrim Chuck on how to start the day in such a way that the daily hike becomes so much easier. You can read the sample chapter here.

Centering comes through regular daily practice of meditation, even if its for only a few minutes a day – and the best time to do it is in the morning.

Reino Gevers – Mentor and Author – Your Health Matters

 “Walking on Edge – A Pilgrimage to Santiago” available both in Kindle and paperback.

http://www.reinogevers.com

Start your day by adding turmeric to your meals – one of the best ways to boost your immune system.

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by | January 10, 2018 · 8:45 am

Sprint and recovery

We live in a time where countless forces are demanding our attention. They are in reality pulling us away from our true destiny and our heart wishes. Most TV shows, the tabloids and social media feed our mind with false images and mind junk. And what you feed your mind with you become.

We so easily lose focus and sense of purpose when these external forces distract us. Moreover it depletes your mental and physical energy to the point where you are constantly exhausted. Don’t let it come to that.

Woman jumping

 

In my previous blog I discussed some of the reasons why most New Year Resolutions fail. The major reason is procrastination and procrastination comes from the lack of drive caused by exhaustion and over-exposure of the mind to distracting clutter.

There is a Chinese saying that the empty space between the spokes of a wheel are more important than the spokes themselves. The recovery time after a sprint is more important than the sprint itself.

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If you are currently engaged in a project or trying to sustain your New Year Resolution then you need to set aside time each day for uninterrupted focus on what you are doing. Make sure you have a space where no one will disturb you and you won’t be distracted by  electronic media for a 90-minute sprint session. After that take a break. Do something completely different, like going for a walk, doing an exercise sequence or taking a power nap.

Its a common illusion that sitting at an office desk for eight hours a day or longer is productive. I would guess that at the most a third of the time is actually used for effective work. The same applies to meetings. Most meetings are completely useless and energy sapping.

Remember: We have all the time in the world and yet no time to lose!

Reino Gevers – Mentor for Leaders and Achievers – Your Health Matters

Awakening the Fire Within – key principles of health and success. Enrolling now will give you a 25 per cent discount.

 “Walking on Edge – A Pilgrimage to Santiago” available both in Kindle and paperback.

http://www.reinogevers.com

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by | June 2, 2017 · 8:54 am

How important is your health?

Most personal bankruptcies in the United States are directly linked to a health issue. I have seen so many good friends, leaders and experts in their fields hitting a wall with a life-threatening disease in the prime of their lives.

Comical chubby guy not sticking to his diet

This doesn’t come overnight. In most cases poor or good health is directly linked to lifestyle choices.

Less than ten per cent of major health issues are triggered by fate such as accidents or hereditary factors.

When asked, most people will tell you their health is very important. Asked what they are doing to stay healthy, the question gets a little more difficult to answer.

The truth is that bad lifestyle habits such as poor nutrition and lack of exercise are seeing diseases such as diabetes, cancer, obesity and mental illnesses such as depression skyrocketing in all of the industrialised countries.

I have myself been on the brink of burnout, overburdened by work demands and relationship issues, so I know what I’m talking about. Poor health doesn’t come overnight. Its a slow degenerative process that sets in when you stop looking after yourself and external demands or distractions start controlling your life.

So, its become my passion, my personal mission to tell people what they can do, to lead a much healthier and happier life.

I firmly believe that it all starts from within. Do you love and respect yourself? What is your self image. Your body will reflect what is going on inside you. Facial expressions and body posture can be telling. What mental and physical clutter are you carrying around with you? How do you deal with stress? Are you following your soul purpose? These are questions that need to be answered before you start a diet and it is the main reason why most weight-reduction and exercise programmes fail.

In the many workshops and trainings I have done with people at all levels in the corporate world, the issue its not the lack of awareness. All of us have heard and read about these things. But there is a huge gap between awareness and taking concrete action. I’ve given this a lot of thought. Why do people avoid action when it comes to the most important aspect in their lives with personal health literally affecting every facet of life.

One reason is that you don’t see the effect of bad lifestyle habits immediately. If I told you that drinking that sugar-laced “energy drink” is a poison that will kill you in the next few hours, you wouldn’t touch it. Toxic foods and negative mental distractions are all around us. Its become a huge challenge of our time to avoid these and to focus our mind on positive thoughts.

To have a healthy body metabolism you need a walk of between five and eight kilometres per day. Most people don’t even manage two in walking from the house to the car and from the car to the office. The compound effect – good or bad is what does it.

