Nap to Improve Business Relationships
Napping for Business Attention
Remember when George Costanza in ‘Seinfeld’ had a bed built under his desk at work? It seems he wasn’t off the mark at all! Reported by Behavioral Health Care Journal this week, napping is now encouraged at the office for an increase in sociability. Finally, I can nap and quote a study that shows it’s not only good for people in the South American countries, but for everyone. Today on Oprah, Dr. Oz supported the need for 7-9 hours of sleep per night – it’s even supposed to help reduce weight! Now that’s something to pay attention to.
At the SLEEP 2009 conference in Seattle last week, researchers from the University of California – Berkeley revealed results of a study that ’showed naps with rapid eye movement sleep refresh the brain’s perception of positive emotions.’ It seems study participants taking a 60 to 90 minute nap mid-day with REM sleep were much more receptive to happy facial expressions than those who didn’t. In fact, participants without a nap had an increased reaction to negative emotions. Have you ever been called cranky because you reacted to the way someone looked at you after 3 p.m.?
Once again we learn that we knew all we needed to know in kindergarten – a nap a day keeps you alert to pay attention.
BHC Journal interviewed two of the principal investigators of the study who were at the conference: Dr. Matt Walker, Professor of Psychology and Director of the University of California – Berkeley Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory, and senior research scientist Ninad Gujar.
http://www.bhcjournal.com/default.aspx?articleId=29692&tabid=252
The following is a direct quote from a newsletter by Jodi Sleeper-Triplett of JST Coaching. She is one of my teachers.
Professional coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. A professional coach helps people improve their performance and enhance the quality of their lives.
Coaches are trained to listen, to observe, and to customize their approach to each individual client’s needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client. They believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach’s job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.
AD/HD coaching embraces the ideals and core competencies of both life coaching (www.coachfederation.org) and AD/HD coaching (www.adhdcoachinstitute.org). This approach provides the structure and strategies needed to create success for clients with AD/HD, while honoring the clients as creative and resourceful individuals. In AD/HD coaching, we hold our clients more accountable and usually have a tighter plan with more frequent contact than in general life coaching. Meeting with AD/HD clients occurs at least once a week, which is more often than in many life coaching or executive coaching programs.
Are Your Emotions High Drama or Nothing at All?
High Drama at Home?
Do your family and friends pay an enormous amount of attention to your emotions or little at all? Does either reaction stimulate more or less emotion from you? What is the value of paying attention to emotions in your world? Do you have a choice?
Growing up, my family weighed heavily in the direction of emotional overload at all times, but I come from an addictive family environment. High drama was the rule of the day. My addicted parent appeared to be in control at all times, and we created the myth that it was true. The other parent was sick a lot. We walked on eggshells in the house (read Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul T. Mason & Randi Kreger). We had fun too, but it was played out against the backdrop of this emotional dynamic. Oh, and we all live with ADHD.
Well, darned if I didn’t go and look for the same dynamic in some of my relationships outside the family. I was high drama depending on the situation – it’s like it was a cloak I took off and on. And like that cloak, now I can take on a full experience with my emotions or I can choose to spend less time with them. What I mean is that if I’m happy I can really get in to it or I can use the energy to move forward. The same is true with sadness or anger. I can stay stuck in the sorrow or I can use the information in a healing fashion and again move quickly forward.
This knowledge comes from my life long search for what’s normal with an attention challenge, but you don’t have to wait so long. When that right person, a friend or a partner pays healthy attention to you and your emotions are on green, don’t get stuck waiting. Cross over and start a new life of healthy attention habits. You can choose to leave the high drama behind. Cultivate your healthy emotions that serve a purpose by choosing to spend more time in the situations in which they will occur. What you pay attention to will grow.
How do you cultivate healthy emotional friends, partners and situations?
Link to the following article for an excellent review of emotional sobriety http://www.bhcjournal.com/default.aspx?articleId=28362&tabid=255
Did I intend to get fired?
It wasn’t my intention not to pay attention on the job…or was it?
The ghastly job seemed to have all my attention. I worried about it; thought about it; dreamed about it; talked about it; stayed late; arrived early and in the end I was fired from it. But what was my intention during that time?
This job was a dead end when I said yes. The first day of work the ‘boss’, the woman who asked me to apply for and then to take the job; who was the mother of my son’s friend, told me we wouldn’t become friends. That we would be working at the same place every day and then some, but we wouldn’t become friends. That was her intention.
