💡 5 Ideas to Bring the Best of Teams Across Time Zones

💡 5 Ideas to Bring the Best of Teams Across Time Zones

When it comes to leading global calls, it’s hard to fathom what it’s like on the other end of the call, if you haven’t had the distinct pleasure of living in their world, walking a mile in their shoes, and understanding the hoops they jump through each day to be a connected, contributing, collaborative team member.  I remember the fun we had as an Asia Pacific regional leadership team, preparing a video for a quarterly global call, that showed clips of each of us taking routine midnight calls, and the unique things we did to keep ourselves focused & awake: taking the call in a closet so not to disturb sleeping family, sealed with a fresh a mud mask and cool cucumber eye pads, meditating to background sounds of Tibetan singing bowls, yoga poses to keep present in the moment, and multiple shots of espresso and hits of sugary snacks.  Our team did our best to paint the picture of what calls were like in the “unfriendly time zone.”  Humorous as it was at the time bonding over similar experiences, there was a shared sense of frustration of being disadvantaged; the ability to present, contribute, debate, and bring our best selves to represent our region was limited on midnight calls.  Not just a global dilemma, with lines between work and home now blurred working from home for the past 10 months, it’s now our new reality globally, and more imperative to succeed as teams for the long haul.

Many articles in the public domain talk about ways to deal with this, but there’s no silver bullet.  We live in a global world, multi-national teams, spread across so many time zones that there’s not an ideal way to ensure everyone can participate when their brains are at their best.  That said, I’ve revisited this topic through my neuroscience lenses, and conversations with many globally remote leaders, sharing practical ideas that might help us all come a little closer to creating a more compassionate, inclusive and collaborative environment in a 7×24 world, while simultaneously developing and elevating all members and accelerating team performance.

 

  1. Cultivate a Culture of Empathy & Compassion: Empathy is the art of putting yourself in another’s shoes, with intention to understand their perspectives, feelings and comes from the emotion centers of the brain. Compassion, different from empathy, steps back from the emotions, comes from the cognitive center of the brain, and allows us to filter the emotions to guide us to better actions. With compassion we are able to turn empathy outward with intention to help; choosing consciously to benefit each individual and team through reflections, discussions and decisions that improve the team’s ability to collaborate and communicate.  To elevate above our unconscious biases, judgments and agendas, we must be able to understand how and why others think and feel the way they do.  When considering your globally dispersed team, have you taken the time to truly get to know each member, and how are you synthesizing this information to bring them together in ways that allows each member to bring their best self forward to contribute?

🌟 Tips:  Get to know your team members and what helps/hinders their contribution to virtual team: 

  • Walk a Mile in My Shoes: Learn what it is like to live their daily life and let them share ideas & solutions that would help them to best contribute to the team. Ask open ended questions that allow them to share what the ideal conditions for them are to participate in virtual team calls and allow them to share their experience through their eyes.  You may just discover some of the following considerations:
    • The physical environment they are in may inhibit their participation – inconsistent internet, sufficient power-supply, taking calls from or is it family shared space, or a sub optimized space like a closet, garage or outdoors to minimize disruptions, are others sleeping and concerned about disruption?
    • They are living a zoom-a-thon nightmare. Besides your team call, they have other calls piling on off-hour calls throughout the week.
    • Perhaps they prefer late night, early morning calls and it suits the rest of the team well?
    • Trying balance work/life with the current call demands are compromising their ability to show up well; perhaps they are living with extended family, or the sole provider needing to home school, cook, get the kids ready for bed, caring for aging parents requiring their attention during the time you have your calls.
    • Is “your workday” meeting actually requiring them to attend on their weekend, or local country holiday?
    • Does daylight savings time in some countries cause significant issues for part of the year?
    • Is there something significant happening in their country, city that impacts them; be aware of the environment and stressors they are operating amongst.
  • Reframe: Knowing what you have learned about each team member, how can you reimagine and reset your meeting time, format, to support the ability of each team member to participate and contribute fully? 
  • Invite Solutions: Acknowledge with the team that one solution will not meet everyone’s needs and invite them for ideas to allow everyone to participate fully.  Facilitate a video break out where 2 individuals get to know each other better in each breakout, what helps/hinders their participation, and they come up with barriers to solve for and ideas to share back with the full group.  This humanizes the needs across the group and empowers the team to solution ways forward.
  1. Build a Foundation of Psychological Safety and Authentic Conversations: Neuroscience teaches us that when people are in a “reward emotional state” we can see more options, choices, opportunities and take in more information. When we feel threatened, we move into an “threat emotional state” and experience fear, anger, frustration, confusion and pain, our ability to see options, choices, opportunities and receive information is limited.  Have you played the icebreaker game of learning a few things about another person in a meeting and sharing out about that person later with the broader group?  It’s a skill to put others at ease, hold space in the moment, intent to listen, appreciate, and capture what they’re saying, how and why they’re feeling as they do; hear their story and hold no agenda or judgement but absorb and represent exactly what that person has shared with you.  We all want to be listened too, to have our feelings acknowledged.  Creating and holding space helps to disarm fear, build trust, engage and create an environment that brings out the best individually.  How are you helping to facilitate authentic conversations in your remote team calls?

