~ : Waltzing Ma-Tilda, Don’t Forget to Dance and Enjoy the Music

September 18, 2017 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

Taking some time out for dancing, singing, and playing or listening to music can help you reclaim your zip. Test-drive new kinds of music and movement from foreign cultures, from another genre, another time period, or from another region. Discovering a new twist to an old favorite is invigorating. Expand your horizons and become acquainted to new types of art, music, theater, and dance to rev up your creative juices.

Besides being great exercise, using large and small muscles and displaying large and fine motor movements, dancing moves the blood carrying much needed oxygen to all parts of the body, helping us think clearer and also get more in tune with our body and our dance partner. Put on some music and let it move your body, turn up the volume and feel the beat resonate through your bones.

I recently took my mom to see The Blue Man Group perform in Las Vegas. This very unique performance involves lots of drumming from huge drums and other percussion instruments played at a very high decibel level. It gets so loud, that the theatre provides earplugs for the audience. The beat of the drums is so intense that you can feel the beat in your heart and it is a truly moving experience.

Music is a terrific energizer or “calmer-downer”. Your heart and your body react to the rhythmic tonality of music with either a strengthening or weakening affect regardless of your opinion and taste in the music. Since our bodies are made up mostly of water, the vibrations of music can affect our moods.

The more strengthening physiological reactions come from classical music from the Baroque period with soothing, flowing instrumentals such as Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Handel. Studies on this “Mozart Effect” have found that students score better on tests after listening to this music and their spatial reasoning performance greatly exceeded similar students who were not either listening or playing Baroque music.

Our brains respond to music of that era because it was created in such an orderly way and our brains respond to order. This music causes the brain to use both of its sides simultaneously because of the symmetry, key relationships, rhythmic pastern contrasts, highs and lows, light and dark, and the way that it was arranged with such organization. Listening to, playing, or singing helps us integrate the left side and the right side of our brains more effectively and thus create more positive energy upon which we can draw. Mental alertness and creativity have been associated with listening to this type of music.

Weakening music includes heavy metal, jazz fusion, or music that has been digitally recorded, because the rhythms are not in alignment with our body’s natural rhythms. It feels more like a machine gun hitting our body than a stroke of a feather. If music soothes the savage beast, just think what it could do to your frazzled nerves, co-workers, kids, angry customers, or pets.

Whether you are listening to it or making it, music affects your entire essence, so choose your music wisely according to your mood, energy level, or need for energy or calmness. Music can be your jumpstart to your new mood. Music on your stereo or in your car with the top down is great, live music is even better. Don’t forget to cut loose once in a while, put on your boogie shoes and cut the rug.

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Four Core Needs of Every Employee

September 23, 2015 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By

The Harvard Business Review interviewed more than 19,000 people, at all levels in companies, across a broad range of industries asking the question of what stands in the way of our being more satisfied and productive at work.

The results were that people feel better and perform better and more sustainably when four basic needs are met:

  1. renewal (physical);
  2. value (emotional);
  3. focus (mental);
  4. and purpose (spiritual).

No big surprises in the answers as this is what I’ve been teaching for decades that when we feel more energized, appreciated, focused and purposeful, then we perform better.  I recently read several articles in Training journals about the importance of play at work and gamification in the learning arena helping workers learn better and having more fun at work improves productivity. Really? They are JUST NOW printing these articles?? Those of us in the Recreation and Training industries have known for many decades that work made fun gets gone and good times lead to good business. Also that laughter and learning go together to improve retention. When we are more fully engaged, present, comfortable, centered and on purpose, we do better all the way around in life.

When we get to rest and renew our energy during the day, we are better able to focus, handle workloads and be creative. One reason to get out of your office over your lunch break. Your brain and your body need a rest so you come back refreshed and renewed.

Feeling valued creates a deeper level of trust and security at work, which frees us to spend less energy seeking and defending our value, and more energy creating it. Having a sense that what we do matters and serves something larger than our immediate self-interest toward our personal purpose which hopefully is aligned with the organizational purpose is a grand source of motivation.

What’s surprising about our survey’s results is how dramatically and positively getting these needs met is correlated with every variable that influences performance. What they found that meeting even one of the four core needs had a dramatic impact on every performance variable in the study. When all four needs are met, the effect on engagement rises from 50 percent for one need, to 125 percent. Engagement, in turn, has been positively correlated with profitability.

You can start with just one core need and add the others as the previous one becomes habit and ingrained in your organizational culture. Only 20 percent of respondents said they were encouraged by their supervisors to take renewal breaks during the day. By contrast, those who were encouraged to take intermittent breaks reported they were 50 percent more engaged, more than twice as likely to stay with the company, and twice as healthy overall. Leaders need to question their outdated assumptions that that performance is best measured by the number of hours employees puts in — and the more continuous the better — rather than by the value they generate.

In a recent interview with Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post empire regarding nap pods she has installed in her organization; she stated that she does not pay her staff for their stamina, she pays them to for their creative brain power and if they are too tired to think, they are not bringing creative ideas to the table. So a renewal nap of 20 minute is certainly worth it in the long run. You can’t argue with that.

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F2: Fun & “F”ectiveness to Improve Your Energy

April 16, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

Fun and effectiveness combine to increase peak performance. Put the FUN back into functional by using unique, everyday items such as color-coded file folders, bubble pens, calligraphy pens instead of typing labels, photos of loved ones, stress toys, humorous recognition cards/awards/coupons, and cartoon calendars. Learning and productivity are enhanced when fun is mixed with effectiveness to generate a creative and enjoyable environment for children and adults alike. It is a proven fact, work made fun gets done and good times lead to good business. Just like sports figures, we can’t sprint non-stop all day and expect to have any energy left over. We must mix in our fun with our effectiveness for peak performance.

Workers are like cows; we produce more when we are content.  Many surveys cite having fun as a top workplace motivator. World-class athletes and entertainers also mention fun as a key factor in the success and enjoyment of their work. Fun is an attitude – seek out the humor in your daily life and cultivate an eye and an ear for humorous alternatives. What are you doing to add more fun into your life? Did you have fun things on your Ideal Day list that was your assignment in the last post? What new, fun things can you add to your life? What have you not yet tried? How can you make your work or your work space more fun? Ruminate on these questions to brainstorm how you can add more fun and effectiveness to your day. To help you keep energized, tune in to more blog posts.

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