Some friends and I were chatting recently and discovered something in common, namely a state chaos and a realisation of how much time is lost by attempting too many things at once. I mean I’m talking, highly talented and skilled women here, so it was surprising to discover how many of us need to get organised in other ways.
We laughed about starting a hundred chores at the same time, okay slight exaggeration here, but…
Can you relate to this?
You start one task, for example clearing your desk, then you go to the kitchen to get a drink, open the fridge, notice the shelf needs a wipe over and end up cleaning out the fridge. Then you remember you’re half way through clearing up your desk, so go back to your desk. Then you notice an email that you should have responded to, start to reply and horror! Remember your were running a bath! Before long the whole place is in chaos! You need to get organised!
We agreed that having a number of tasks on the go feels really stressful. A messy environment equals a messy mind and definitely leads to feelings of agitation and stress. It triggers the inner critic too and before long, you’re berating and beating yourself up, which is very bad for your confidence and leads to poor self-esteem.
Does this or variations of it sound familiar?
But what if I told you there’s a cure for this, that in addition, you will have a nice little release of Serotonin, the drug that promotes internal happiness? Every time we get a reward, the brain releases a small amount of dopamine. Dopamine, a molecule that sends signals from our brain, gives us a temporary sense of pleasure.
When we increase rewards they build up and we eventually get a shot of Serotonin which gives us a deeper, longer lasting sense of pleasure and happiness.
It’s simply a matter of retraining your mind and re-conditioning your behaviours and that’s easier than it might sound.
The positive psychology of Neurolinguistic Programming helps us to get organised and encourages us to ‘Put Systems In Place’ again, this is not as complicated as it sounds.
For example; always putting your front door keys in the same place, will ensure that you wont spend 10 minutes searching for them with the “I’m sure I put them there” lament! It’s a system.
American Author Alan Lakein created the following to get us more organised, read on now to discover how you can bring structure and simple systems to your tasks.
Cull the Chaos
1. Make a list with no more than seven tasks on it. Write A,B,C or D beside each task in order of priority i.e. the most important jobs will have an A next to them, then B and so on.
2. Start the first A job and complete it. Do NOT move onto any other chore until this first task is completely finished. Then you have the small pleasure of putting a BIG tick beside it and crossing it off of the list, and that’s your first reward and remember a reward equals a shot of feel good dopamine.
3. RINSE AND REPEAT! Do this and you’ll get organised.
When I discovered that multi-tasking is a myth, that something has to suffer when you attempt to do two things at once, I worked even harder to stick to the above system. In a relatively short period of time I retrained my brain and my approach to tasks and have become addicted to feeling good!
Yoga Retreat
Oh, I almost forgot, if you’re in need of a reset and would like to experience a deeper state of peace and tranquility, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is we are now fully booked for the March 2024 Yoga retreat but the good news is that we do have a couple of spaces available on our weekday Yoga Retreat 12 – 14 June 2023.
It’s held in the beautiful space of Florence House in Sussex, suitable for beginners and experienced yogis alike. Please feel free to contact me for more information or questions.
Yoga / Qigong Classes – Last Friday of every month – Bromley
Finally, alongside the weekly online yoga and meditation classes, I’m now offering an in-person Yoga/Qigong class on the last Friday of every month, in Bromley at a great spanking new venue that has a fabulous cafe serving quality food and drinks, it is in the beautiful green space of Norman Park and has free parking. Beginners welcome. Please get in touch with me by phone or email if you would like to know more.
