The importance of sleep, physical and mental wellbeing

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i'm absolutely delighted to be welcoming you to today's event um i'm not going to speak for very long
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but i just wanted to say that you know obviously as you know um today is brought to you by our our
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midlands region um and it is part of our very successful and ongoing and evolving regional series
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um and today's speakers are going to be taking um a deeper dive into different aspects of wellness
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um and we've just been having a chat about actually you might have heard us you know given the events of the last year this is even more relevant for
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all of us both personally and professionally and certainly at cipd ireland we're
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seeing this um when we're talking to employers and different groups such as our regions
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um and particularly with our recent hr practices survey results results that
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have come through and we're seeing neither employees um employers are are really putting
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well-being at the center of how they support people um and interestingly we're also
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hearing about how that approach is uh that approach is not embedded in compassion
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um which you know from our point of view and certainly for me personally i see that as an indicator of how things have
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changed quite dramatically over the last year for all of us and so as i said i'm not really going to
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say very much other than that um i just want to thank our speakers um for coming along today
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i think it's going to be a really really interesting and insightful um presentation and i think there's
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going to be quite a lot of well humor peppered throughout it as well um and at this point then i'm going to hand
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over to caroline who's going to tell you more about what to expect caroline thank you very much jane
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uh on behalf of the cipd midlands region committee i just wanted to formally welcome you to
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our event here today as jane has said it is the latest in the cipd ireland regional
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series and i just want to thank you for spending your lunch hour with us here today
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hopefully we can give you some food for thought as part of your lunch time the online series that we've been
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running um with cipd ireland has proved very popular as everybody gets used to the new remote
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way of working and we're all adapting to the new world that we're living in at the moment
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we have as the cipd midlands committee and some of the other committees as well
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and been a bit more innovative this year in how we've been communicating with our membership
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and with everybody so we've actually recently developed a podcast or a recorded webinar
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um on remote working and that's available through our cipd midlands ireland linkedin group
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and it's also on youtube as well if anybody is interested to have a look at that
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we have been sharing much more through our cipd midlands ireland uh linkedin group
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this year because we're not getting to see everybody uh face to face in the sheraton alone for example
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every few months and so we've been looking at things a little bit differently so you'll see more of our events
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articles and discussions there than you normally would so if it is something that you're interested to participate in
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please do join that group as well if you can back to today's event then and when i
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was thinking about uh how to introduce this event today it really kept occurring to me that so
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many times at the moment i either think or i write or i say
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in the current climate or with the situation that we're in at the moment and i think it's just constantly playing
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on our minds and constantly in everything we're doing at the lockdowns the homeschooling
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juggling everything maybe a threat of redundancies maybe additional workloads that's going
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on uh and on top of all that there's the sameness of it all
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so you know as we were saying at the start we've we've been doing this for almost a year now at this stage and and it's
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that monotony and sameness that that becomes difficult to manage as well so hopefully with this um we'll get some
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tools some hints and tips uh some information to help us manage and cope with the situation that we're
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in at the moment and to really get some insights around sleep health and well-being and how we can use
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that for ourselves personally but also our teams and our employees as well to try and
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make this a more positive experience for everybody today's speakers uh we have neil ronin
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from titan wellness and ex-leinster munster and ireland professional rugby player
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we have david gillick two-time european champion olympian and mental health advocate
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and we have tom coleman sleep specialist and health scientist as well and who's going to be talking to
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us today so a really exciting lineup that i won't stand in the way of for any longer so i'm
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going to pass over to nile now to get us kicked off hi guys thanks very much and really
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appreciate it first of all i'd like to thank cipd and all the team for inviting myself tom and david uh here today and so hope
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you're all welcome and i suppose why we're here today is during the first lockdown and the start
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of this pandemic uh myself tom and david and some other from our team
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set up a company to help remote workers and to provide a solution for uh the well-being of people in terms of
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a pathway uh for employees and to help hr uh with implementing uh wellness solutions so
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today i'm gonna touch base on our new company and physical well-being uh what is my expertise so i'm told
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anyway so i'm gonna just share my screen um and we'll get going okay i'll just
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put this on full screen here in it y'all see that okay yeah
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thumbs up good okay so yeah so we set up a team myself tom and dave have been working in
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workplace wellbeing in ireland for the last five to ten years and we i suppose we
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got frustrated that there's one off well being webinars and um we wanted to provide a solution
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where there's a pathway so creating awareness educate the people they learn and then behavior change so
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we set up a company called remote wellbeing there's some of our team there and i'm going to introduce the
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importance of physical well-being for yourself and for your employees and how you can change your lives
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especially during a pandemic and it's snowing at the window at the same time and so my background and
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i played professional rugby in ireland for over 10 years and i started off my rugby career playing
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for leinster i played there for four years and then i was lucky enough to get seven years with monster rugby and which
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was amazing experience living in limerick and i played for ireland at all levels and when i was 25 i think it was i had
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no qual qualifications whatsoever so i was nicely persuaded by my coach who was
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a coach called declan kidney he's been the monster and ireland coach and i went back and i did a degree in
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strength and conditioning so i did an online um i think it was a five-year um degree and
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i did counseling and psychotherapy courses as well and i did all my coaching badges within the irfu and the international rugby
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board and then when i retired i had to ask myself what am i going to do what's the plan for the future because