🌟 Tips:  Modeling good behaviors and techniques helps reinforce authentic and inclusive virtual calls.  I recall trip to India, I saw a sign posted on a wall read, “Good Behaviors are Noticed and Copied by Others.”

  • Be Present: Turn off beeping, buzzing, flashing devices so you are focused. Notice non-verbal expressions and gestures; be truly focused in the moment on the person you are conversing with.  Resist the urge to multi-task, people sense it even if they can’t see you; and look at the screen, not at your phone.
  • Positive Levity: Start calls with a light icebreaker – each person sharing one accomplishment they’re most proud of (personal or professional).  This helps move the individual into a positive, reward state of mind, and creates a level of shared permission to participate within the group from the start.
  • Silence is Golden: Get comfortable with it, allow others to fill the space, actively listen and reflect back what you’ve heard.
  • All About Them: Make the conversation about the other person, focus on their feelings (not yours).  Check in in advance or follow up after 1:1 to help a remote member feel connected.  How can you make the meeting a better experience for them, and ensure the team benefits from their perspectives and contribution?
  • Clear the Space: A technique of naming the emotion buzzing around in one’s mind.  Name it, state it, set it aside.  This helps to clear the space and allow the individual to move beyond the distraction to focus forward.
  • Every Voice Matters: Set the intention, and make it known you want to hear from everyone.  Use polling, surveys chat functions, and inclusive facilitation: HBR Article on pros/cons of different techniques.  https://hbr.org/2020/08/how-to-foster-psychological-safety-in-virtual-meetings.
    • Use break out groups of 2 or three individuals ensure more participants actually speak – report out and represent to the bigger group
    • Have team members use celebration (clap, thumbs up function) when others share an idea; positive reinforcement for speaking up boosts confidence and puts our brain in a toward state.
    • Begin the call with each person stating an emotion they want to clear before the call, tamps down the limbic system. End of the call, state one word around how you are feeling after the call, creates shared space to be vulnerable and share emotions.  How does this compare to where people were in the beginning of the meeting?
    • Actively moderate your virtual calls, ensuring all have the chance to speak, express their views, and role modeling acknowledging their participation and ideas. This creates a safe space for others to be vulnerable and share.
  • Create Space: Ask open ended questions and facilitate the team to ideate the way forward; be open to and recognize new and different solutions.  HBR Article shares ideas for opening up vulnerability and sharing: https://hbr.org/2019/04/make-your-meetings-a-safe-space-for-honest-conversation
  1. Foster Allyship: Creating a culture of shared accountability for success and support across a globally distributed team can cultivate deeper compassion, empathy, trust, collaboration, not to mention a far more holistic perspective of the business and the diverse set of customers you support for each team member. Building a community of allies that are accountable to recognize and represent the diversity of opinions in the group and support each other can reduce actual and perceived status barriers between different levels/seniority team members and stigmas sometimes associated with roles at corporate, regional and local levels.

