By Wellbeing Case Manger, Beaulah Rose

Is it even possible that we are once more at the end of another year? With the new year approaching, we can find that we feel under pressure to put plans in place to do more and do better in the coming year.

The end of the year is a time when we are both focused on the present –  holidays, including celebrations with family, and on the future and all that we want to achieve in the new year. As a result, we can forget to be mindful and reflect on how far we have come.

In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, most of us find ourselves in an endless loop of, ‘what do I need to be doing today?’  Wake up, get yourself (and possibly your family) ready, head off to work, head off to school, work work work, travel home, get home and find yourself swept up in the busyness of the home routine and, by the end of the day, we are exhausted and down on ourselves about everything we couldn’t get to.  There are very few of us who take a moment to pause and evaluate the value we have created in that day and the accomplishments we were able to achieve.  For most, the idea of pausing seems like a task they just don’t have time for. 

But let’s look at the value a moment of pause can bring.  For one, we have the opportunity to give both our minds and bodies a break (sleep is not the only rest we need and, to have good quality sleep, we need the brain to know it can shut down at the end of the day). Secondly, we get to provide our minds with different levels of information.  The first level of information is that we are permitted to take rest, and that it is okay to breathe and get in touch with where we are and who we are.  The second level of information is the insight into what we have been able to do and this provides positive reinforcement which, in the longer term, sustains our self-concept, confidence and level of motivation.  The third level of information, with our endless to-do lists and tasks, is being able to recognise what we have learned.  Too often, we fail to take stock of what we have achieved and what those achievements have taught us and how they have given us the opportunity to grow and master new skills.  When people get stuck and feel they have no options, this information is incredibly important in helping us establish a way forward and in recognising opportunities or alternatives which would alleviate much of the stress associated with feeling stuck.

Allow me to illustrate this with a metaphor of the life cycle of a tree.  Initially, any tree is merely a seed.  The seed’s only job at that point is to be a seed and germinate.  It has its tasks to perform of absorbing water and creating its food, so it has the opportunity to grow further.  Simple right?  But in its ability to recognise that that is all it needs to be, it soon turns into a sapling.  That sapling now has a much larger list of tasks to perform and potentially more risks associated with it not being successful in growing into a tree.  It has not forgotten what it has learned to do when it was a seed, as it needs those basic skills to continue to be able to perform its higher level tasks successfully.  It uses those skills as the foundation to build up new skills so it can thrive.  As the sapling grows, it turns into a tree (which now has even more tasks to perform) but it continues to make use of the functions it has executed well in the past to help it build up and get stronger, so that one day it can bear fruit, have a sold trunk, be resistant to weather and storms, and stand tall and be all that a tree can be.  All that tree needed to do was to be what it needed to be in that moment of its development, have a willingness to continue to grow from its previous chapter in life, and use those baseline functions to be stronger for the next chapter.

So, take a moment to pause and recognise where you are in your life right now.  Consider what is needed of you, what have you done that has brought you to where you are now, what can you make use of from where you are coming from, and what works and what doesn’t.  This is such a rich context of information that will inevitably help you become the tree of your own life.  Because, if you don’t take the moment to recognise all you have built up and do what is needed of you right now, it may be a little more challenging to weather the storms of life.

This Holiday Season you can still access your Wellbeing Services via your Wellbeing Portal or you can contact us here.