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rugby doesn't last forever so i wanted to bring what i learned in professional sports in terms of high performance and in
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terms of eating healthy exercise communication planning strategies
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and all those things that you have in professional rugby bring them into the workplace so i set up a company called titan
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wellness where we provide a lot of more fitness and classes for ireland but this new
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company that we're working on we really want to try and push that to people today because education is the key in
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terms of behavior change so i'm going to give you a taster of what physical well-being is
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and why we should all practice it on a daily basis so we're going to get moving first of all so we've got an activity
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all right okay so i know all your screens are off so you better be doing this right so
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we're gonna i'm gonna push my uh my laptop out here a little bit so we're gonna do
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10 squats okay if you look at the left-hand side we're going to do a chair squat okay so we're going to stand up and
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we're going to sit there okay give me 10 reps let's go one two don't be shy three
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four five i'm getting tired now six seven
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eight last two i promise nine and ten okay we're going to look really
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seriously into our laptops into the screen and we're gonna pop box for 10 seconds nine eight
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seven six five four three two one last activity we're going
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to run to close the store or your front door and back okay i'll give you 10 seconds let's go go to the front door
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mine's right beside me so it's not too bad okay so you probably won't be able to
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answer this question because all your mics are a mute right but i'm going to ask tom there because i know his mic is ready to go so tom
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what did i do there do you know um you changed our state or energy state
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certainly anyway yeah and i'll ask you another question did you have a bit of fun while you did
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it absolutely yeah i love it good stuff so we worked on our lower body strength
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guys by doing the squats activating our core as well a little bit and then we worked on an upper body movement
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and then we a little bit of our cardiovascular er we worked on that as well by running our
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moving towards the door so again for me what physical well-being is it's fun it's movement and it's it's
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it's good for you okay so i'm gonna go into the benefits of it so when you exercise you feel good and you
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control you can control your weight so if you eat well and you move three to four times a week uh when your heart rate has increased
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you your your body fat will reduce so that's a good thing we all want to be slim and look good and live forever
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that goes on to my next point where when you exercise improve improves your heart health and all your
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overall health so if you put in healthy food into your body to function properly and move on a regular basis
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you're going to be healthy you're going to be fit and you're going to live a little bit longer okay for me when i exercise on a regular
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basis i become more creative and it motivates me to to work to spend time with my family to
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communicate with my friends so i think that's one thing that people forget about when we exercise
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it helps our mental well-being and it helps us be more productive within the workplace and in our overall
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work life balance so it's really important to get moving uh david will touch on the mental
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well-being side of things but you know i'll give you a quick example of two young kids under four
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sometimes you can get stressed out you can get sick of playing hide-and-go-seek or doing a horsey for two hours when you've
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dodged your knees from a rugby career but it's a de-stressor for me exercise
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and so example the weekend i'm playing too much hide-and-go-seek and it's half 12 my little man goes to
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sleep which he is now upstairs you have to be a little bit quiet and i get outside and i do my exercise
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or go for a walk and when i come back i'm a different person so it really is a good de-stressor
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and exercise de-stresses me and it makes me happy so they're really simple tips in terms of
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what exercise can do for you and if you can motivate your employees and the people within your organization
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to be more active uh productivity will um will improve and their mental well-being will improve
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so just a few kind of a snapshot of the downside on the upside of uh physical activity so if you don't
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exercise and eat poorly you're gonna get uh increase your body fat okay your health will be affected
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high plus high blood pressure might kick in okay depending on and what you're eating or what you're
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doing or not doing you become more stressed when i don't exercise i get grumpy my wife tells me
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that on a daily basis okay so when i exercise i'm a different person and then i suppose our muscles waste away and our bone
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density decreases and we look older and feel older when we don't be
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more active and we don't eat well okay but when we do invest time into our nutrition
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and exercise which is very important to have the two of them together it reduces your heart disease improves
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your bone strength it's a de-stressor and i always finish off with this one look good feel good
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so when you exercise i feel like i look good i'm trying my best anyway my mother always said you have to love
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yourself before you love anyone else i think that's true so again you feel good about yourself and that improves
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your confidence improves communication with your friends and family with your work colleagues so again there's huge benefits to
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physical well-being and and i'm here to try and motivate you to invest time into it
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and so my next slide here just give me one second she's stalled no
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quick drink so i always get the question so many times
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a week should i train what's the plan what should i do so i'm going to give you a quick overview of what i recommend you
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to do and each to their own at the same time so schedule your weekend weekly training so for example last
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sunday i said to myself okay i know what i have to do in my calendar for work i know my family
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commitments during the week and what i have to do and but what is my training for the week
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so i plan that with my work commitments and my family equipment so for me i do three home workouts a week monday
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wednesday and friday it takes 25 minutes and i do one run then to try and get my
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cardiovascular health up so i do four sessions a week which kind of are high intensity take me no less than 30 minutes and then
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i probably do two walks as well during that week so that's my schedule your schedule could be totally different
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but the first step is in terms of improving your physical well-being is to plan ahead plan what it is have a
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part of your lifestyle not just do it for one week and then forget about it do it on a regular basis and then your
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your overall mental and physical health will be good and another thing people always ask me what exercise
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should i do so i don't like doing some sort of exercises so i used to do a lot of rowing
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on the roar when i play professional rugby and i have nightmares about it so i will never row again so i will not
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choose that as my preferred option to exercise so if you like running if you like walking if you