🌟 Tips:  Create an all for one, one for all “one team” culture.  Understand, appreciate, and authentically represent another’s perspective.  We’re more likely to participate when we know others have our back and want to see us succeed.

  • Buddy Up: Appoint shared pairings of individuals to represent another that can’t attend the meeting to collect inputs and feedback in advance of the meeting and share output through 1:1 follow-up after the meeting.
  • Musical Chairs: Rotate that appointment for each meeting facilitates greater shared understanding and perspective across the team and for the individuals tasked with having the pre-meeting conversation; your team becomes far more integrated, with a broad and more diverse and inclusive perspective.
  • Share Outside the Box: Create breakouts in the virtual meeting 1:1 to share, discuss and integrate diverse ideas, with each person needing to report out the other’s needs, input, perspectives.
  • Instant Replay: Technology can be our ally.  Record the video call so team members can see how their feedback was represented by their ally; creates sense of accountability and builds trust when seeing allyship in action.
  • Thrive Asynchronously: Project teams can record their own segments presenting their portions of project plans for teams to review and provide feedback via teams. While live debate is valued, differentiating and prioritizing what must be discussed live and what can be worked on in parallel allows the ability to tap full global potential of the team.
  • Times Up, Stand Up: Take a stand for others during the meeting, ensure their voice, their ideas are heard and understood; more ideas that are shared and understood create a better solution.  Modeling this can create a positive movement.
  • Trip the Wire: We are wired to hear the negative. Model and encourage others to call out great ideas, supporting team behaviors, and breathe a little love, light into each person – that does of oxytocin puts the individual and others in a reward state.
  1. Allow Space for Autonomy: Neuroscience shows that having a degree of choice and ability to control our day helps to move us from threat state to a more engaged reward state. When we understand what makes each person tick, we can allow for highly relevant choice, allowing better adapt, compromise and show flexibility.  This is especially important now with work-from-home encroaching on our ability to establish a semblance of normalcy within an unpredictable pandemic, while managing and balancing professional and personal intersects throughout the day.

🌟 Tips: Enabling opportunity for choice and igniting empowerment.

  • Share the Love: pleasure & pain.  Drawing the short end of the stick for an unfriendly meeting time all the time can cause burnout, misunderstanding, disengagement and resentment.  Rotate meeting times on a set schedule that can be planned for in advance.  Let the team come up with what this looks like.
  • I Bend So I Don’t Break: Provide flexibility for individuals to reframe their workday to adjust to odd hour meetings, with flexible day time to reserve for balancing personal activities.  Instilling trust that we are all responsible for delivering to each other, and that how this happens during the day might look a little different for each of us, especially during times of lock down.
  • Give Permission: Allow for the ability to opt in or opt out of specific meetings, without repercussion or judgement.  Your words matter.  How you respond to the request before, during the meeting in front of the team and after the meeting sends messages that it’s ok.  Don’t assume each person understands what that means, especially your remote employees.  Acknowledge their need, and the solution you both agreed to, and how you will support this individual; give permission for the agreed upon approach.
  • Team Discovery: Ask the team to explore the success factors for each participant and come up with a shared solution (how, when, where) they can all support and hold themselves accountable for shared interaction and collaboration time.
  1. Create Certainty and Boost Contribution: Clarity of expectation allows us to reduce threats that cause us our minds to stress, worry and spin. Our brains function well knowing how things will flow, being able to think or prepare in advance, especially in times of pandemic.  How many times have we attended meetings that we did not need to be attending, or were not expected to contribute to?  How often are meetings for informing versus active problem solving or decision making.  Knowing our role in a meeting, and what’s expected can help determine if those off-hour meetings require attendance for all and allow in advance for prior preparation for penultimate participation.

🌟 Tips: Establishing clarity and consistency of expectations.

