Workplace Wellness Whisperer – (June 4)
Hello Wellness Seeker,
Building daily gratitude habits and communicating more appreciation toward others are some of the simplest ways to gradually shift to a more positive mindset and experience the joys of life more deeply.
🙏Gratitude Practice🙏
I invite you to recall a grateful moment in your life. Visualize it as it’s happening right now, relive it right now.
🌸===🌸
How to Establish and Design a Wellness Program?
Designing and managing an employee wellness program is an important step in improving the health and productivity of employees and potentially improving the overall cost of employer-provided health care. Because of the ever-increasing costs of health insurance and the importance of employee health, employers should consider implementing a well-thought-out wellness program that benefits both the employee’s health and the employer’s bottom line.
My Workplace Wellness Calendar can guide you how to chart your course to success.
Here are 9 steps that I recommend every organization to follow while designing and implementing a Wellness program:
Step 1: Conduct assessments
Step 2: Obtain management support
Step 3: Establish a wellness committee
Step 4: Develop goals and objectives
Step 5: Establish a budget
Step 6: Design wellness program components
Step 7: Select wellness program incentives or rewards
Step 8: Communicate the wellness plan
Step 9: Evaluate the success of the program
I invite you to listen to several of my podcasts on Self-Care and subscribe to my YouTube channel for amazing practical workplace wellness tips that I share everyday.
Here’s a summary of this week’s 5 tips that can help you personally and professionally.
Read, Listen and Share!
Tip #1. Choose Your Inner Circle Wisely
According to Jim Rohn “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
So who are the 5 people you hang around with the most from the office?
The world’s longest-lived people choose, or are born into, social circles that support healthy behaviours. Okinawans create moais – groups of 5 friends that commit to each other for life & support each-other throughout the years, even financially.
Research shows that smoking, obesity, happiness, & even loneliness are contagious. By contrast, social networks of long-lived people favourably shape their health behaviours. All but 5 of the 263 centenarians were interviewed during the Blue Zone research belonged to a faith-based community.
Research shows that attending faith-based services four times per months will add 4 to 14 years of life expectancy.
At the workplace I advise you to hang out with colleagues of similar life goals and urge you to participate with the community programs organized by your HR to nurture that sense of belonging and inclusion, not only will it add years to your life but also make you more productive.
Listen to the Self-Care Goddess Podcast Episode #15 “How to Celebrate Your Life’s Magnanimity Through Your Breath”
Tip #2. Move Your Body Naturally
Time Out in Nature, Physical Activity, Brain Fitness, Optimizing Sleep, Managing Stress, and Living with Purpose & Gratitude are just a few of the common denominators that help you live a long, healthy life according to the hotspots of longevity around the world. One of my favourite ones is to Move Naturally.
The world’s longest-lived people don’t pump iron, run marathons, or join gyms. Instead, they live in environments that constantly nudge them into moving. They grow gardens, walk everywhere, and most certainly don’t sit in front of a computer all day.
So here are some tips to incorporate movement in your daily routine for busy professionals:
✅ Park further from the entrance of your building
✅Ditch the elevator & take the stairs
✅ Take a short moving break throughout the day (every 30mins) ideally outside to get some natural light
✅Walk before you start your day in the morning
✅Skip the Netflix binge watching & take a walk after dinner
How can you incorporate more movement into your daily workplace routine? I urge you to include natural movement throughout the day everyday, make it a habit.
Get my step-by-step guide to starting your day right and learn how to drop stubborn weight from the trouble areas that are resistant to diet and exercise! Get it here
Tip #3. How to manage stress by managing your time with the Eisenhower Priority Matrix.
If you regularly push yourself to exhaustion, are easily fatigued, feel wired but tired, you complain & grumble regularly, feel irritable & on edge you’re most probably operating in survival mode and feeling really physically stressed out.
Stress can do a real number on your brain too hitting the neural circuitry responsible for cognitive function, decision making, and mood, which in turn can alter other biological systems including the nervous system, immune system and your metabolism.
Also, too much stress can disrupt your sex life and fertility, the chemicals released during stressful times interfere with your body’s production of sex hormones and throw off your hormone levels leading to irregular periods, fertility problems, and low libido.
In a nutshell, exposure to chronic stress depletes your body’s resources, making you feel tired and lead to burnout!
Oftentimes, our inability to distinguish from the essential to the non-essentials tasks will exacerbate the stress response. That is the reason I wanted to share with you this amazing, simple and super applicable tool for managing your time, so you can better manage your stress response.
In this video, I explain the very popular Eisenhower Priority Matrix, that will help you visually see how to not only be productive when selecting your daily tasks but also super efficient. Understanding this simple grid can help you thrive vs. just simply surviving. I hope you find this video helpful and please share with family, friends and co-workers.
Tip #4. Guided Loving Kindness Meditation | Beyond Stress Management | Rest & Recovery
This type of meditation can help manage stress, improve sleep, reduce depression and anxiety, enhance self-awareness and social empathy, promote deep rest and healing, and increases immune function, working memory, focus and attention span.
I hope you enjoy this guided meditation and evoke feelings of love and kindness towards yourself and others and help you experience deep and profound restoration.
Thank-you for sharing this space with me. Namaste.
Check out my amazing delicious ‘Roasted Butternut Squash with Pomegranate & Tahini’ recipe.
Tip #5.Myth: Fasting is like reducing your calories!
Fasting is like reducing your calories? Wrong! You may have heard about calorie restriction and fasting diets and wondered why they’re getting so much attention in the news. Aren’t they just another way of dieting to lose weight? No, they’re not.
Calorie restriction means reducing average daily caloric intake below what is typical or habitual, without malnutrition or deprivation of essential nutrients. But let me be clear here, Calorie reduction does not give you the same benefits as fasting, especially the hormonal changes.
During fasting, unlike caloric reduction, your metabolism stabilizes or even goes up to maintain normal energy levels. Hormones like adrenaline and growth hormone increase to maintain energy and muscle mass. Blood sugar and insulin levels go down as the body changes from burning sugar to burning FAT! You may be tempted to try one of these eating patterns. It’s important to make sure that whatever you try provides you with a safe level of nutrition.
If you’re ready to begin your fasting journey, contact me and I can guide you on the benefits and risks before making any significant changes to your eating patterns. Contact me for more strategies on how to begin a fasting lifestyle.
If you’re ready to leverage your workplace wellness strategy and explore how to optimize individual, team and your company’s performance, book your complimentary Workplace Wellness call here.