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like pilates yoga practice what you like doing if you find it hard to invest time into your physical
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well-being and that would be a good start in terms of getting moving and also you know you
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have to take your rest days i wouldn't recommend training every single day you can be active every single day by
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walking but try and get your rest day so if i do four um hard workouts that means i have three days to recover
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so i can invest time into my flexibility uh by doing a little bit of yoga for 10 minutes or going for a walk or just
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doing nothing at all and eating healthy foods alongside that and so so my message guys to use
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is exercise should be part of your lifestyle on a daily basis invest your time into it because we all
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want to live long forever i have two young kids and a wife and i want to be on this world for as
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long as i can so that's my motivation to exercise i'm not a professional rugby player anymore
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so i don't have to commit my body to be ready to play sport so i'm investing time into my body to be
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more active to be happier and improve my mental well-being so that's for me guys and if you have any
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questions ask away and uh thanks very much
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so i'll stop sharing there
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sorry doing it
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that's to be done guys move over to david now i think uh cheers and oil good afternoon
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everyone and don't worry i'm not going to have you all up and running around and trying to hit doorbells and all the rest of it
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and so you can kick back and and relax for the next 10 minutes um pleasure to be here and great to see
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so many people on the call i'm gonna touch a little bit on mental health okay um which is an area that we've uh
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we've seen quite a lot of demand in over the last 12 months
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indeed since we set up remote well-being it's something that a lot of people um are asking for and and
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it's just the year that we've had we've everyone is dealing with an awful lot of change an awful lot of uncertainty
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and that in itself kind of breeds a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety um
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and just kind of that element of like when will things go back to normal and the tendency is that we jump maybe a
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couple of months ahead of ourselves or we all almost idolized our past so it's very hard to stay in the middle of
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the now and my own journey um as well as i've gone through my own mental health
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uh journey i i had depression um i suffered with a lot of anxiety i
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constantly worried about the future and and it was all off the back of my atlantic career which
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um you know i had a good career i competed at all my championships i won a couple of medals i represented around the olympic games
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and but kind of similar to noil and sport doesn't last forever and then um i
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had to make a decision what i was going to do the rest of my life and the truth be told i didn't have a clue um i didn't know what i wanted to
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be when i grew up and that scared the living daylights out of me to be brutally honest and
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even coming to terms with that level of change and that level of uncertainty i struggled with uh dealing with that and i didn't ask
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for help i didn't talk about it i kept it all in house i suppose been a male um coming from sport it's fitter
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faster stronger that's all that really matters and me kind of turning to someone and
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telling them how i really felt i really kind of thought that has been weak so i kept it all in house and to be
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brutally honest i suffered in silence for about three years uh thankfully i got the required help and
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i finally put my hands up and asked for help and advice and i got a lot out of that and that
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in a way i suppose built up my own level of resilience um my own kind of daily resilience
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toolbox if you like and i'm going to share some of these things with you but you know again it's open
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that conversation and what we kind of do with a lot of our clients is we we try and create that awareness uh
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open a discussion around mental health and get people talking um you know there's a lot of people that
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are struggling right now in terms of their own mental well-being and and i'm not saying that everyone as
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a result of the impact of change but we all have a good days we all have our bad days um i have two kids very young kids my wife
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is 32 weeks pregnant and it's there's a lot going on in our house i'll be honest so
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even in myself i've had to run back up to my parents house right here right now to get on the internet because their
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internet decides not to work so what i'm going to do is i'm going to share my screen because i have a few little slides that
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i'd like to to share with you guys so just bear with me one second um hopefully we can all
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see that yeah so like i said just going to touch on an area of mental health um and i suppose one of the key
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elements that we're talking about here is that level of uncertainty and that level of change and again i know
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i don't have a whole lot of time here today but just the kind of few areas that a lot of people are probably kind
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of coming to terms with and trying to deal with at the moment you know um that lack of routine and that isolation
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that lack of face to face all the things that we were maybe very used to when we worked in an office environment
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you know you had that support you had that literally you could walk one meter maybe have a conversation with
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someone about oh hey listen i'm stuck on this or i'm a tricky client can you help you know that's kind of gone now you
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have to maybe schedule a zoom call you have to uh you know factor it into a day and that
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sort of in um connectivity it can be a bit of an issue for a lot of people likewise what i said
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about broadband i can guarantee a lot of people at lockdown number one were pulling their hair out when it came
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to broadband and internet and zoom and people are still struggling i know a lot of people might have seen
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the court case that was done virtually in the states and the guy somehow managed to put himself as a cat and he couldn't
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change himself back so it still is happening and we're all getting used to it but again when you look a little bit closer to home and
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again we're talking kind of very corporate here as well but i want you know i want this to be about you as an individual as well and we're all
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coming from different lives where we've got vulnerable people in our own families that we're trying to look after maybe we've got homeschooling going on
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childcare all this sort of stuff and that personal impact is a huge huge area that can
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breed a lot of worry a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety so again we're like i said sometimes we
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flip and we fly from the future to to the past and again we're forgetting about what we can control right now and
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i think trying to strip it all away and come back to ourselves and manage ourselves is vitally vitally important so just
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this is something that i kind of refer to quite a lot um it's from a book by dr rick hansen you
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can see it on the slide there called the buddha's brain and he talks a lot about our own kind of responses to
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events that happen and the way he termed it which i thought was brilliant is like a game of darts e plus or equals o event plus response
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equals outcome so if you look at the year that we're having the big event is obviously the pandemic covert 19.
