Switch Off E-Book

Angela Lockwood

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 225

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A modern-day guide to slowing down in a fast paced world.

Switch Off shows you how to take that sorely-needed time-out. We all know about the benefits of slowing down and disconnecting: reduced stress, higher satisfaction, better performance, higher productivity, tighter focus, reduced depression and innumerable other positive health effects. The big question is, "How?" When we're all stuck in a cycle of demands and pressure it feels hard to prioritise slowing down. How do we step back and find the time to take care of ourselves? This book shows you how to let go of the guilt, turn off the phone and step away to re-energise and re-focus. Whether you need a true vacation or just an uninterrupted cup of tea, you'll learn how to integrate the skills of slowing down into your life so you can do what you need, when you need it. Written by a health professional who has witnessed the impact of being constantly switched on both professionally and personally, this book gives you more than permission to disconnect – it gives you a real-world blueprint for taking the time that you need.

This book shows you why it's so important to slow down, and how it actually is possible in what can be a pressured and overwhelming world.

• Choose how you use your time
• Stop feeling guilty for practising self-care
• Boost your energy and productivity levels
• Harness the power of perspective and focus
• Learn how to create an environment that supports your health and wellbeing

From the executive needing time to contemplate big decisions, to the teenager closing their bedroom door to be alone, we all need time to disconnect. Switch Off shows you how to do just that, with expert guidance with you the whole way.

Leseprobe

SWITCH OFF

How to find calm in a noisy world

Angela Lockwood

First published in 2017 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064 Office also in Melbourne

© The Place for Health (STAM Media Pty Ltd) 2017

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Creator:

Lockwood, Angela, author.

Title:

Switch Off: how to find calm in a noisy world / Angela Lockwood.

ISBN:

9780730336280 (pbk.)

9780730336303 (ebook)

Notes:

Includes index.

Subjects:

Self-management (Psychology) Time management. Self-help techniques. Relaxation.

Dewey Number:

158.1

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.

Cover design: Wiley Cover image: © topform / Shutterstock Advert image: Happyness Photography

Disclaimer

The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.

CONTENTS

About the author

Acknowledgements

Introduction: A message from the author

Part I: The burden of connection

Chapter 1: Work–life integration

Searching for slow

Life role evolution

Chapter 2: Constant connectivity

Losing track in the virtual world

Wired for business

Chapter 3: Workplace overwhelm

The fallout of fast

Health responsibility

Part II: When to switch off

Chapter 4: Understanding your behaviours

Sensory overload

Recognise the signals

Chapter 5: Understanding your triggers

Signs and symptoms

The 3 O's

Life audit

Chapter 6: Flicking the switch

Changing perspective

Focus on you

Part III: Regaining control

Chapter 7: We can choose

Taking control

Making better choices

Introducing the phases of switching off

Chapter 8: Phase 1: Disconnect

Stop

Step back

Breathe

Chapter 9: Phase 2: Re-energise

Write

Rest

Notice

Chapter 10: Phase 3: Refocus

Question

Plan

Act

Part IV: Designing your habitat for health

Chapter 11: Setting up for success

Chapter 12: Your picture and your people

Create your picture

Establish your health team

Get organised

Chapter 13: Your time

Carve out guilt-free me time

The many faces of me time

Quiet time

Chapter 14: To be at your best

Get physical

Look beyond the walls

Get creative

Have fun

Final message

Index

Advert

EULA

List of Tables

Chapter 2

Table 1

Chapter 5

Table 2

Chapter 9

Table 3

Chapter 12

Table 4

Table 5

Guide

Cover

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About the author

Angela Lockwood is an occupational therapist whose boundless energy sees her equally at ease working with children as standing in front of a packed audience delivering a keynote. Through living life at full-speed, Angela has learned first-hand the power of ‘switching off', allowing her to overcome seemingly impossible challenges and achieve success in life, love and career.

As a star hockey player during her school years, Angela had her sights set on the Sydney Olympics. However, after fracturing her skull during a game — an injury that would have stopped most in their tracks — her experiences learning to talk again and re-think her approach to life inspired her to change her path to occupational therapy, propelling her into a career that she was made for.

With a desire to help children have the best start in life, Angela is one of the most respected pediatric occupational therapists in Australia and abroad. Her knack for creating success has allowed her to become the go-to person for industries including government, schools, universities, hospitals, emergency services, health and wellbeing providers, banks, real estate institutes, not-for-profits and media outlets, and to fulfill roles such as CEO, keynote speaker, author, health and fitness instructor, trainer, motivator, mum and wife.

