Watershed Solutions Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Wendy Woods’

We: How to Increase Performance and Profits through Full Engagement

Author: Rudy Karsan and Kevin Kruse

Date: January 24, 2011

Pages: 236

“We live in a new era where work and life are blended as opposed to balanced, entitlements are a thing of the past, and job satisfaction is at a record low. This is a crisis for individuals because negative emotions at work spill over to our personal lives and cross over to those around us.” – Rudy Karsan

The book We: How to Increase Performance and Profits through Full Engagement provides relevant and actionable tips on how leaders can inspire immediate personal and organizational growth through interactive exercises, videos and anecdotes. Karsan and Kruse inform readers of the great impact engagement can have on a company’s financial performance that is validated from findings of over 10 million worker surveys, as well as their personal experiences as leaders of emerging companies.

Here are their fundamentals for driving employee engagement and your bottom line

1. Growth: Employees need to feel that they are advancing in their careers or learning new things
2. Recognition: Employees need to feel appreciated and believe that their ideas count
3. Trust: Employees need to trust senior leaders and feel confident about the future

The reality is that stress is an inevitable part of life. However, the key to living a more balanced life is to manage stress so it doesn’t manage you as opposed to trying to eliminate it completely.

Here is a quick Watershed Training Solutions Stress Busting strategy:

Take 10 Slow Deep Breaths - Why? Breathing is one of the easiest systems to control in order to relax (Dr John Mason, Guide to Stress Reduction). Close your door or put on a headset so your colleagues won’t be disturbed. Close your eyes. Take 10 deep slow breaths where the exhalation is longer than each inhalation. As you breathe, make sure your abdomen fills up like a balloon when you inhale and sinks in when you exhale. Very quickly you will feel more relaxed and able to refocus.

Enjoy this tip? Check out our sample e-book Stress Busters: Simple Strategies in 3 Minutes or Less to gain access to 35 proven strategies for dealing with life’s ups and downs!

Click Here

In July I wrote about the importance of meditation as a way of managing stress.  Meditation has been proven to have many benefits in addition to stress relief which are listed below. I hope these benefits help convince you to give meditation a try.

You don’t need to become a Buddhist monk or move to India to start meditating.  You can start with as little as 5 minutes a few times a week and gradually increase your time.  There are also guided meditations to help make your introduction an easy one.  If you’re interested in our Meditation for Non Meditators Program, email us at info@watershedtraining.ca.

• Meditation boosts the immune system (Stein, J. (2003) The Science of Meditation, TIME Magazine)

• Meditation controls high blood pressure at levels comparable to widely used prescription drugs and without the side effects of drugs (Hypertension, AMA Medical Journal)

• Meditators were able to reduce chronic pain by more than 50% even 4 years after completing an 8-week training course (Jon Kabat-Zinn, M.D. Stress Reduction Clinic, University of Massachusetts)

• Meditation may slow aging. A study found that people who had been meditating for more than five years were biologically 12 – 15 years younger than non-meditators (International Journal of Neuroscience, 1992)

• Meditation can relieve many arthritis symptoms, such as pain, anxiety, stress and depression, as well as ease the fatigue and insomnia associated with fibromyalgia (Arthritis Foundation)

• Meditation reduces the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (State University of New York, 2001)

• Meditation offsets the sluggishness of sleep deprivation better than a nap (University of Kentucky)

• Meditation increases in empathy (University of Wisconsin, 2008)

• Meditators notice more, but react more calmly than non-meditators to emotionally arousing stimuli (The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation, Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1997).

• Reduces chronically depressed patients relapse rate by half (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2000)

Give meditation a try and see what benefits you experience from this ancient practice.

P.S. If you aren’t sure where or how to start, email us info@watershedtraining.ca and we’ll help you start this amazing practice.

Note: Ask us about our new stress management e-book Stress Busters in 5 Minutes or Less