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and that's out of our control okay we cannot control the pandemic unfortunately um and our reaction to that will dictate
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the outcome so again the way he turned it is a game of darts that first start is out of our control
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unfortunately it's going to cause a bit of pain we're going to feel a little bit uncomfortable it's going to breathe a bit of anxiety and a bit of
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worry you know but we can't control that dart number two dart number three dart number four
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and so on are completely inner control and that will dictate our outcome so to give you an example lockdown number one
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i obviously at the time was working for myself so um i took a huge impact in terms of my own
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work and then it was a case of uh what was going to happen next um and i
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had to take a really really difficult phone call um and at the time we were all working from home and the kids were in playing uh oscar
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was playing with his little duplo i took the call in the hallway and it wasn't a great call i walked back into the room
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the red mist ascends why because i stood on one of those chunky pieces of duplo
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and i give out to my four-year-old who's playing with his tuple and as a result of that he starts crying
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and then my wife turns around to me and was like what are you doing and then we have a little bit of an argument and then it all just descends into a big
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row and the day is just a mess um and then unfortunately
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it was a case of like okay well you know what could have done a little bit better and the reaction was it was my response
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to the phone call it wasn't to do with oscar playing this duplo or anything like that and i think right now it's how can we
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stay in that middle of the now take those little split seconds that just maybe
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gathers ourselves before we actually respond and that's what it's all about episodical zones so again
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you know just some events that we can control some events that we completely utterly can't and it's just creating an environment
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where you just have that split second where you can just scatter yourself because there's an awful lot of negativity out there at the
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moment a lot of stuff in the news and the papers that you know can just get our backs up now and again and as a result can
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dictate our outcome so again it's just a little tool that um you know might be able to just give you
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a second or two to kind of just just hold forth and improve that outcome so again you
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know when we don't look after ourselves when we don't um react in the right way it can breed a
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lot of stress and stress is quite broad and um it's something that i think in order of managing our own
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stress we need to understand how stress impacts our body so as you can see on this slide there the physical the
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emotional the mental and the spiritual and again i'm sure there's people on the call that maybe have flipped and flocked
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between different areas here you know you'll that fatigue that burnout and poor sleep as a result of maybe the
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anxiety the the worry this is all brand new what's going to happen my job what's going to happen my kids my family
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all this sort of stuff and i know tom's going to talk a lot about sleep but sometimes when we go to bed that's the
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time of the day when suddenly the mind begins to really go into overdrive and it affects our rest
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and our recovery so again it's impacting the emotional side but even from your work work from home
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maybe your environment is a conducive to that sort of been focused or having that clarity and
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sometimes when we're a little bit stressed a little bit worried we simply cannot focus i know in my experience when i was really really
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struggling i couldn't even read a book i couldn't read the paper i just simply could not focus on anything and
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i lacked that creativity and you know all the things that i thought i wanted to do i just didn't have the motivation didn't have
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the desire to really um get stuck into it all because i wasn't dealing with the stress levels and wasn't
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dealing with the anxiety and then i suppose did the spiritual side of it as well that um that purpose and that's that's a really
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key word you know i think sometimes when we're under stress or there's a lot of change we can kind of question an awful lot of
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things and even though we could be really happy we really could be content in what we're doing but suddenly because of all this
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change we go into a little bit of overdrive and again we start asking ourselves questions that you know are not relevant and so again
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you kind of look at stress and you look at how it impacts our bodies and then we hope to maybe kind of become a little bit more aware of it and
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and then we can deal with it as well so again you're kind of looking at the mental health element to it because if
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we don't look after our stress levels unfortunately they can get a little bit worse a little
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bit worse and then you're running into chronic stress and and that's something that we've seen a lot over the last while research
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has backed that up um acute stress as well off the back of the change in the uncertainty that's going on
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um and again like i said it can cause a lot of mental health issues and crisis um for a lot of people so
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it's just kind of it's trying to create that awareness around mental health and remove that stigma because unfortunately
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there is still a stigma there and particularly you know on the male side as well um and the challenge
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in terms of mental health services right now is the fact that everything is in isolation um and that can be really really hard
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for an awful lot of people and the one thing i would say you know when we work in environments and office based
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environments and you know for a lot of people that could be their only social interaction of the day or the week
