Having an interest in human psychology and in particular to the mechanisms that give rise to happiness and suffering, I am passionate about health and wellbeing.
Having come from a working environment where there is little or no regard to the wellbeing of staff, and having experienced first hand how this impacts hugely on an individuals' health and general wellbeing, it has catapulted me towards trying to help create a better understanding within the working environment of how our stress receptors react, and how showing compassion in the workplace can benefit both employees and employers.
In order to sustain health and wellbeing within the workplace big changes need to be made. How we can learn from other disciplines/cultures where happiness is considered as important as profit?
Many businesses go by the model of fostering competition, instead of teams co-operating with each other they are pitted against one another to win business and meet targets. This makes for a very unhealthy and hostile working environment and should be recognised as the first steps to creating physiological fear. Studies show that groups and teams who co-operate and show compassion to their co-workers produce the best results. So why do we still see this corporate trajectory time and time again?
Physiological fear is unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread - what might happen. You are in the hear and now, but your mind will be in the future, this creates an anxiety gap. Our stress receptors were designed to cope with relatively short lived stressors, but not chronic stress. There is substantial evidence that high levels of the stress hormone cortisol can actually damage the immune system and the brain if it remains elevated for too long.
My intention is to work towards providing a better understanding of how compassion, co-operation and sharing is the biggest driver to meeting the needs of individuals and the foundation for a sense of belonging and camaraderie within the workplace. Through mindfulness classes, reiki and supporting my students along the way, I wish to increase positivity, wellbeing and productivity in all aspects of our daily lives and in turn benefiting employers who have the foresight to put their people first.
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