I have gleaned and finetuned from my workshops what I believe are the key principles of good health. I have put all this together in a seven-part online course with a clear positive habit forming plan to set you up for a much healthier lifestyle. You can check it out here and watch a free video preview

Reino Gevers – Mentor for Leaders and Achievers – Your Health Matters

http://www.reinogevers.com

Get my free E-Booklet “Resilience: What makes us strong”.

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by | March 8, 2017 · 2:23 pm

The myth of multitasking

In an unprecedented gaffe that saw one winner swapped for another at the recent Oscar awards, the question was obviously on everyone’s mind. How could that happen? It seems  a classic case of multitasking gone wrong.

According to a report in the New York Times the person responsible for handing the envelopes with the winner to presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty had posted a tweet while sorting the envelopes during the show.

We see it constantly around us: People on their smart phones while attending important meetings or supposedly conversing with others around the table and at the same time answering whatsapp messages. Believe me. There is no such thing as multitasking.

We are fast losing our ability to concentrate on the magic of the moment by falling prey to a constant bombardment of distractions. Most of the recent neoroscience research concludes there is no such thing as multitasking – that is the brain’s ability to do several things at the same time with the same amount of concentration.

Losing Brain Function

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While multitasking we make mistakes, lose energy, get stressed and are less productive. The brain focuses on things sequentially and is unable to do two things at once. It must disengage from one activity in order to engage in another. And it takes several tenths of a second for the brain to make that switch.

Multitasking is not holding the hands on the wheel of a car and concentrating on the road at the same time. We can breathe and talk but when it comes to paying attention we can only concentrate fully on one thing at a time which is why accident research shows that a person using a cell phone and driving at the same time, takes up to a second longer to slam on the brakes.

Mindfulness training is concentrating on one thing at a time and also concentrating fully on the person we are engaged with instead of checking emails at the same time. Above all its downright rude. You are missing out on life and telling that person. My emails are more important than you are!

Reino Gevers – Mentor for Leaders and Achievers – Your Health Matters

http://www.reinogevers.com

Get my free E-Booklet “Resilience: What makes us strong”.

 

 

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by | September 28, 2016 · 8:07 am

Where is your attention?

harmony

by Reino Gevers

When you practise the martial art of “taiji push hands” you instantly become aware when your mind is wandering elsewhere. As soon as your attention slips your opponent has easy play in finding the gap and pushing you over. Its all about:

Where your attention goes your energy goes.

In our connected world the power of distraction lurks everywhere. Our mind becomes like a butterfly constantly fluttering from one short attention span to the next. We search for something on google and suddenly a pop-up diverts our attention elsewhere and before we know it, we have spent hours surfing meaninglessly on the Internet.

Mass media is brainwashing us 24-7 with drama and catastrophes. The objective is to shock and awe. The result: more clicks, more viewers, a higher circulation and more advertising revenue. Good news is no news. I know what I’m talking about because I worked in the news industry for more than 26 years. Don’t get me wrong. Its not about sticking your head in the sand and avoiding the world’s problems. Its the dosage of negativity in relation to positivity.

Human nature has a habit of looking first on what is bad than on what is wonderful and on what we can be grateful for in our lives. If your mind is filled with thoughts on wars, riots, crime, the antics of the rich and famous and all the other shadow sides of humanity your subconscious mind will begin to confirm all this as the reality of existence. The end result is often depression and a sense of hopelessness. Moreover, negativity hurts us on the physical level, weakening our immune system and causing many of our modern day plagues such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

The truth is that we live in a world of polarity – of yin and yang. For every bad event being flashed across the globe you can be sure there is another positive thing happening at the same time. Its just not receiving our attention. There is so much distraction, brainwashing and mind control from external forces that we spend less and less time in reflecting on what is happening to us. The end result is living a life behind a veil of negativity and emptyness.

You have the power! Draw your boundary on what you want inside your “room” and what needs to stay out:

  • By anchoring yourself with meditation you are extracting yourself from distraction. Meditation is a powerful tool in helping you perceive that inner voice that keeps you connected to your Soul Path.
  • As you meditate you will observe your thoughts. Are they mostly of a positive or negative nature?
  • Are the people you surround yourself with kind and compassionate? Do they exude positive vibes or are they abusing you as a refuse bucket in venting all their anger and frustration? Remember you are the sum of the people you surround yourself with.
  • How much time are you spending in nature? Are you exercising enough? Taking a walk in nature, doing yoga or taiji,  will hugely improve your mood and help you realign.
  • Are you nourishing your body and mind with healthy foods and liquids?

