How Mindfulness can help with the stress and anxiety of what we are dealing with right now

October 26, 2022 Penny Metcalf

This month I wrote a guest blog for Sophisticated Cloud:

“Day in, day out we are being bombarded by information which is inevitably increasing our anxiety levels. There is uncertainty around the economic stability of the country and also of our own personal finances. There is growing concern about fuel prices, interest rates and increased prices in general. Further away there are mutterings about Putin and nuclear weapons, closer to home there is political incohesion.

It is this lack of certainty and the fear of what might happen next which is responsible for much of the increase in anxiety and stress. This is where mindfulness can help. Mindfulness is about becoming more aware of what is going in your mind and being able to manage it better. This can help us to respond more calmly to stressful situations. The human mind is continually wandering. It has been wired to continually risk assess and check for danger. This was to ensure the survival of the species but now it is what is bringing us down.

As our mind tends to wander onto any risks so that we can prepare for them to keep us safe, we inadvertently add to our already stressful lives by focussing on what might go wrong, or what has gone wrong in the past. Mindfulness teaches us the ability to spot this mind wandering and makes us more able to bring the focus back to the present.

When we are able to control the mind’s natural urge to wander onto the negative, we are more able to get things done and to stay calm.”

Read more here:

https://www.sophisticatedcloud.com/all-blogs/how-can-mindfulness-help-with-the-stress-and-anxiety-of-what-we-are-dealing-with-right-now

How to change what you need to change, with Mindfulness. Learn how to focus on work at work and how to switch off at night

May 19, 2021 Penny Metcalf

Take a few moments out to think about what you would like to change and how you are going to do it. Many people are telling me that working from home has meant that they feel less able to switch off from work in the evenings and at night.

Mindfulness and meditation can be immediately useful for this. Both mindfulness and meditation enable us to increase our ability to focus and also to be aware of what is going on in our minds. Meditation allows us a few minutes each day to focus on this alone. Mindfulness practices give us the chance to put this into action in every life. The combination of these two things in what enables us to develop the ability to focus better both at home and at work. We become more able to manage distractions, whether those are external, like your emails pinging, or internal, like your mind whirring at 3 am.

Can small things make a big difference?

February 1, 2021 Penny Metcalf

This is Children’s Mental Health Week and I thought maybe we could use it to share some ideas on what we can do to help our young people and their mental health in lockdown. There are some frightening statistics coming out around the impact that lockdown is having on young people and their mental health. I am not going to dwell on the figures, which are depressing in themselves but it’s true to say that the majority are struggling and girls appear to be suffering more than boys. Let's talk about what is going on and what we can do to help them.

This year’s theme is ‘Express Yourself’ which is about finding ways to share feelings, thoughts and ideas creatively - through art, music, writing etc. This sounds ambitious to a mum of teenagers reluctant to express themselves at a basic level, let alone anything more intimate. However for those with younger, or more expressive, kids there are free resources at https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk/

Time to Talk Day is this Thursday. This is about finding new initiatives around talking, or listening, in a way that makes conversations about mental health a little bit easier. Sometimes just starting the conversation is all that is needed but that start seems impossible for some. This year the theme is ‘the power of small’. The idea is that very small gestures can make a huge difference to someone.

People of all ages are reluctant to talk about their mental health for a variety of reasons. Now more than ever is the time to try to make a difference, to make these discussions more open and more viable. Right now the majority of us are struggling in one way or another. This is the week to reach out to someone.

I have heard recently that just asking, “How are you?”, followed by “How are you really?”, can be a big help. We all respond automatically that we are fine but sometimes we need permission to not be fine. In helping others we help ourselves. In revealing our own weaknesses, we allow others theirs.

So what can we do for ourselves and for our young people this week?

1 We can ask “How are you really?”. We can suggest different ways of expressing this. This could be through art or writing or teenagers might like to tell us via emojis.

2 We can try to do one thing a day for our mental and physical health and share this with the young people and share with them why we are doing it, and allow them to find their own version.

3 Through trial and error over lockdown, I am now encouraging my young people to have some contact with someone else outside the house each day. That could be a dog walk - or it could be the xbox - compromises have to be made!