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and now with remote working there's an awful lot of people that are potentially uh very much isolated um in their own
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homes apartments wherever they they live and they're not getting that personal interaction that social
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interaction on a daily or even a weekly basis so again it's very important to check in with people not just from a work
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perspective but it could be just a how are you it could be a message it could be an email it could be a phone call so
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you know that connectivity that communication is vitally vitally important um just a few kind of coping kind of
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strategies as well and like i'll be honest some of these are kind of from my own experience and i began to go to council in 2013. i i
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still go it's one of the best things uh sorry not 2013. i retired in 2013
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2016 i started to go to counselling and you know for me opening up and having a
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conversation and i suppose to be fair shown an element of vulnerability uh was probably my
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greatest strength because off the back of that i began to understand why i was feeling a certain way why i was anxious why i
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was stressed and and then also the little triggers the simple little things that i i used to love doing that i
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almost did automatically and then suddenly i stopped and simple things like you know looking after myself in terms of my
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exercise my sleep my nutrition and but also simple little things for a lot of people right now to maybe
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look back on 2020 what hap what worked what did not work you know what could i control right now
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what are the simple little things that i could work on from a day-to-day basis just maybe helps me um as an individual
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i i think the element of fun is vitally vitally important i think remote working we tend to be always on
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the laptop now you're always on the phone those boundaries are a little bit blurred you don't have that routine of
28:42
driving to the office and driving home so again how do we build a bit of fun into it you know maybe it's for kids
28:47
maybe it's a family whatever it is that off switch is very important um understanding our stress so when we get stressed what can
28:53
we do what can we do to maybe reset and go again and then the final two are around gratitude again checking in
29:00
yourself what are we grateful for your health your happiness you've got a job um you know family all
29:06
these things that are vitally very important that sometimes we just lose sight of and then finally communication and talk
29:12
not been afraid to ask for help advice and having a conversation with a colleague
29:17
and things like that are really really important and i suppose the more we kind of share this more we push it out
29:22
and hopefully we'll remove that element of stigma so people can and do have the courage to stand up and ask for
29:28
help and advice um i know tom's going to touch on the kind of duress element but it's very much a
29:33
holistic approach to it and again from my experience nora talked about movement that's a huge one for me
29:39
when the morning it's when i fit it into my day again with a young family i try and get up a little bit earlier and do some form of exercise that just
29:46
releases those endorphins and makes me feel good about myself and just kind of kick-starts the day and
29:52
tom's going to talk a lot about sleep sleep for me is very important as well that routine about going to bed getting up at the same time
29:58
i've always been like that and then food not letting my emotions dictate my food choices so
30:04
again when i was really suffering all i wanted to do was come for these dominoes pizza on a tuesday two large
30:10
pizzas for the price of one straight on the blower and a tub of uh ben and jerry's ice cream and i would just do the dog in it and that was it
30:16
made me feel good for maybe a couple of slices and then the guild kind of kicks in so again just becoming aware of my food
30:23
choices and then you know mindset as well having the little goals those micro goals that you
30:28
have what are the little things that you can do on a day-to-day basis um because sometimes when we talk about
30:33
kind of actions um and that's where behavior change comes in which is really important um you know the purpose where do you
30:40
want to go what matters to you and sometimes when we talk about purpose we think it's this big almighty great
30:45
fantastic thing it doesn't it doesn't have to be like that whatsoever purpose could be you know what i want to go for a walk
30:52
and my health is important to me and then the truth is okay well where am i now well you know what i haven't walked
30:57
or haven't ran i haven't done any exercise in a long time they're the gaps and when you understand the gaps then
31:03
you can action them and that's where i i refer to micro starts start small and build what's the simple
31:10
little thing that you can do because we all love taking a box and if we can do that we'll end up
31:15
breathing confidence and you know you're empowering yourself you're motivating yourself and that's a really important thing you
31:21
don't have to go out and do as i said three hit sessions and and all the rest of it uh off the bat we can build to that and
31:28
that can be the goal but again action when does it work for you when are you going to fit it in and i think that's where behavior change in terms of
31:34
our own kind of mental well-being and self-care is very very important um just to finish off with no tron an awful
31:41
lot at you um but again at the end of this we've time for questions as well so please if any
31:46
questions fire them in but i think managing you and self-care is something that's really really important right now and again
31:52
sometimes we have to build it into our day we have to build it into our own calendars and otherwise it won't happen because
31:59
it's just an awful lot going on so again don't be afraid to allow time for yourself and whether it's getting out of the house
32:05
exercise reading the book netflix whatever works for you you know and have an element of structure around
32:11
your day and don't be don't forget about eating lunch don't forget about having your breakfast
32:16
you know don't don't forget about having that coffee at three o'clock and maybe ringing a friend and having a laugh you know simple things
32:22
like that you know even if it's five minutes ten minutes because at the end of the day we're not robots
32:27
we need to allocate a bit of time for ourselves and and and don't be afraid to kind of flick the the off switch
32:33
and then finally communication again trying to just communicate with people very simply
32:39
um you know again it's it's don't forget about the person that you know you may have we haven't seen in a long
32:46
time perhaps or is not in the office so again it's a case of just tapping into that person but again that's managing you it is very important
32:53
and you know a lot of people on this call are probably looking after other people as well be it team members be
32:58
a family but again empathy is a huge thing okay showing a bit of empathy to people because we're all managing this in our
33:04
own ways and i'm trying to understand uh understanding from someone else's point
33:10
of view is very very important so sometimes just listening to sometimes not having all the answers but just lending them your ear
33:16
and i think um when we're human as well is very very important so a level of uh being authentic but also
33:23
um just human in it there's no no manual with this uh pandemic we're all trying to find our way through it so
33:29