My intention in taking the work was to provide income for my family while my husband began a professional transition. My intention was to support his desire to change his life. I had no intention to change my life or the world. My intention was not related to friendship, but it would have been an OK perk on the job to be friendly at least.
So, serendipity found me fired and quickly hired to work at a school for students with ADHD and LD where my intention again was to support my family. This time, however, I found a calling and a life’s work. In the end, I was completely changed and passionate about working in the world of ADHD. My strengths were used to create my job and my weaknesses were otherwise managed. I grew in confidence and stature knowing that in that environment I made a difference.
I’m a born coach, maybe even born again. I was the student and young adult who asked the questions no-one else thought about. That’s what I love – asking the questions whose answers will change your life.
What do you want in a job?
What are your intentions in taking the work?
How will you make a difference in this field?
Is there a future for you with this company?
My story is the story of many job seekers and office workers. If you can’t pay attention it may be because it’s not worth your health and the health of your attention to remain.
What is your attention-to-intention-on-the-job story?
Forgive me, Donald.
(http://www.abovethelaw.com/images/entries/Donald%20Trump%20You%27re%20Fired%20Above%20the%20Law%20blog.gif)
‘Take that pile upstairs while you’re on your way up.‘ ’Don’t leave the room empty-handed.’ These two admonishments were companions in my childhood home. ‘Take this while you’re going that way.’ I guess I can keep remembering the many ways I was trained in distraction. My favorite is ‘Don’t think about yourself – think about other people’s needs.’ Whew – that was distracting information for an evolving sense of self. ‘Can you drop this off at her house if you’re in the neighborhood?‘ Sure, it’s only a few miles/minutes out of my way. ‘Can you return this for me – I don’t want to go back to that store.’ Yes, I’ll take responsibility for that.
And that’s my distracted childhood environment in a nutshell. It was all delivered day after day with a kiss and a smile and a badge of being a good child to my mom. It was different with Daddy. ‘Can’t you see what’s in front of your face?’ he would say coming up behind me when I couldn’t see what was in front of my face that he had sent me to retrieve. It was either momentary blindness or paralytic fear of his anger that completely blocked from my view whatever it was he wanted. I was trained in both physical and emotional distraction.
I remember asking one of my kids to get something for me that we all knew I was capable of retrieving on my own. I didn’t get anywhere with them. My Irish grandmother would tell us cousins to get something for her because our feet were younger and healthier than hers. But my kids knew my feet and legs were quite healthy, thank you very much. Have I trained them to be distracted, too?
I believe we were born distracted and then endlessly drilled to develop it more fully, helplessly/naively hoping that someone in the world around us had a better handle on attention than we did. (Excuse me while I pick up the letter to take to the mailbox. I’ll just take that cup to the sink while I’m on my way out and maybe stop and pet the dogs which reminds me I have to buy more food and what’s that collar doing under the bureau? It sure is dirty – I better take it to the laundryroom…
Will I ever make it to the mailbox – oh, well there goes the mailman and my neighbor Jeannie is outside so we can talk about our flowers and…
What was the name of this blog?
What’s your intention today to stay attentive and feel good about it?
Maureen
Yesterday I ran in to two ‘old’ friends at lunch. We talked about our children, what’s happened to each of us in the past few years and what we’re doing now. At one point one woman casually commented that ’she had ADD’ as part of the conversation flow. When it got to my turn to share my new business (to them), that I coach people about attention and that many of my clients live with ADHD, they had lots of questions, especially the ‘big’ one: ‘Hey, do you think I have ADHD?’
It’s one thing to tell a friend there’s a green thing in their teeth but something completely different to say ‘you have ADHD’. Early in the game I did suggest to a friend that she probably lived with ADHD. I was so excited about what I was learning that I couldn’t help but apply it to everyone. It was way better than sharing a cookie. It was life changing information! But believe me she was not happy that I shared with her my joy at her disability.
So among other things I said ‘There are three markers of an attention disorder – inattentiveness, impulsivity and distractibility not counting hyperactivity.’ And I let them take it from there, all of us laughing at all the ways they were impulsive and distracted. What I didn’t say was that I’m attracted to people with ADHD because I live with it. Like is attracted to like. They concluded that it didn’t matter to them anyway because they weren’t having to make a living. And that’s where it stands with anyone – it’s only a problem to live with ADHD if it interferes with your life. But it can make you creative and impulsively available to family and friends and it is a source of fun and laughter, too.
What’s your favorite ADD moment?
