Career

This week is Walk to Work Week 2015. The scheme is designed to encourage more people to pound those pavements and get their hearts working and blood pumping, even if it’s just for a week. There are obvious health benefits to taking to the streets rather than being cramped onto the tube or sat in traffic. Living Streets says that walking 1 mile can burn up to 100 calories and walking just 2 miles a day, 3 times a week, can help to reduce your weight by 1lb every 3 weeks. Being more active can reduce the likelihood of you becoming obese or getting diabetes or heart disease.

The Department for Health suggests that adults should be active every day and that each week you should undertake at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity in bouts of 10 minutes or more. A brisk walk to work could save you money on gym membership and on travel costs. It’s a win win situation.

Walking isn’t just good for your health

Fancy arriving at work energised and ready for the day ahead rather than stressed out and fed up? The International Charter for Walking, Walk 21 states: “The more a person walks the better they feel, the more relaxed they become, the more they sense and the less mental clutter they accumulate.” Walking home again can also help you to work off some of the stresses of the day and arrive home feeling more relaxed.

Another of the benefits of walking to work is that you get to live life in the slow lane and actually take in your surroundings. Last year I had to go to London for a course and instead of taking the bus or underground and cutting my journey in half I decided to walk. Granted, I’m not in London every day but I still think that you can always stop to appreciate a city even if you’ve seen it a million times.

Compromise

I do realise it might not be feasible to walk all the way to work, depending on your commute, but you could get off the bus or tube a few stops earlier or perhaps park a little further away. You could also compromise and walk one way. I’m not a morning person so when I was working at the Parliament of Victoria I would get the tram across the city centre in the morning and walk home. Plus it meant I got to browse in Melbourne’s shops on the way back. Always a bonus but one of the main reasons my wages didn’t go very far. Ooops. On the way home you might be less likely to be rushing: on a nice day I certainly enjoy taking a little detour and strolling home rather than walking back the same way I normally go.

So, it’s good for your health, good for your mind and helps you arrive to work raring to go. Are you tempted to don your trainers and walk to work?

Let’s do it!

Of all the things that you think could affect your career, getting enough sleep probably isn’t the first thing that pops into your head. But it turns out that sleep deprivation can not only be bad for your health but not so good for your job prospects either.

Sleep your way to a healthy life?

Not getting the right amount of sleep has been found to be bad for your health. The US-based National Sleep Federation has recently updated its sleep duration recommendations and The Guardian has reported that, “In making their recommendations, the experts [at the National Sleep Federation] took into account the health benefits, but also the risks, associated with sleep. Too little sleep over several nights leaves you tired, unable to concentrate, depressed, anxious and, eventually, if it continues, an increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. Too much sleep is associated with much the same problems.”

Sleeping your way to the top 2.0

If you’re going to progress in your career you’ll want to be at the top of your game. This means being able to concentrate, stay calm under pressure and preferably not yawning during meetings. Travis Bradberry, writing for Forbes, believes that not getting enough sleep could be bad for your career. He lists some of the side effects from missing sleep as:

• Decreased creativity
• Irritability
• Cognitive impairment
• Increased stress
• Memory lapse or loss
• Impaired moral judgement
• Symptoms similar to ADHD

None of these sound conducive to a successful day at the office, do they?

Don’t burn the candle at both ends

It’s easy to suggest making sure you get enough sleep, but what is the magic number? Most adults need 7 – 9 hours of sleep each night. To work out how much you need will probably be a case of trial and error. On a day when you don’t have work in the morning try going to bed when you’re sleepy, rather than fighting it, and don’t set an alarm. Work out how long you slept for and try it again the next night. If you need to get up for work, try setting an alarm just in case. It might take a while before you’ve got it down but eventually you’ll hopefully be able to work in tune with your own body clock and you can wave goodbye to mornings of being rudely awoken by your alarm.

Not fighting your tiredness is easier said than done. Hell, I’m doing it right now. You might think it’s more productive to stay up into the early hours to do more work but more often than not this is actually counterproductive. Make sure you get enough sleep so that you’re ready and raring to go in the morning. A company I really admire is Buffer. One of their values is live smarter, not harder; they want their team members to ‘value waking up fresh over working that extra hour’. Buffer understands the need for rest and relaxation.

It’s your responsibility to look after your health. If making sure you get sufficient shut-eye is going to help stop you from succumbing to diabetes, high blood pressure, etc, then what’s to lose?