  • Set the Table: Clear meeting purpose, agenda, timeframe, outcomes, and stick to it. 
  • Mirror the Method: Bringing into the virtual world familiar ways to express and collaborate that were used when the group was physically together creates confidence and paves the way for greater contribution.  I love using the application Miro – it’s just like facilitating an in-person meeting for team brainstorming, problem solving, process mapping, mind-mapping, you can have every person own their own sticky notes and be even more involved with a larger group of people, versus only a few fitting around a physical flip chart.  It brings the same familiar techniques back into the moment and actively engages each participant.
  • Stick to It: I had a CEO who led a passionate commitment-based culture: “say what I mean and do what I say.”  It led to an entire cultural reset.  Well run meetings are efficient, productive, and keep participants engaged and on track to deliver the collaboration outcomes; they deliver on what was expected for participants.  Nothing worse than being on a midnight meeting, being told you are going to present, and the meeting runs late, and they don’t even get to your part.  A great slack blog running virtual geographically dispersed meetings: https://slack.com/blog/collaboration/ultimate-guide-remote-meetings
  • Predictability Calms the Mind: Consistency in meeting frequency and what’s needed from participants.  If it’s a late-night meeting Asia time and you can incorporate the team members from that region to participate for a set time – they get the information they need, and share any regional inputs with the team to consider throughout the meeting.
  • Pivotal Roles Required: Is every person invited really needed to be in the meeting, what do they contribute to the desired outcome.  If someone doesn’t attend will they be disadvantaged in any way? 
  • Gift of Time: Words of wisdom from my scuba diving instructor stick with me over 30 years:  “Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance.”  I never wanted to run out of air, be outside my depth, surface too quickly, end up in a hyperbaric chamber; I prepared for every single dive, even after having done hundreds, be focused and at my best for every dive.  Are you allowing equal chance for remote and in person participants to prepare and participate?  Does each member know what good contribution looks like?  Team members who are collocated know each other well, they have side chats during the day and may have more insight into what is expected.  Remote colleagues are not always in the loop.  If a meeting must be taken during sleepy time in a participant’s part of the world, it allows advance preparation, in the ‘awake’ hours before a meeting.  It also enables introverts in the group to introspect and think before being put on the spot.  Allow each participant to bring their best self and elevate the entire team.
  • Rewind, Revisit & Reinforce Learnings: Follow up the meeting with a summary and reinforcing diverse perspectives to reflect how contributions helped shape the meeting outcomes.  Share the instant replay of the meeting.  What themes are you seeing, are we doing what we said we’d do?  What’s working, what needs course correction?  Put it back to the team to hear their insights and new ideas and build a culture of continuous improvement that fuels your team collaboration.

Are you a global or expatriate leader looking to elevate yourself and your team’s success?  Reach out and learn more click here.

 

Inspiring Change: Solutions-Focused Feedback for a Virtual World

Man jump between impossible wording and possible wording on mountain. Mindset for career growth business.

Inspiring Positive Change:
Solutions-Focused Feedback for a Virtual World

I can’t wait for my performance review, said nobody, ever. As many approach year-end feedback season, it should be a time for celebrating and acknowledging wins throughout the year, and reflecting on past situations, extracting unintended learnings that will allow further development and growth of skills. Our brains are wired to hear and see the negative, and many systems like performance reviews or 360 feedback instruments when implemented unintentionally create barriers to seeing the positive, having the effect of shutting us down, versus engaging and inspiring focus on what we can do to affect positive change and continue to grow. Authentic, constructive feedback seems more elusive in a completely virtual pandemic environment that has become our new reality.

Throughout this year I’ve been using a ‘game-changer’ narrative 360, grounded in positive psychology, that helps break down these barriers and enables the feedback recipient to get context-specific, solution-focused feedback in a way that engages action, supported by a social system intentionally engaged for individual and organizational success. In our virtual reality where it’s difficult to see how to shift and what actions will fuel success, I’m seeing first hand just how transformative applied neuroleadership and positive psychology can be for individuals and their teams.

Feedback shared from some clients:

“The narrative feedback was truly a pivotal moment to understand what others might see or hear that was not visible to me ordinarily and allowed me to apply new behaviors to immediately shift what had been creating perceptions.  It was easily addressed and become a strength, once I was clear about what others suggested I should do differently, and when I should do it, and applied the solutions.”  

