by Tracy Bevan | October, 2023 | Tracy Bevan
Listen to the audio version of this article. Journeys are best begun with an initial reconnaissance. We want to get our bearings, check out what supplies we have in our backpacks, decide on a destination. A self-development journey is no different and learning more about our strengths is an excellent starting point because they are the foundations on which we can start to build greater self-awareness. Today, as I started out on a fresh adventure with a new client I reminded myself why. Why Start With Strengths? At the start of a coaching relationship, hope is high but trust has yet to be built. Your client might be nervous, wondering what they’ve signed themselves up for. I am asking them about some broad concepts; Zest, Honesty, Bravery, any one of Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) 24 character strengths. The client is new to this work and I can tell they’re not sure. How will becoming aware of their strengths benefit them, what can this knowledge offer? Well, to begin with, strengths are a great place to start a conversation. A way into the stories we hold about ourselves. It helps the client notice the lens they are holding up to their lives and in turn builds self-knowledge and understanding. It also provides a language with which to discuss our drivers and interests. It helps us name our choices and see the threads that have guided our decisions all through our lives, even when we didn’t realise it. Humour, one of my top strengths, helped me recognise the truth of this. Seeing The Funny Side I had always...
by Tracy Bevan | August, 2023 | Health, Tracy Bevan
By the time you get to your 40s and 50s you think you have a pretty good handle on who you are, then along comes menopause and everything can get turned on its head. It is a time in life that often involves considerable external pressures so it may not be obvious that hormones are playing a part in how you are feeling. Caring for aging parents, dealing with children, work, relationships; there are so many reasons to be sleepless, tired and overwhelmed. We don’t always stop to consider ‘oh, this could be a menopause symptom.’ For me, I was left questioning my identity, not just because I was aging but because mood swings could leave me wondering who I really was. Something I took in my stride one day could cause a melt down on another, so which was the real me? It isn’t always comfortable to realise that our reactions are dictated by the presence or absence of hormones, we believe in our stories – my manager made me cross, a late train made me anxious. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t sit well with our minds. When the outside world doesn’t match up with how we feel on the inside, it searches for explanations, and we invest a lot of effort into finding things to blame for our difficult feelings. But all women go through menopause, what’s the big deal? It’s true, menopause will happen, and some sail through with few complaints. Some find it a difficult time without ever realising why and many simply put up and shut up because our health has never been that high...
by Tracy Bevan | June, 2023 | Tracy Bevan
Asking For What You Need Boundaries are not all about saying no to what we don’t want, equally important can be asking for the things we do, but that doesn’t always feel comfortable or easy. So how to do it? The answer is straightforward, you just have to practice, and it will feel unnatural to start with because you may have spent most of your life doing the exact opposite. Spend some time digging deeper because if you can uncover the reasons for an established behaviour this can be a great catalyst to support change. If you grew up in a family with strong opinions, or strong opinions on particular topics, then a sensible coping mechanism for managing the dynamic would be to take yourself out of the equation. Your own desires are something you have some control over, so by discounting your own opinion there is one less person in the mix, making family life easier to negotiate. Added bonus – if you don’t speak out, you save yourself the disappointment of being overruled! Time To Move On That’s all well and good as you start out in life, families can be tough for the gentle soul, but as a grown up these behaviours are not always the most useful. They can land us in difficulties as we try to negotiate adult relationships including the relationship we have with ourselves. That inner voice can be crying out to be heard but we’ve learnt to stop listening. After years of not expressing our needs we can simply lose the ability to discern what we actually want. We create so...
by Tracy Bevan | March, 2023 | Health, Tracy Bevan
The world moves so quickly. It’s not surprising that our minds and bodies can sometimes struggle to keep up. Evolution takes a long time. A really long time. We often forget because our brains are wonderfully plastic and constantly adapting but some parts still remember the stone ages like it was yesterday! Whilst we are capable of assimilating new information at a fantastic pace, the area of our brain that was used to dealing with ‘that shadow looks like a bear’ can find it hard to interpret messages. The input becomes conflated and distorted, from ‘nice headphones’ to ‘everyone else has those headphones’ to ’if I don’t get those new headphones I’m in trouble’. We are left on high alert, our senses primed for danger, watching for the threat our brain tells us is out there. Stress Is Normal We don’t always notice the daily stressors we encounter because they are a constant low buzz in the background but coming out of lockdown offered me occasional moments of clarity. I noticed the discomfort created by motorway rush hour traffic or being back in an office. These things generate a strain on the nervous system and require some effort, heightening our stress response system. Let me be clear, these are not bad things. We were born for stress, effort and challenge, they fire us up and teach us skills. The problem comes when we stop acknowledging stress and forget to do the things that help us come back down again afterwards. Without the self-awareness it also gets harder to connect the resulting anxiety with its origin. Balancing The...
by Tracy Bevan | February, 2023 | Tracy Bevan, Work
Acknowledging the value of staff wellbeing has come a long way in the last few years. The pandemic bought the topic into sharp relief and did much to convert policies into practical action. There was a genuine need to check in with isolated employees to make sure they were OK. If a colleague asked ‘How are you doing?’ it was a real question not a social nicety, and it felt like a safe space to say ‘Actually, I’m finding this really hard’. Because we all suffered to some degree, the global experience of Covid did much to narrow the divide between the, generally, mentally healthy and those who have experience of mental ill-health. The ‘us and them’ distinction at the root of stigma diminished. Mental Health and Mental Ill Health It’s a strange by-product of the disease model of mental health that we define our mental wellbeing in the negative. We refer to our ‘mental health’ when we are actually talking about ‘mental ill health’. In fact, mental wellbeing is much more than the absence of mental illness, and it can be helpful to think of them as two different constructs, not opposites on the same continuum (Cheavens et al., 2006). To use an analogy with our physical health; when we break a bone or have high blood pressure, we go to the doctor with the goal of getting it fixed but we are aware that the most important aspect of managing our physical health is the day to day maintenance; exercising, eating well, good sleep and so on. It’s this regular effort that keeps us healthy. Likewise,...