Do you have any relaxation tips? What’s your favourite way to unwind and get ready for sleep? Tell us in the comments below.

Tomorrow’s prompt for the Blog Every Day in May challenge is ‘guilty pleasures’. Come back tomorrow to find out what mine are.

There’s always that woman that walks into the room and just oozes confidence. She looks amazing and you want to be her. Don’t worry, me too.

Having a lack of self confidence could be holding you back from living your dream. Do you put off applying for that dream job job for fear of failure? Building your belief in yourself could open doors for you and help you become the person you want to be.

I’m not preaching from up high on this one. I’ve got a long way to go when it comes to my own confidence and esteem issues. My head is usually filled with negative thoughts that cloud my judgement. I try to second guess what everyone thinks about me and it’s usually negative. So I’m along for the journey on this one. Let’s do this together.

Take risks

As Richard Branson once said, “Life is a helluva lot more fun if you say yes rather than no”. When an opportunity arises to try something new, whether it’s going to a Clubbercise class, a work trip abroad or moving to a new city, ask yourself ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’

Yes, you could hate it and wish you’ve never tried it but what could you learn from the experience? Perhaps you’ll learn that your knees can’t cope with jumping up and down for 45 minutes to club tunes, but chances are you’ll feel better for trying. I’d rather have given something a go than regret saying no.

When I was 20 years old I worked as a travel agent. I’d only been there for 4 months when I was given the opportunity to go on an educational trip to Majorca. I was going to spend five days with people I’d never met before, including sharing a room with a girl who was a total stranger. I could have said no and pass on the opportunity. Instead, I got the train by myself to Manchester, I ate in a restaurant alone for the first time, and I met some lovely people who were all in the same boat as me and we had a great time.

That experience really boosted my confidence and helped me to realise what I was capable of.

Dress the part

I’m all for women dressing how they want. Hell, I spend most of my life living in jeans, trainers and a tshirt. But it’s interesting how you can feel more confident wearing certain clothes. For me it’s heels. I can’t wear heels for very long so I don’t wear them very often but when I do I turn into Dave from the Moneysupermarket advert. Heels make you strut your stuff down the pavement. Probably best not to twerk a random passerby though.

Choose clothes that make you feel epic good about yourself. If you feel more confident in a certain outfit you’re going to project this and look more confident.

Change your body language

Certain postures and behaviours can make you look and feel less confident. Having hunched shoulders, looking down and generally contracting your body inwards can make you look defensive. Conversely, if you hold yourself “in an expansive pose”, according to Harvard Business School research it gives you a feeling of power and dominance and displays these attributes to others.

So next time you’re in a situation that’s outside your comfort zone, such as at a networking event, stand tall, relax your shoulders and smile. And remember what this diva has to say:

Set yourself a challenge

Challenge yourself to step outside your comfort zone. Give yourself targets to achieve so your success is measurable. Practising things that you aren’t confident doing and then realising you can actually complete the tasks is a huge confidence booster. A lack of self confidence is often down to a lack of self belief. You don’t believe you can do something and that’s what you tell yourself so don’t even try.

Setting yourself small challenges can help you to build up to the bigger goal. Hate using the phone? Challenge yourself to ringing up and ordering your next takeaway, or call the hairdressers and make an appointment rather than doing it all online.

If you don’t like going to networking events – book to go to one and then set yourself a little competition to see if you can collect at least 5 business cards. Then at your next event, try to beat your record.

By achieving these smaller goals you’re proving to yourself that you can do it. Practise and then practice some more.

Pretend

If you can’t make it, fake it. Remember that confident girl who came in and rocked the room at the beginning? For all you know, it’s all an act. Inside she might be quivering but she’s pretending to be confident and she’s winning.

Create a character that is yourself but the confident you who doesn’t care what people think of her. She’s doing it for herself and she’s living her dream life. How does your character dress? How does she act at parties? Put yourself in her shoes and be her. Putting on a facade might seem a bit fake but it could be the means to actually becoming that person.

So ladies, becoming more self confident probably isn’t going to happen overnight. But by thinking about how you present yourself, saying yes to things you’d normally avoid and acting like the person you want to be, it might just happen. Next time you go to a meeting with an important client or go to a interview for theI’m going to address my wardrobe and create a charity bag of clothes that do nothing for my self esteem. What one thing are you going to do this week that will help you get one step closer to feeling more confident? Tell me in the comments below.