4 I also found this lightbox, many teenage girls will have received them as birthday presents over the years and many will have been forgotten about and left to collect dust. We have dusted ours off and are writing a little positive affirmation each week to help keep the mind on track. This is this week’s - “Believe in yourself”. It’s a small gesture but maybe that is what we can offer as parents, with young people who automatically think we know very little and understand less, maybe the best thing we can do it to make many small attempts to make a difference

5 I am encouraging some sort of physical activity a day whether that is a short run, climbing a tree or a few pull ups.

Anything is better than nothing. I am going for “the power of small”. If we start small, it makes everything less overwhelming and far more possible to do something. And doing something is surely the most important thing, no matter how small.

Cats, mice, Covid and lockdown in 2020

November 23, 2020 Penny Metcalf

The cat is very cute when it is asleep but when it is awake it succumbs to its natural instincts.

Why is this relevant to mindfulness? One of the benefits of practising mindfulness is to be able to respond calmly to unexpected events, rather than react negatively. This ability to respond calmly was tested this morning as a small mouse ran, repeatedly, towards my feet while I was teaching mindfulness online. My feet moved out of its way, but my face remained calm, as my brain flicked through all the options - and where the mouse trap might be!

As the cat is keen to bring its mouse friends home to play with so it was inevitable that this would happen at some point. It made me smile because I have not always been able to handle these small furry creatures quite so calmly.

And why is all this relevant to everyone and everything in 2020? Because almost everything that has happened this year has been unexpected and out of our control. From the shock of the first lockdown in March 2020 to the ongoing uncertainty that still surrounds all of our plans for the festive season and the end of the year, it is the unknown and the lack of control that has contributed to our increased sense of anxiety and stress.

The Role of Mindfulness in The New Normal of 2020

September 27, 2020 Penny Metcalf

This is a chapter that I wrote for a book called “The New Normal: How COVID-19 Changed Us”, which is available on Amazon. It is about how the lockdown impacted on me and my business and how I found that mindfulness and mindful running helped to deal with the sudden changes and the lack of control we have over this situation.

As the second wave begins and anxiety is increasing, so is the importance of mindfulness and managing our stress levels.

Contact me for more details about how this can help you.

Supermarket Stress - Bringing kindness and calm to click and collect

June 3, 2020 Penny Metcalf

I went to the supermarket today in Basingstoke to attempt my first click and collect. I asked someone who was waiting how it worked and she explained that there was a big delay and the usual system had collapsed. She was peeved. I was still lost. I didn’t know what I had to do to fit into the usual system let alone the overloaded one. Once I had explained this, she explained that I should get a number and sit in the car for a while until the food turned up, which, she explained with some exasperation, could be some time.

'Oh well’ I said, ‘It's still better than trekking round the whole shop isn't it?'. She looked surprised and replied, 'Well done for finding a positive to the situation, I'm just used to it happening fast.' I laughed, 'Well, firstly I teach mindfulness, but secondly that explains why you're annoyed and I'm not - you have the expectation of this happening fast, but I have no expectation at all. So for me this can only get better - in the future it'll be a nice surprise when I don't have to wait in the car for an hour'. That made her smile a bit so I went to sit in the car and chat to my daughter and take a phone call and pass the time.

It was sunny but not too sunny. We had a chat, I took a phone call from an old friend and we listened to some music. Then our order was ready and we got out to load up the car. As I looked around I saw that there were a lot of angry and frustrated people. They were standing with arms folded and faces scowling.

It made me realise, you can wait in fury or you can wait with calm. It'll still be an hour. I expect it feels like longer if you go for the fury option. That's probably what I would have done in the past. I have years of experience of that sort of thing. As part of the mindfulness course we teach mindful queuing to help prevent this. Today it didn't occur to me to feel stressed. There was no option other than to wait so we waited, and we made the best of it.

I am guessing that they were short staffed or had some sort of hitch. The people who were there were certainly doing all that they could. We have all been there haven’t we? Surely at some point everyone has been behind a screen that wasn’t working or trying to cover for colleagues who weren’t there.

I imagine that we have all taken the brunt of someone else’s anger for something that we weren’t remotely responsible for. So now is the time to stop passing this on to other people. It is the time to accept when things are beyond our control, or their control, and to acknowledge when people are doing their best in a difficult situation.

We had been happy in the car but outside the atmosphere was tense. The staff apologised many times for the delay. I said repeatedly, 'That's fine really, it doesn't matter at all', because with everything else that's going on at the moment, today, for us, it really didn't matter. I smiled at them all and said thank you. They looked very surprised, and grateful, maybe, that one customer wasn’t cross.

That's something we can all do to help though isn't it? Services are pressed, staff are absent, ill, sheltering etc. What we can do is try to be as kind as we can to as many people as we can