i think to be fair just just been human and because that's the best way i think and
33:35
sometimes sharing sharing an issue sharing your own kind of journey sharing how you've who you have uh you have managed yourself
33:41
over the last um couple of weeks and months can be really empowering for someone else who might be struggling so um i'm going to just hand over to tom
33:49
now but like i've thrown an awful lot at you there okay i just i just hope that you know in the 10 minutes that i've had
33:55
to speak that something's kind of resonated with you and if so just try and act on it because
34:00
that's the biggest biggest challenge that we all have is trying to you know embed positivity
34:06
embed sustainable change and that's what we're all trying to do so and that holistic approach is vitally
34:12
important but you know wherever you are i know i'm i'm in dublin now and the sun is out so
34:17
you know even getting out and getting a bit of fresh air for five minutes is really really important so i'm going to hand you over to tom and
34:22
any questions more than happy to answer them towards the end lovely thank you david um i might just
34:29
share my screen one day if it uh it comes off yeah i will it's lovely there we go
34:34
sorry superb thank you very much okay
34:41
so guys i hope you're all well um i won't um i won't have you up exercising um if you
34:47
fall asleep during my talk it's very appropriate um so just to give you a quick
34:52
background on myself um i've worked in health wellness for a number of years i started off working in
34:57
uh nutrition and sleep about eight or nine years ago i worked with a lot of um members of the
35:04
irish rugby team and all four provinces in in sleep and in the last few years i was kind of
35:10
pulled into the corporate world and i do a lot we do a lot of work with vhi to that as well um but i suppose
35:17
you know just resonating with with david and nyle we we we wanted to kind of really
35:22
provide holistic approaches that that could be accessible for you know for for everyone really in in
35:29
terms of what we offer and our expertise um a very limited time here so i will be
35:36
talking a little bit faster i think a famous ceo said listen faster so you might have to listen faster today
35:43
um i was involved in research on sleep last year and i do a little bit of consulting
35:48
as well around around different things i'm going to talk to you about why sleep is so important i mean every kind
35:56
of expert in the world on aspects of circadian biology health um and institutes like
36:03
you know the top institute institutes in the world like stanford university harvard and oxford
36:08
all of them agree harvard regards sleep as being one of the three pillars of health and this ages of equal importance
36:16
some profess that sleep is the foundation that the other two are built upon and
36:23
another famous neuroscientist that calls sleep the ma the master orchestrator of health and
36:29
disease so it is a profound thing and i know jane mentioned at the beginning compassion
36:35
and i would regard sleep as the ultimate act of self-care um there isn't a single aspect of your
36:42
biology or physiology psychologically mentally emotionally that isn't impacted
36:47
um from sleep and we know um the pandemic has had a huge impact on
36:53
sleep as i mentioned earlier there's been a 58 increase in google searches for
36:58
insomnia in comparison to um last year that's not just in ireland or the uk
37:04
that's that's globally so we know there's issues globally with with people sleeping
37:09
i've never had certainly as much um demand for my services uh in in regard to sleep and people just
37:16
struggling we have something called corona comedy it's been it's been labeled as um there's about seven studies going on
37:24
globally um which look at uh pandemic dreaming as well so that's a big huge issue and
37:29
scientists are starting to understand why that's happening um just in regards to and i don't
37:35
usually delve too much into this to be honest when i when i speak um but i just wanted to kind of highlight the relevance and the
37:41
understanding we we know that sleep deprivation has a major impact on um our our health and well-being and
37:47
you know the world health organization had a forum way back in 2004 which which got experts from all over the world and
37:54
did we do understand that it has an immediate impact on us mentally and physically in the in
38:00
the short term in the medium term and the long-term consequences no more than any other behavior because it is
38:08
uh it can be a health protective behavior and if we're not getting it it will be classified as health risk
38:13
behavior but just on a kind of individual level from an organizational point of view
38:19
um it makes so much sense for people to empower their employees to take control over and
38:25
manage their sleepwake cycles much better and we know that
38:30
from again the likes of her harvard they talk about and they've they have a a dedicated sleep research
38:36
center um there's a huge loss in in productivity uh we know that things like um
38:43
performance uh cognitive ability um even even engagement scores all that
38:50
type of stuff is hugely kind of impacted at an organizational level um from lack of sleep we can social and
38:56
interpersonal skills well i mean you know you're cranky when when you when you can't get to sleep and i know all of
39:02
all of us whatever you know the three the three lads on today's call we all have young kids and
39:07
if if they miss out and you miss out uh you're not it may be fantastic to be around uh the next
39:12
morning it it fits into our holistic model of health and i'm a
39:18
health scientist and my background is health science and um we know that
39:23
if we have accumulated sleep debt over over days and weeks maybe that that um speeds up genetic
39:30
expression so how quickly we could maybe get sick and things like that huge huge impact um there is good news though that we you
39:37
know we can have a very positive influence now i would describe health for us on an individual level as
39:44
um it's it's really the culmination of every choice we make and and your body listens to everything whether you do or
39:51
not your physiology picks up it's a recording device it listens to everything um every decision you make along with
39:57
your genetics obviously and environmental factors indeed like our our home offices now and i get the
40:03
example that i use is i ask people and you don't have to answer this question but i ask people i'll give you an example of a choice
40:09
that you've made that impacts your health anybody here married or in a relationship
40:14
i know you are and does that impact your health i i won't get an answer from that that's
40:19
fine you don't need to answer that i know the answer that you won't give me and you smile and i say well i didn't even say if it was positive or negative
40:25
but it's for the most part it's positive uh the stats tell us we actually live longer if we're in a relationship so that's
40:33
good news for us right um i'm gonna just briefly delve into sleep
40:38
um how much sleep do we need it varies across the lifespan young babies need a lot more toddlers
40:45
teenagers require 10 to 11 hours most of them aren't getting it um as adults it's about seven and a half
40:51
to eight hours that's how much we need we're all different and so there are different kind of
40:56
um idiosyncrasies within that um for the most part seven to eight
41:01
hours because we sleep in 90 minute cycles and the recommendation is five 19-minute cycles a night i'm not
41:08
going to delve into what happens during those cycles but we have deep sleep and light sleep and rem sleep
41:14
and all of that is is crucially important and why is it important it's important
41:20
because on many levels from a physical standpoint and a psychological standpoint
41:26
um we we kind of reset every night when we sleep you know it helps us deal with uh from
41:32
an emotional point of view what's going on in the day from a physical perspective um when you
41:37
fall asleep your immune system wakes up and i and we talk about immunity and how to boost immunity
41:42
we want to regulate immunity and that happens very well um if we sleep if we get the right
41:48
quality sleep because inflammatory cytokines go down production of immune cells you know happens at night
