Hello fellow pharmacists and after a bit of an extended summer break, welcome to the seventh article in the 5W2 series, Five Ways to manage your State of Mind.
As you know, if you have read any of my previous articles, the 5W2 series is a selection of short articles on strategies and techniques to support our emotional development within our professional roles.
Each article in this series includes tried and tested practical self-development tools. Previous articles have focused on “Managing Stress”, “Using Mindfulness”, “Self Coaching”, “Maintaining Energy levels”, “Being more Resilient” and “Dealing with Bullying”.
If anyone would like to read previous articles please click on the following link which will take you to the articles page on my website. Click the link here.
Before I get into the details of this article, let me share some thoughts from my third article Five Ways to Self Coach.
Most people think that our State of Mind is only controlled by external factors. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) there is a principle of belief that our behaviours are a product of the state we are in and that our state of mind is a choice.
“Certain people think they will feel good if certain things happen. The trick is you have to feel good for no reason” Richard Bandler, co-founder of NLP.
State of Mind can be divided into two types:
Resourceful States: eg. positive, happy, confident, enthusiastic, calm, relaxed.
Non-Resourceful States: eg. negative, grumpy, stressed, anxious, pessimistic, judgemental.
We can influence our state by making a conscious choice to use our own Physiology or triggering a positive experience via any of our 5 Senses (See, Hear, Feel, Taste & Smell). I will explain this in more detail in the following:
- The art of visualisation (Senses)
- Dump your inner critic (Senses)
- Have an attitude of gratitude (Senses)
- Get physical (Physiology)
- Smile (Physiology)
Each of the 5 Ways can be used on its own or combined together to help us shift to a Resourceful state of mind.
Click here for number one – The art of visualisation (senses)
Jill Cruickshank