Why improve productivity?
Improving productivity allows us to achieve more with less. We often think of this as achieving more financial benefit with less of the organization’s financial resources. There is also great opportunity to achieve more with less of our personal resources.
Think for a moment of the time and/or energy that goes in to building our personal resources: exercise; healthy eating; sleep and others. Significant energy expenditure in order to build our personal resources to have energy available to spend on work – which affords us the money to build our personal resources (hopefully with some to spare for enjoyment). When we learn to be more efficient in expending energy, we don’t require as much work to build our personal resources.
What is stuck in the word ‘should’.
As we go through our day, notice the thought patterns that occur. I ‘should’ leave the office now so that I can get to the gym. I ‘should’ make time to pick up groceries so I can have a healthy lunch. My boss ‘should’ know that the demands are too high so that I can get proper rest. In many cases, we don’t make it to the gym or the grocery store and we fail to effectively communicate that the demands are too high. The ‘shoulds’ continually operate as background noise, to which our body continually responds with thoughts, emotions and sensations that consume our energy and drains our personal resources. These thoughts, emotions and sensations are the reactions that we associate with mental and physical health issues. We feel worry, frustration, burnout, tension headaches and many other symptoms – all in reaction to the way things ‘should’ be but are not.
How to improve productivity.
Think of getting stuck with your car. The common reaction is to step on the gas. And what happens? We spend significant energy and we dig a bigger hole. When we pause to notice what is going on, we can create space to think about the issue and identify a solution.
The same thing happens in everyday life. We get stuck in a thought about how things ‘should be’ and the greater the dissonance between reality and our beliefs, the more energy we consume in trying to change things. We can learn to notice the reactions associated with the ‘shoulds’ in our everyday life and use these reactions as information.
Logosynthesis® is the preferred tool to support this work. The guided change process uses the reaction as information to identify, isolate and neutralize the perceptual triggers to shift energy that is frozen in beliefs, attitudes and memories. As we learn to neutralize our reactions, we can create space to think about the reality of the situation. Rather than getting stuck in the habitual patterns, we can more effectively think about the situation for a broader perspective to lead change.
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The power of ‘should’ is strong. It is often not the belief that is wrong but the reaction to the belief consumes a great deal of energy, in turn impacting health. To learn more about how you can improve productivity by resolving reactions to the word ‘should’, sign up.