41:56
so if you're producing a lot of uh if you're sleeping while your immune cells will be would be uh very healthy um hormone regulation you
42:03
know everything from estrogen to progesterone testosterone cortisol the stress hormone all of those
42:10
are profoundly impacted from sleep muscle and tissue repair um
42:15
most of that is happening while you sleep and then from a psychological point of view um i mean your brain cleans itself out
42:22
at night when you sleep um you know your your your emotional
42:27
stability during the day all that stuff and you see it in kids you know when they're when they're when they're cranky and tired and they
42:33
burst out crying for no reason so you know it has a profound effect how do we influence that well um we can
42:39
influence all of these areas if people have sleep difficulty it can fall into many categories from medical to
42:45
circadian disruption but we look at what we can control and and light david said is to get out in
42:51
the morning and you know get active if you get outside in the morning
42:56
you are getting a very particular type of light that hits your um retinal receptors and it tells
43:04
your brain to wake up and get moving um and that really helps um it even sets
43:09
your melatonin release uh 12 hours later so getting morning light i would say is crucial exercise
43:15
movement fantastic uh for your circadian rhythm watch the stimulants and the sedatives
43:21
the caffeine all that type of thing we want to avoid that that really um
43:26
you know delays and blocks sleep onset and also sleep quality so um food um in the right amount at the
43:34
right time habits great with the children aren't we you know pajamas
43:39
you know brush the teeth you know relax play time bedtime story and sleep and i said to
43:46
people do you have the same routine for yourself and of course nobody's reading you a bedtime story at night
43:51
and what happens to us we're on the we're on the next slide we're on the electronics aren't we electronics elicit a dopaminergic
43:59
response okay so what do i mean by that i mean we get a hit dopamine we hear that little
44:04
bing for the messages and dopamine can be associated with cortisol the stress hormone
44:10
and that's about keeping us up and anxious and dopamine is also associated with
44:15
goal setting are we on the right path in life and if we start thinking about what happens when we go to bed at night
44:21
we often go into that thinking analyzing aspect of our brain and we get these dopamine um signals
44:27
that are all confused because we're not sure of the outcome of this whole thing and where we're going we want to elicit relaxation that's what
44:36
we want to elicit so if we look at this a sliding scale stresses up you know a high amount of stress and anxieties on one end
44:42
sleep is on the other end of it so we need to bring ourselves down and how do we do that the exercise the routine um
44:48
the right type of foods and being in the now because all of that's related to serotonin serene serotonin being in the
44:55
now when the breathing and all those things can really help so this is what we need to do uh watch the electronics
45:01
um and create a beautiful environment for sleep so you can train yourself to sleep
45:07
control the sensory input control the psychological input and the bedroom environment and all of
45:12
that type of thing and that's what we promote so i'm just going to finish with a couple of kind of slides on on how we have have approached that
45:19
not just from a sleep perspective but from a from a uh holistic point of view so
45:26
when working with nyle um and david and the other members i wanted to really um you know educate
45:34
and promote behavior change and empower people to take control over the aspects
45:39
of their day and their lives that a huge influence on their sleep quality because sleep was so important and so
45:46
you know we've we created a suite of training courses on e-learning and we we have run uh everything from
45:53
sort of you know our talks to to four-week programs dedicated to um topics like remote well-being and
46:01
sleep um so we've put together those packages and what we
46:06
kind of pride ourselves in is is the ability to to demonstrate a kind of before and after so
46:12
um that you know we can show you kind of analytics and results and things like that we and and what this does
46:18
really is it provides an equitable solution for companies and organizations
46:27
uh whether whether you have people who are
46:36
physically in the office working remotely we really have taylor to their goals and
46:42
requirements yes no interest we lost you for a second we are back now okay and we're back again
46:50
okay sorry guys um yeah um so that's that's really what it's about and um just in one of our sleep programs
46:56
we we use um a validated sleep tool so we know that you know it's our intervention that
47:02
that that really produces a positive outcome we had some fantastic numbers where we we worked with the group we analyzed our
47:08
sleep before we done our intervent intervention and we analyzed after and we produced a 22-page report
47:14
uh for the uh for the organization which went into detail and you know one of the interesting
47:20
things from that was we found that 41 of their workers were
47:25
um struggling to stay awake when driving home i mean that's that's just really um something which is critically
47:32
important that could be that was that was happening that people weren't aware of so you know this stuff is is um really
47:38
um important to get right both individually and from an organization level that it's that is
47:43
addressed uh correctly so i'm never worried as my father used to say to me i'm not worried about the problem you
47:50
have i'm worried about the solution you're going to apply so i i hope you all learned a little bit
47:55
about sleep in that very brief talk and i'd be delighted someone asked a question that i just picked up in the
48:00
in in the um in the chat function when is the best time to exercise 30 minutes after waking that that hits
48:07
the court of all cortisol activation response which is great three hours after awaking your body temperature starting to rise or
48:14
11 hours after waking which is the peak of your body temperature the least likely time to injure so 30
48:20
minutes three hours or 11 hours and thank you all very much and
48:25
uh i i'd hope to i hope that i can speak for you at some time in the future and we'll be happy to take questions now thank you
48:33
thanks tom um i think and thank you nylon david um you've all shared some really superb
48:39
tips and takeaways which i think we can all implement in our daily lives and and start to work on on the specific areas
48:46
you spoke on we've had some superb interaction on our chat box and we thank you all for that it's great
48:52
to see such um tips and suggestions and discussion going on in there as well
48:58
so um i'm just conscious of time so i'm going to kick on with some questions and answers and i'm going to
49:04
start with you and i'll uh tom stole one of my questions so i'll ask you one um it's okay tom
49:10
um we have an individual who's recently started running again after many years
49:16
and they've realized that they haven't been doing enough pre or post run stretching and they're feeling it um
49:22
in their muscles in tendons and wondering if there's any suggestions you'd have with regard that
49:28
yeah i totally understand um where that person's coming from because i never would have ran myself i would have run
49:34
after rugby ball or a football and did my weight training but i never actually went running until the first
49:39
lockdown uh so um i started running there and i do one run a week sometimes two depending
49:45
on my energy levels but i do i practice yoga uh twice a week sometimes three
49:51
for 20 minutes and there's loads of free resources online and there's a there's a 20-minute yoga
49:57
hit on youtube called runner's yoga so that gets deep into the joints and the muscles and the
50:03
ligaments and that will help you recover from um from running so i highly recommend yoga
50:09
for that one thanks uh nile that's great um david um
50:14
i know he's you touched on you know um the aspect of loneliness um and um the struggle people are having