After the success of her first book The Power of Conscious Choice, a publication aimed at helping people to simplify the way they make decisions, she launched The Place for Health, an online hub that aims to educate health professionals and caregivers on how to prioritise their own mental and physical wellbeing. She also works with individuals and organsiations, hosts retreat events and conducts programs in schools to help people continue to live the life they choose with the energy needed to get them there.

Practicing as she preaches, Angela lives on the beautiful coastline of Northern New South Wales with her husband and two gorgeous children. She spends as much time as possible with her feet in the sand and takes the time to look up and around, forever thankful.

Acknowledgements

Many people have helped make this book happen. From Wiley, thank you to senior commissioning editor Lucy Raymond for seeing my vision and sharing my passion, to editor Jem Bates for your attention to detail, and to the whole Wiley team for your professionalism and for believing in me and the book.

To my husband Matt: with you beside me I can truly live the life I choose. And to my beautiful children: I hope you continue to embrace possibility, take the time to look around you and always be thankful for the gift of life.

To the tribe of friends who have supported me through this writing project: thank you for being there when I needed a helping hand.

Several people whom I deeply admire willingly shared their time and expertise with me, allowing me to channel a small part of it through this book. A big thank you to Shivani Gupta, Dr Jenny Brockis and Jenna Kennedy.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge the beautiful world that surrounds me. Inspiration was always in my reach through the crystal-blue ocean, the green forests, the birds that sat beside me on the verandah while I wrote — and the vibrant cafes where I sought to refuel! It is when we look up and around us that we realise we already have everything we need in life and more. We just need to slow down long enough to enjoy it.

Introduction A message from the author

Most people use business, self-help and motivational books as a feel-good tool. They read a few pages before falling asleep at night. They tell their friends about this book they are reading and the ideas it offers on how to get the most out of life. With thousands of these books published each year, we can be certain there are plenty of good titles out there, in print and online. Let's not make this one of those books that you dip into every now and again but that only gathers dust on the shelf when you're done. It would be such a wasted opportunity.

I wrote this book for one reason: there are too many good people who are doing everything they can in life but are finding themselves overwhelmed and exhausted by it all. I want to show those people how they can do whatever they want in life if they just slow down. The only way you are going to get any benefit from this book is if you read it slowly and thoughtfully. Not because it is especially content heavy, but to allow the messages to sink in and make a positive impact on your thinking and your actions. I don't want you to waste your time.

Switch Off interweaves stories, research, reflections, information and activities in ways that I hope will encourage you to take what you have learned and apply the strategies directly in your life. You will find more than 250 ideas on how to help you switch off, slow down and regain control, so now you really don't have any excuse not to take action.

I hope you will feel while reading that you have someone supporting you along the way, because you do. I understand how hard it is to try to maintain control over the hectic busyness of life, so let's not make it any more complicated than it needs to be, and you surely do not have to do it on your own.

I vividly recall the day I experienced my own panic attack. Or at least I think that was what it was; all I knew was whatever was happening to me felt scary and all-consuming. Early that morning I drove my husband to the train station to connect to his flight to the top of Australia, where he would be working for the next few months. After saying goodbye I drove off, holding in my tears, not wanting the kids to see how sad I was to see him go. I never have been one to cry.

I dropped the kids off at school and drove to a scheduled meeting with a consultant. I had been feeling she wasn't right for the business, but I hadn't had time to look for anyone else. After a long discussion on how important technical issues were yet to be resolved, she slid an invoice across the table, apologised for the size of the bill and promised to fix the unsettled problems the following month! I could feel my chest start to tighten, my breathing quicken and what felt like a vice clamping down on either side of my head. I was trying hard to hold it together, but my body was telling me I was about to explode. I stood up, thanked her for her time and walked out of the meeting half an hour early, leaving an unambiguous impression that I was not happy.

As I walked towards my car I felt like the Hulk at the moment of transformation, and then my phone rang. It was the printer of my first book, telling me the layout was wrong … and it was going to print in four days. My heart raced faster, I looked around wildly for an escape, not sure where to turn, but knowing I had to get out of whatever this crazy feeling was. I was on the brink.

I retreated to the safe familiarity of my car, closed the door, took a breath and a whirlwind of emotions overcame me. Basically I lost it. For the first time in my life I felt completely out of control … and alone in my chaos. I was swept up in one of the scariest feelings I have ever felt. I couldn't control my breathing, tears flooded down my cheeks, my hands trembled, my eyes were wide as plates. I just didn't know what to do. I froze in this scary moment.

