One benefit that a lot of people found to working from home in the past years has been the flexibility to go on a daily walk. I am sure we are now all familiar with the benefits of going on a daily walk; it improves your overall fitness, decreases stress and it lowers your blood pressure. But did you know there is a direct correlation between stress levels and how much time you spend outside?
Getting your five minutes of fresh air can seem boring and like a bit of a burden and now that some of us are back into the office, getting outside has dropped down the priority list significantly.
Have you ever thought that this could be because of the priorities that you are setting for yourself?
Picture this, you have three meetings today, a deadline that needs to be submitted by the end of the day and finish a report to be sent off. You are getting stressed as someone is late to one of your meetings and you’re starting to get annoyed.
To calm yourself down you scroll on your phone for 20 minutes to distract yourself. You’ve now seen someone on your Instagram having such a ‘producitve day’ and now you’re mad as it feels like you’re not quite there yet and you want to scream.
Scrolling on your phone for those 20 minutes is the easy option. I am sure it is right next to your laptop so you pick it up and distract yourself. You may be sat at your desk thinking “well if I want to go on a walk I need to go downstairs, get my shoes on, find my coat and headphones and then go…”
So you choose the phone, as it is easy, convenient, and right next to you.
But, if you had gone outside for 20 minutes with no phone, how do you think you would feel?
You put your phone in your back pocket, put a podcast or audio book on and you can relieve your mind of stress for a little while. You can escape for 20 minutes and clear your mind.
When you get back to your desk, you feel calmer and are able to finish that report and get that sent off quicker than you thought. But I know that if you had stayed in and scrolled on social media and not given your brain a chance to switch off and clear, you would be going round in circles and find completing that task extremely difficult.
Not prioritising time outside and getting some fresh air is a habit that a lot of us slip into as it is something that is easy to replace with another task.
At Stress Matters we have a weekly check-in meeting where we have a catchup and see how all of the team are doing. One thing that some team members have implemented is their ‘Non Negotiabales’. These are tasks that we set that we have to complete.
For example, one of mine is that I have to do one Yoga class a week. It clears my mind and I know that the more I go the better I am going to get. Another example is hitting 3l of water a day. This is a big one for the team as we know the benefits of being well hydrated.
It is really hard to make the slightly more difficult decision to do the harder task like going outside but the benefits of this small change can be phenomenal!
Next time you feel a bit overwhelmed or need to take a moment to breathe, put the phone down and grab your shoes and get outside.
Building habits is hard and takes dedication and it can be hard to know where to start. Our Building and Breaking habits workshop covers learning to spot your habits – in your workplace and/or in your home – and identify if they’re good or bad ones. Establishing what you want your habits to actually look like, and why. And how to deal with the maintenance of good habits, and how they contribute.
If you think that is something that you would be interested in looking into drop me an email for us to have a chat amy@stressmatters.org.uk
