Anyone who has ever met me will know that I’ve always been very certain about what’s what in my world, I’m always seeking new things and when my intuition tells me to follow something it’s very hard to hold me back. My ability to trust my intuition wholeheartedly, only really came into play after finding my yoga practice, before then I remember sort of ‘knowing’ things but also often just going with what was happening and often not trusting my 'gut feeling' like I perhaps should have...
Interestingly when I was choosing what to do after finishing high school, my first and only thought was “do something that you know you’re good at” and so I toyed with doing psychology, which I didn’t believe I would get good enough marks for, or Human Resource Management as it was something that I seemed to be good at in my business subjects at high school. It didn't take much more thought or pondering then that.
When I began my degree however, like I’m sure most teens who start their degree at the ripe old age of 17 do, I instantly disliked it. I was bored, half of the numbers subjects were too complicated for what I thought you even needed (unless you were genuinely going to become an accountant or work in banking & bonds) and I had this deep sense that everything I was learning would NOT prepare me for the real world of HR. I was right.
I decided pretty quickly after starting my degree that I would need to get office / HR administration experience to prepare myself for what was to come post my degree and managed to get a great job that would take me through to the end of my studies. This job was just the beginning to learning, understanding and experiencing the ‘people’ side of things in a real workplace. It was an opportunity to get to understand the intricacies of what happens when you put a bunch of strangers, in one place, for a LOT of time, with a common goal which sometimes wasn't actually a common goal at all… safe to say I learnt and experienced a lot!
A friend asked me the other day how I’ve gotten to where I am and did I learn what I know now through my degree? No. Absolutely not. I in some ways I wish that I had the option to combine a psychology degree with a business/ HR degree in order to prepare myself better for where I am now, perhaps that was why I was drawn to yoga, to fill in the gaps, to fill the void of knowledge that I wasn't provided about the inbuilt systems, like our threat/reward or fight/flight responses that happen naturally because they are built into us from the moment we are conceived. So I learnt through experience, I learnt through practicing, I learnt through having to have really tough, horrible conversations and really great ones and only in this past 2 years have I truly had time to step back and reflect on that and compute the lessons and the information that I have gathered in the 7 years that I have been working in HR.
One thing that I think is crucial for anyone who works with people for a living, and I don’t just mean working in a social environment, but actually working with people and hearing their aches, pains, triumphs and well basically anything that involves you taking on some of their ‘energetic load’ is taking time regularly to reflect and to step away. Speak to your employer about spending some time, once a month, or however often that you need writing down what you've learnt or experienced through the work that you've been doing. Take the time to compute everything that has happened, to acknowledge it and to learn from it if applicable before moving forward. This act of reconciling what you have experienced in life is something that we simply don't make time for, and yet it is this time that gives our bodies and minds a break and allows us to step back into a workplace feeling refreshed and ready to take on the next big thing.
So after my second stint of 4 months recuperating, reconciling & giving my mind a time out, I’ve finally had time to think about the ancient philosophies of yoga, the modern world, the science of the brain and the realities of our workplaces and have realised that it’s all inextricably linked. Our mind is linked to our body, our body to our mind, and in the most basic form we human beings, as much as we don’t realise it, need a good balance of external stimulus with internal quiet in order to thrive in our lives. There are any number of ways you can break this down, I can be super ‘yogi’ about it or 100% factual - it still remains the number one problem that we can’t articulate that troubles our lives.
This blog series #YogaForOfficeWorkers is me breaking that down, based on the lessons I’ve learnt so far...