With the clarity that only hindsight affords, I came to recognise the three things that had led me to this moment: I was overconnected, overwhelmed and completely overstimulated. Too many people were wanting too much from me (including myself). I was being crushed by an ever-growing to-do list, living in a state of hyper-arousal, persistently on the edge. Life at full throttle was too much, too full and too frantic. It was no longer working for me. I needed it to stop. One of my favourite mantras is ‘you only get one shot at life'. I had interpreted this as meaning I must do everything and do it now. But it was taking its toll.

As soon as I called a friend I knew I was no longer alone. That frozen moment in the car marked a moment of choice: I could suck it up, take a big deep breath and keep going, or I could see it as a sign, a message, a wake-up call that it was time to make a change, to see things differently and more importantly to do things differently. I had been given an opportunity to take a step back from the chaos and slow down, and that's exactly what I did.

This life-changing experience (it really was) gave me an opportunity to find a calm place within the noise of my life. It forced me to stop and take notice, to reconnect with the side of me I had been suppressing in my wild pursuit of living life to the full, to re-examine what I wanted out of life. This wasn't going to happen through attending a retreat in India or seeking a meditation guru or taking a 90-day trek through the mountains. This, right here, right now, was my opportunity to find calm in the chaos.

Reading this book you will discover that my experience, my story, is not at all unique, that many people yearn for time on their own and for a less complicated life in which they feel in control, at least for a time. That is what this book is for. To help you to see that, rather than being a luxury, slowing down is a necessity, and that it may be the key to helping you live the life you choose.

Part IThe burden of connection

The background hum of the television was mostly drowned out by the whirr of the oven and the ruckus of the kids getting ready for dinner, until a prime-time television news report broke through the noise and caught my attention. A revolutionary new ‘boot camp' had been started in South Korea to help kids as young as eight learn how to play with their peers and take time away from technology. In a first of its kind (other such initiatives have since followed), this residential program brought city kids into a natural setting where they got to run outside, build forts and generally mix with other kids — with no iPad, smartphone or television in sight. The idea was to teach children how to be children again, without technology.

I stood in the kitchen, a tea towel draped over my shoulder, riveted to the story. The screen showed boys aged around 9 to 13 standing in loose formation, bringing to mind a scene from M*A*S*H, the military comedy series from the 1970s. Except these were not recruits in army greens but young boys of every shape and size, most of them not looking at all pleased to be there. Their parents waved goodbye anxiously and drove off, leaving their sons in the hands, not of a stern-looking drill sergeant, but of a middle-aged couple who looked more like office workers than boot camp instructors.

But this was no typical boot camp. It was a camp for troubled youth whose main challenge was an addiction to technology that had impacted their behaviour, their learning and their friendships. At home they were forever sprawled in front of the television or glued to their computer, rudely refusing to do their homework and chores, isolating themselves from their peers. As the story progressed we saw the same young boys climbing trees, jumping into a creek, reading books. To me they looked like … kids, and they were. Except they had lost connection with the childhood joys associated with being outdoors, being creative and playing with real-life friends. Their problem was not simply playing too many computer games; it went deeper. The interviewer asked one young boy how he was finding the program. With eyes downcast and in a soft voice he replied, ‘It's good, but I miss my computer … I didn't think I could live without it'.

As the curry bubbled on the stove behind me, I couldn't keep my eyes off the screen. During my career as an occupational therapist I have worked a lot with children with learning, behavioural and developmental challenges. I imagined (or hoped) what I was seeing here was a problem that applied to only a very small demographic of the global community. I knew South Korea was one of the world's most wired nations. But surely this was not a serious issue, big enough and prevalent enough that kids needed to be taken from their parents, forcibly disengaged from their technological devices in order for them to learn to be kids again. Well, it seems I had no idea. The problem for all of us is indeed bigger than I, or any of us, could have imagined, and it is not going away.

Chapter 1Work–life integration

The challenge of being overconnected and unable to switch off from technology transcends age, race, education and geography, and it doesn't stop with technology. Many of us feel the effects of living life in the fast lane. Our frenetic pace, racing from one meeting to the next and one activity to the next, is affecting our ability to take time out, slow down, switch off and refuel. With our bodies and minds constantly ‘switched on', our health and wellbeing are increasingly paying the price. We are in a state of chronic overconnection, overwhelm and overstimulation. This is a growing global problem.

Searching for slow

In 2004 Canadian journalist and best-selling author Carl Honoré published In Praise of Slow, in which he outlines the sociological and psychological implications of a speed-obsessed culture and warns of the potential negative consequences of our obsession with speed. Honoré traces the history of our relationship with time and asks, ‘Why are we always in such a rush?' and ‘When are we going to slow down?' Arguing that ‘Evolution works on survival of the fittest, not the fastest,' he proposes an alternative way of thinking and living, which he calls ‘the slow revolution'.