In training your awareness by doing the right things every day, of every week of every month and of every year you will be aligned and become immune to energy-sucking distractions.

By Reino Gevers – Health Mentor for Leaders and Achievers

http://www.reinogevers.com

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by | June 8, 2016 · 9:46 am

Why you need to take a break

IMG_1197With work pressure increasing in practically all sectors its not uncommen for people to remain stuck at their desk for hours and taking their “lunch” while tapping away at the computer or taking a call. On the long term this is wreaking havoc on concentration levels, health and productivity.

Under stress your sympathetic nervous system is on alert flooding your body with stress hormones that accelerate your heart beat, increase your blood pressure, dilate your pupils and inhibit other body functions like your digestion. At some stage however the calming side of your body, the parasympathetic nervous system, will want to reduce the arousal system, bringing everything back into balance and tiredness creeping in. Its a natural body reaction that you can’t control.

We need a good balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system – between the arousal and recuperation phases.

Research has indicated that most concentration levels start sinking rapidly after about 50 minutes of uninterrupted work on a computer. At the latest after 70 minutes your parasympathetic nervous system will start taking over. This is the time to take a short 5-10 minute break. And a break is only really a break if you interrupt your work and do something completely different, like opening a window, taking a deep breath, looking at the bird in the tree across the road or chatting to a colleague.

If you have an office job you will have spent some 80,000 hours of your lifetime in a sitting position until you reach retirement age. This is an enormous strain on your back, neck, skeletal and body alignment system. Interrupting your work for 15-20 minutes a day to do some active stretching movements, will work wonders for your health, your mood and your concentration and work ability.

Pushing your break of say half an hour until the end of the work day practically has no recuperation effect. Regular shorter breaks after every hour are far more effective. Taking a power nap of between 15-20 minutes in the early afternoon works very well for some people. It should however not be longer as you then fall into the deep-sleep mode and will wake up more fatigued.

If you have had days, weeks or months of high stress, your body will very likely have high cortisol levels. It means vital organs in your body are being undernourished because your body is in a “fight or flight” mode. You need recuperation, a time out, to bring those stress hormones back to normal. Best you choose a place where you can lock away your cell phone and focus your mind on anything else but work. Check out also our outdoor coaching programmes.

Reino Gevers, coach, trainer, author

PowerBodyMind – Gevers Consulting

http://www.reinogevers.com

 

 

 

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by | May 4, 2016 · 3:21 pm

Employee vitality – the human factor

Happiness and joy. Young happy female

Its a common fallacy that technology alone and the cost factor are key ingredients on the global corporate playing field. Yet when looking at highly successful companies its the vitality and positive-mindset of its people who have that slight but crucial edge.

These are the corporates with a high stress resilience in rough times, open to innovation and change and who go into positive resonance with clients.

The mindset of key players in a company is crucial. This means having a permanent learning culture of self-development, reflection and positive feedback. Investment in the well-being of employees makes itself paid on all levels.

As the lines between work, family and leisure time become increasingly blurred in the digital world of today, it is all the more necessary to keep in mind essential human needs. We are social animals who feel a great need to interconnect positively with those immediately around us. It gives us a feeling of safety and security because humans have depended on each other for survival since the earliest of times.

Old style management that leads with fear and intimidation creates an environment that stifles all form of healthy human communication, inevitably stirring basic human survival instincts that lead to mobbing, burnout and other psychological fallouts. On the long-run companies that rule by fear are doomed.

A healthy work environment has room for recuperation phases and encourages them. There needs to be a healthy cycle between intensive work sessions, times of stress and rest periods. Its old school thinking not to include private issues at the work place. Immediate colleagues are often the first support network we fall back on when we have tough times at home. So how do you create a healthy corporate culture?

  • Its a long-term learning process. Supervisors and managers need  to keep their ears close to the ground in addressing the needs of their employees. Listening is one of the most important yet least found ingredients among leaders.
  • Self-development, team training and investment in soft-skills training is a crucial element.
  • Self-responsibility on personal health, nutrition, recuperation and lifestyle management can be actively nurtured in a learning environment.
  • Creating a culture of mindfulness and attentiveness is a high ideal but can be learned and creates a highly positive resonance with clients. We are after all dealing with humans.

We spend most of our lives at the workplace and it is sad to see that so little effort is being made in investing in the “human factor”. Do we live to work or work to live?  To quote Studs Terkel:

“Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

Reino Gevers – coach, author, trainer

http://www.reinogevers.com

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