Reframe Your View of Your Mindset
On day 3 of our Reframe Virtual Wellness Festival we were treated to an evening of open, honest and hilarious chats with host Anniki Sommerville, the author of ‘How to be a boss at ageing’, Leah Larwood the founder of Meet The Moon Lab and Kim Palmer the founder of Clementine. This evening was all about taking control of your priorities and reframing your mindset. We wanted to give some of our top tips for finding your own success, and prioritising yourself, so let’s dive in.
Finding your own success…
Our eye-opening evening kicked off with Anniki and Kim discussing work-life balance and finding your OWN success. From this session we learnt that making work your one priority in life can not only cause a deterioration in your mental health, but can also affect those around you. In this honest chat, both highlighted that it’s important for our mindsets that we can find a divide between our work life, and our home life to give us the very best chance at achieving that healthy balance we all need.
Kim mentions how making work her a priority became normalised throughout her family…
‘ I never saw the effects my work was having on my family and friends, it was just what we knew. For me, work was everything’
Anniki talked about how it’s important to understand that having a demanding job is okay, as long as you can shut it out when you need to. She found that too many of us are unable to find a healthy work-life balance, and this can lead to all sorts of mental health problems and really a lack of happiness. Anniki used this example to prove that work doesn't need to be the most important thing in your life...
‘The moment you go into work and your boss says you are getting a pay rise, you have that moment where you get a really huge lift in spirits, but quickly after a few months it fades and becomes normal. What I am arguing is, you do not need to make your work or job the ‘be all and all’’
Anniki posed a question to us all that we think is well worth thinking about - she asked:
"What does it take to free yourself from these unhealthy patterns and reach a more sustainable, rewarding work-life balance?"
Pondering this question might help you uncover some of the small shifts you can make in your daily life to make your mindset a priority in your life. We’ve also found this great article that gives you a step by step approach to giving you the best possible chance of giving yourself the healthy work life balance that so many of us need.
Anniki’s latest book “The Big Quit: How to ditch the job you hate and find work you love” is currently available for pre-order here.
Focus, and how to put yourself first…
For the rest of the evening we were joined by Leah Larwood who led us in some exercises on reflection and prosperity. Leah highlighted that putting yourself first over everything else is vital, because only you can control how your life is progressing. She mentioned that doing so in a space where you can reflect and be comfortable in your decisions and opinions is the very best way to approach this.
‘It’s a little bit about stepping back, and tweaking your approach or the directional perspective a little bit to get a different outcome.’
Life can sometimes be consuming and overwhelming and it becomes easy to lose yourself, which is why it is so important to take even just 5 minutes of your day to write down your thoughts, needs, desires, and anything in between! Even just releasing your thoughts can be vital in changing your mindset. Leah kindly led us through a short writing exercise that puts into practise everything we learnt in the evening and here is how you can join in - grab yourself a pen and paper…
Take however long you need, or have to think about the following and just let the thoughts flow, yes it is that simple! You can keep coming back to this too, so don’t feel like you have to do it all in one sitting.
List all the moments you felt joy in the past 12 months.
List what you are proud of.
List the times you felt most stressed.
List what you wish you had done more of in the past 12 months.
List what you wish you had done less of.
List things you can not live without
Once you’ve answered these questions, take a look over. Maybe it’s helpful to give yourself some space before you revisit what you wrote. Maybe it becomes clear for you what you can be doing to help put your mindset first, or maybe it needs some time to settle. There’s no right or wrong way to do this, but simple exercises like this can be so rewarding for helping clear your head and realise what’s important to you.. To find more exercises like this, or to find out more about the work that Leah is doing, head over toMeet the Moon Labget stuck in!