A Practical Tool for Working from Home | READ
Struggling with working from home with kids on e-learning?
Feeling that you are not making any progress anywhere in your life?
Frustrated with the lack of structure and sense of achievement?
By Monday evening of our 2nd week of e-learning I thought my head was going to explode. My kids had been running in and out of my office, my husband (who usually works away 60% of the time) was regularly popping in for a ‘chat’ and I found myself feeling incredibly frustrated that I hadn’t achieved anything.
By Tuesday I had asked my two children to design a traffic light system for my office door. Not only did they then understand the boundaries but because they were in involved in the design they took ownership of the rules too. My husband, for some reason, didn’t think these applied to him too…
By Wednesday I found I had to re-introduce to myself a fabulous, simple, practical tool that I often give to my clients as ‘HomeFun’*. I was feeling overwhelmed and needed to move forward on all my exciting business objectives.
The tool is from Martin Seligman, the forefather of Applied Positive Psychology. In his book Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being he shares a habit that has been used to successfully lift depression and anxiety.
The daily process is called WWW&W.
Every day you need to write down, and actually writing it down is part the success factor,
- 5 things that have gone well for you and very importantly why you think they have gone well
- It has to be 5 different things every day
- It can be small or big achievements
By Thursday as a result of doing this these I found the following personal benefits.
Some of my examples may seem small to you but they felt big to me!
1. What went well
Getting the school e-learning worksheets printed the night before
Why
Felt more organised and had less interruptions during the day
2. What went well
Shared the WWW & W with my children and husband at dinner time
Why
Started sowing the seeds of focusing on the good things in their life and everyone was able to come up with at least one item every day
3. What went well
Completed and really enjoyed my first Zoom MasterMind team training session
Why
Gave myself permission to have fun and play with it . Told myself ‘it’s just an experiment!’
“What you focus on is what you will find”
What are the benefits of adopting this habit?
- Trains your brain to start searching for the good things that are happening
- You feel a sense of achievement
- Ends your day on a high
I have shared this tool with many of my MasterLeaders who are leading teams globally whilst WFH and they are now starting their meetings with a round robin of WWW&W. The feedback has been amazingly positive as it lifts the energy of the conversation and people are realising that they are making progress and achieving something. It also builds connection as it gives the team members insights to what is important to each other.
What a fabulous individual, family, team and organisational habit to build, don’t you think?!
This is a daily habit that I will be continuing and in the meantime,
Stay safe, be kind to yourself and others and know that this too shall pass.
If you’d like to learn more tools like this to help move forward in life and see things in a positive way, get in touch: mary@marybarrett.global.
*Homefun: never homework as you are an adult now and any work you do on your Mindset is invaluable.