To achieve more we do not have to keep pushing ourselves to do more; in fact we are capable of achieving more through doing less. Most people reading this will want to jump immediately to the ‘how to' section. It is a modern-day conundrum: how can we do more by doing less?

To achieve more we do not have to keep pushing ourselves todomore; in fact we are capable of achieving more through doing less.

In Praise of Slow was written more than ten years ago. This way of thinking seemed then to be espoused only by hippies living in the mountains who were rarely in touch with the ‘real world'. How times have changed! Roll forward ten years and it seems the slow revolution has started to find its way into the consciousness of people you would least expect to have time for it. Executives in boardrooms are searching for ways to integrate slow living into their fast-paced, demand-driven lives, and as suggested in the Korean news report, parents are embracing the slow revolution for their children.

We want to have it all — a fat pay packet, a successful business, prestige during the week, and the weekend spent stand-up paddle boarding, sipping lattes and coaching the soccer team. To have it all, though, we need to make some changes to how we are living. Back in 1948, in his best-seller How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Dale Carnegie spoke of the importance of living a life free of worry about the constraints of time and other pressures. His message evidently remains compelling, as the book continues to be one of the most recommended business self-help books almost seventy years later.

If we have known for a long time, having been warned by such authoritative voices as these, that living life constantly ‘switched on' is negatively affecting our physical and psychological wellbeing, then why haven't we taken notice?

Part of the answer lies in the context of the rapid pace of change in our world. The changes that have resulted from the growth in population, communications and technology over the past hundred years are quite astonishing. Here are some examples taken from the years my grandmother has been alive:

As many people live in Sydney today as lived in the whole of Australia in 1915.

Traditionally school children relied on paper and ink. Today's students learn using personal tablets, computers, interactive boards and live video linkups, starting as early as preschool.

A handwritten letter to a friend could take weeks to get to London from Australia; now it takes milliseconds to send a message via instant messaging to the other side of the world.

The most influential people were once politicians; now we look to business leaders, bloggers and celebrities for guidance.

People would send a letter or walk to a friend's house for a cup of tea and a catch-up; now there are social media platforms with millions (sorry, billions) of users, allowing you to connect instantly with your friends (and with people you don't even know!) all over the world.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 1915 just 498 divorces were recorded in Australia; today's annual figure exceeds 47 000.

Television, computers, phones, cars, air travel, the pop-up toaster, disposable nappies, ballpoint pens, batteries, aerosol cans, stereos and the internet, all now taken for granted in our society, were invented during the lifetime of my grandmother. It is mind-blowing to think that none of these things we so take for granted even existed when she was young. Now we cannot imagine life without them. (Think about the changes you might yet see in your own lifetime or 100 years from now.)

We cannot deny these changes have benefited us in so many ways. It is our ability to keep up with the speed of change that is taking its toll on our health and wellbeing. So why haven't we learned how to switch off when we need to? It comes down to two factors: expectations and priorities.

Life role evolution

Life roles evolve. If we roll back a few thousand years, the chief expectations of our early ancestors were to eat and to stay alive. Life was based on survival, so daily actions focused on finding adequate shelter, gathering enough food and making sure you were not eaten — with social roles distinguishing, for example, hunters from gatherers. Not complicated perhaps, but life had its risks and stressors, like being taken by a lion or dying of starvation.

Roll forward a few thousand years to the 19th century and expectations had changed significantly. By common practice men worked for pay to provide for their family while women were expected to run the household, raise children, and keep the family fed, clothes washed and needs satisfied. Days were spent working to provide a roof over the family's heads and put food on the table — not so very different from our early ancestors, albeit a little more complicated, and with the danger from lions much reduced. It was still a lot simpler than the complexity of life roles we know today.

Move into the 20th century and life roles started to shift much faster. Women were speaking up, demanding equal rights, insisting there was more to life than putting a hot meal on the table, and looking for options beyond running the household. Men, in turn, started to resent how their long hours at work meant less time with their families. They were looking for ways they could both be the provider and take a more active part in family life.

Part-time work was typically taken on by men nearing retirement age as a way to gradually step out of full-time work into retirement. How times have changed! According to a report released in 2016 by the Workforce Gender Equality Agency, an estimated 9 per cent of Australian men are now working in part-time employment across their working career so as to take on more family-focused roles. As national interest in gender diversity has grown, life roles and community expectations have significantly shifted for both women and men.

People are looking for and creating opportunities that will allow them to work and