Change as an opportunity and ally

We all love to be smart because it enables us to get things done efficiently. When we use our inner mental functions purposefully, we can get impeccable work results.

Strangely, the currently dominating approach to keeping our minds well is mostly failing to be proactive – focused on how to stay fit and well.

Instead, our approach to mental health in workplaces and society is dominantly reactive, which means it only becomes actual when the signs of mental health problems or illnesses emerge. Thus, we lag behind the opportunities that the real situation presents and also often end up suffering.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR MIND?

They say that opportunity favors the prepared mind. What does it mean?

It means that your mental fitness should be your utmost priority. Preparing your mind becomes easy when you have practical intrapersonal skills.

Awareness-based skills are easy to train and allow you to lead different processes within your mind at will. For example, you can learn how to respond to difficult and challenging situations in a creative and forward-leading way. Or you can focus on any task at hand regardless of the distractions around you.

Let us look at this potential more closely.

Your awareness allows you to observe and notice different processes both around you and within you.

When you observe the external facts and compare those to your subconscious inner reactions you might become aware that your old habitual patterns lack adequacy. When you act according to those inner reactions, you miss the opportunities that life offers to you.
 

Change as a friend

Being fully present and using your awareness enables you to see opportunities where others see only obstacles based on their inner reactivity. Intrapersonal skills become the inner tools that allow you to solve any problem or face any situation.

Being proactive about your mental fitness allows you to prepare your mind for seizing the day so that when the change brings along an opportunity, you truly can benefit from it. When you respond adequately to change, it can become your allay, offering support to what you want to achieve.

In essence, the proactive or forward-looking mindset is what every successful business leader and great entrepreneur always possesses. Often this isn't achieved by systematic intrapersonal education but instead by rebelliousness.

UPBRINGING AND INNER EDUCATION MATTERS

Exceptional leaders like Elon Musk or Richard Branson have a different upbringing from most people that allows them to be without many typical automatic inner reactions that others haven't questioned.

As we revealed in our last blog post, your ability to use your awareness to respond adequately has nothing to do with automatic inner reactions. Instead, it allows you to notice opportunities as you are free from the old habits that keep you inadequate.

INTRAPERSONAL SKILLS SHARPEN YOUR MIND

When you learn how your inner domain is built and learn awareness-based intrapersonal skills, you can also discover that creativity isn't a mystery, and gaining access to intuition becomes a learnable skill. Intrapersonal skills thus allow us to open new doors and discover new paths.
 

Back in 2016, The Global Wellness Institute report ‘The Future of Wellness at Work’ stated that when people are unwell at work, they report:

• A decreased ability to get their tasks done (62%);
• Lack of work engagement (63%);
• Lack of motivation (62%).

So, no wonder businesses fail as people in them become paralyzed by the change.

In the online survey conducted by Wrike, 87% of responders admitted to overworking, and according to the Cigna study, 87% of employees pointed out that they were stressed. Are those overlapping numbers coincident?

We don't believe so. Instead, these overlapping statistics clearly illustrate that problems originate elsewhere than in the work environment as such.

Now, when we work from home and see even worse stress and burnout numbers than before the pandemic, it becomes clear – the problem has never been the environment alone. Yes, a lovely office and work conditions do indeed matter but don't hold the key to our inner wellness.

Your intrapersonal skills are always with you. Wherever you are and regardless of your current task, intrapersonal skills enable you to focus and adapt to change.

CHANGE IS A CONSTANT

The problem with your automatic reactions is that those are subconscious behavior patterns that you have learned from others without questioning their efficiency. The huge change that came along with the global pandemic has broken the benefits of such habitual patterns. Either you and your workplace adapt, or you end up going out of business.

We falsely believe that resting the ongoing change enables us to keep the status quo, but it doesn't. All government financial aid is temporary and often prolongs agony more than opens new opportunities.

Resistance to change more often causes pain and renders us helpless and prone to (mental) illnesses. By resisting the continuous change you will only create a gap between your reality and your expectations.
 

The neutrality of the present moment

The truth is, the present moment has never cared for what you think of it or how you feel about it. It even doesn't care about your dreams or your expectations. It just is. It is up to you to notice how things are and benefit from them.

The constantly ongoing change around us can indeed present challenges. However, if we look at the big picture then the change in nature is a reliable constant. Even the hardest rocks change slowly.

Change of season is natural to us up here in the North where we experience all four seasons. Here we adapt our lifestyle according to the seasons and embrace the beauty of the ongoing gradual change.

See the beauty of the Nordic hemispheres full four seasons in 7 minutes, this amazing time-lapse video is by Morten Rustad.

WHY DO CHANGES AROUND US GO UNNOTICED?

Most of the change in nature remains hidden because it is too slow to be visible to the human eye (see the video above). The same applies to your inner domain, your inner reactivity has been learned since childhood and stays invisible as you lack the awareness to observe such (slow) change.

Awareness-based intrapersonal skills allow you to discover those and replace those reactions with an adequate aware response. Thus, you can take back control. For example, when we don't see the sun for weeks and experience cold Northern winds, we dress up and still go outside and even work there. Similarly, intrapersonal skills allow you to notice what is going on and work regardless of the external situation.

SKILLS vs KNOWLEDGE

Skills are always practical. There can be a manual for your camera, and if you don't read it, you don't know what this camera is capable of. However, if a professional photographer who has worked with this camera model comes along and gives you practical guidelines on how to use it, you can pick up those new skills fast. Often such a lesson by the practitioner is quicker than reading the manual where someone describes those potentials.

Fact is, we always learn much faster when we practice things. That is why all Wellness Orbit mental wellness e-trainings include practical sessions and self-evaluation tests that give you instant feedback.

CONCLUSION

Our ability to learn in practice is our greatest gift.

This gift has a solid foundation in our awareness-based intrapersonal skills: the ability to observe, the ability to notice, the ability to listen, or the ability to access creativity are just a few examples here that allow you to work more efficiently, regardless of your current profession.

When employers provide practical intrapersonal skills e-trainings, they give employees access to lessons that enable them to keep their minds well. Contemplating change as your friend will allow you and your employees to be happier, healthier, and more productive.

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This blog post is written by Kaur Lass