50:21
working from home at the moment in terms of turning that switch off and just one question i suppose a lot of us
50:27
are working from home and you know this idea of separation so i think we spoke about it
50:32
just before we came on the call the idea that you know a lot of individuals maybe are working their house sharing they're
50:39
you know sleeping and working from one bedroom um and how do you separate that or what would
50:45
your top tip be in ensuring that you're turning off that button yeah look it's a great question and i'm
50:52
sure it's it's a topic for uh of interest for a lot of people right now the way i'd approach that is
51:00
again you're looking at your structure of your day and your timings around okay if you are using a
51:06
suspicious sorry a specific room in the house you know you walk into that room and you walk out of that room the danger sometimes is
51:13
that when it's all into one room so it could be let's say yes you're using a bedroom you wake up
51:19
the first thing you see is going to be your laptop or the computer or the screen and it it's almost calling you oh just i'll just
51:25
flick it on here and i'll see see what's there and right enough there's probably a couple of emails in there so before you know it
51:31
you've answered one you've answered too your routine is already off to a bad start because you're out of your bed you're on
51:37
the laptop you haven't you've gone downstairs to have a breakfast so it's very important and this is where it's
51:42
almost you know there's there's a pool with technology and i know tom kind of mentioned as well
51:47
but if it's right in front of us well then we're going to access it likewise you know if you're downstairs
51:53
and let's say you go into the kitchen and you're using your kitchen table there's a lot of noise in that space
51:59
it's a lot of coming coming and going so people are coming in people are going out and as a result of that you're not
52:04
getting a good flow to your work so you always feel like you're catching up you maybe start an email you stop you
52:10
have a conversation someone's making a cup of tea then you go back to the email where was i suddenly an email that might take five
52:16
minutes has taken 15 20 minutes and what that does is it puts us on the back foot so we always feel like
52:21
we're catching up and we're chasing so to answer your question is it's really important that we create
52:27
that boundary of where do we work in our house you know where is that place that we can seclude ourselves a little bit where
52:33
we're away from distractions and i'm talking about simple things like the tv a radio you know we have good natural
52:39
light we've got good air flow but it's a place that you can go and just literally switch off
52:44
um from the rest of the world if you like and i know that's not an easy thing to do for a lot of people because of
52:50
houses departments and everything like that but you know sometimes and i'll be honest i'll sit down to try and do a bit of
52:55
work but if i'm doing at the kitchen table or if i'm doing it in one of the bedrooms suddenly i'm tidy in the bedroom you know i'm i'm oh that needs a hoover
53:02
oh i should open the window you know i it's it's difficult okay so i'm not saying it's easy but again it's
53:08
becoming a little bit more aware of um i find to be brutally honest i put on earphones and i try and list
53:14
listen to a bit of music a bit of common music and just try and kind of block everything out and get into that sort of zone um is the best
53:21
way but i definitely think it's kind of look at the ergonomics of where you work and that's another key area in terms of
53:26
remote work and that ergonomics about you know your desk your chair your seat your seated position
53:32
uh light air all of these things are very important because if there's any distractions there um working from home they'll grab you so
53:39
just be cognizant of where the laptop is where the computer is in relation to where you sleep where you
53:44
rest where you recover and also where you eat that would be kind of the advice i'll try and give
53:51
brilliant james i see one comment there thanking you for your honesty so thanks very much for that tom question
53:57
for you uh what's the latest recommended time for caffeine is not to disrupt your sleep
54:02
sure okay super uh good question very common question um caffeine acts
54:09
we metabolize caffeine differently depending on your genome so some people can process it very quickly there's a lot of um variants with
54:17
caffeine even from the same coffee machines it can be different amounts of caffeine so in that sense the advice is
54:22
kind of broad and what i mean by that is not more than two to three cops generally not after two to three p.m
54:29
caffeine has what's known as a half-life of about five to nine hours depending on your ability so
54:34
it will take a little bit of investigation from your standpoint i know with myself that after i can't
54:40
like two o'clock two o'clock is my cutoff point uh two to three cups for me that's it if i go over
54:45
that it's going to block the adenosine receptors in my brain and interfere with sleep the sleep mechanism so that's the
54:52
general advice check it out yourself and just to pick up on something that david said there because it was it's actually all circadian rhythm what
54:58
he spoke about is actually getting up the right signals at the right time getting outside
55:04
we need to elicit that strong response and when we sit down to work it we have something called ultradian
55:10
cycles they last about an hour and a half we it takes us 10 minutes to get into something we get into it
55:15
for about an hour and a half and then our level of concentration needs a break and take your breaks and that's all
55:20
about that routine that david spoke about and that's critical uh for productivity
55:25
and for our emotional and mental well-being as well brilliant tom thanks a million guys just
55:31
conscious a time where we want to ensure that we're finishing up at two o'clock so that's
55:36
all the time we have for um questions and answers at the moment i see a lot of questions in the chat box
55:41
asking about the um slide deck and the recording as well um and this is being recorded it will be
55:48
available on the cibd web page um and the slides can be made available to you as well
55:54
i'm going to hand over now to caroline ward our chairperson of the midlands region to close out and again thank you all for
56:01
joining us today and we really hope that you enjoyed at today's event thank you lisa thank
56:07
you and thanks once again to all of our speakers today i think really the level of activity and
56:15
interaction and positive uh feedback in the in the chat box really and speaks to how great an event it was
56:23
today so thank you very much for that i really have to echo as well for all three of you was really great to
56:29
hear and great honesty and and you know matter of fact
56:34
answers to the questions as well and what can be quite a vague area sometimes so uh really great to hear some practical
56:41
advice and honest responses so thank you for that thank you also to our cipd midlands
56:47
region committee and for their um work in pulling together today's event
56:53
and our podcast and our linkedin page and keeping everything going at the moment and through this uh remote period
57:01
particular thanks to lisa mulvey who is dealing with the questions there and the lord agreeing very well
57:07
uh managed and also for organizing the event today so thank you very much for that lisa and
57:14
lots more events coming up over the next while in the um the cipd remote series and from ourselves
57:21
and the other committees on the podcast side as well so please do keep an eye on the cipd
57:27
website and if you remember on your emails as well and i'll just reiterate again if you
57:33
have an interest please do join our cipd midlands ireland linkedin group as well
57:39
and where we share lots of information on what's going on around thank you to all of you as well for your
57:46
attention and being here today i hope you really enjoyed today and that um
57:51
you have some some tools and tips to take back to your desk for the afternoon thanks everyone thank you very much
57:57
thank you very much bye bye
English (auto-generated)