“Missing out on the in-person office interactions left me also missing out on in the moment feedback and opportunity to make a change.  This approach brought my colleagues closer, in a virtual work from home environment and allowed me to develop powerful new leadership skills from behind a zoom screen.”

The Shift Positive methodology allows the feedback recipient to:

– Trust the intention of the person sharing it with you, truly for your benefit
– Understand context to the feedback, not a rating on a page
– Gain a clear, tangible, and pragmatic picture on what you “can do” to grow, versus focusing on what “not to do”.
– Build a social system of allies that reinforces your growth

The beauty of this approach, positive solutions-focused feedback, coupled with a team of allies who are fully engaged and accountable to commitments to help the feedback recipient positively succeed for the benefit of all and shifts our mind in a “reward and growth state.”  It allows our brains’ limbic system to tamp down the anxiety that leads to fight or flight, allows the “executive function” to have the space and resource to hear, see, and process solutions in a context-rich paradigm to apply immediately and have a social system surrounding the feedback recipient that support, see and recognize the positive change.

Virtual reality being our new reality, why not supercharge success, and build leadership skills that will transcend pandemic and work-from-home to elevate your leadership and your teams success.

Explore how you can use feedback to inspire positive shifts for yourself and your teams click here.

💡6 Ideas to Nurture Creativity Amidst COVID Captivity

Hawaii sunset on a surfing yoga retreat connecting like-minded women

💡 6 Ideas to Nurture Creativity Amidst COVID Capacity

One thing is for sure, 2020 has left us navigating through a seemingly constant state of “fight or flight.” Caught in a state of lock down, bombarded by negative media, unable to reach out and see loved ones, and the uncertainty that even the next week holds can easily paralyze our ability to think, decide and act.  It’s difficult to just get through each day, let alone attempt to be creative. Just when we think we’re through the fog, we are hit with another dose of social media that sends us retreating. Neuroscience helps us understand what’s happening when under threat, and why feeling this way is completely normal; all that oxygen and glucose in our brain is redirected to prepare us to protect ourselves, and diverted away from our prefrontal cortex which requires a large amount of resource to think, create and innovate.  

As coaches, we seek to empower thinking, using techniques to help clients dampen down that fight or flight reaction, and facilitate a psychologically safe environment to be able to think, ideate, and solution a positive way forward. Even skilled coaches need a special thought partner to break through the constraints of a limbic system on fire, and tap into and unleash creativity. Connecting with the right thought partner that you trust and inspires you is key.  

I would never have launched my website during this COVID time without the help of my creative marketing thought partner, “Website Wonder Woman,” Jocelyn Lu of Rainfield Marketing. I met Jocelyn on a SwellWomen Retreat in Maui, and learned of her talents, in and out of the water. Serendipitously, we met again, 5 months later atop Whistler Mountain, snowboarding got our creative ideas flowing before COVID quarantine hit a week later. Over the past few months, Jocelyn has been able to truly get inside my head and help me pull through insights to visualize and bring to life a site that represents me holistically.  I would never have been able to break out of the quarantine-fog without my thought partner.  She helped me to limit all the distractions swirling, focus on the most critical aspects of building a website, put me on a schedule which kept my attention focused on specific goals & deliverables – delivering the right ideas and decisions at the right time, focused my attention through questions and alternatives in creative reviews and gave me ample time to process, reflect, and ideate. With my creative sounding board and the right conditions established, I was able to tap into my creative juices and have her help bring them to life.  

Some brain-friendly activities we can all try out, even during quarantine, to put our brains at ease, and free up resources to be creative.

  • Clear the Space:  focusing on what you are feeling, the emotions, and putting words to them, and stating them out loud helps to calm.  This helps clear what’s buzzing around in your head, like an etch-a-sketch screen erase, and welcome new space to think.
  • Do Less.  Focus:  carve out time to be completely focused on on task or mastering an experience like learning to play a new instrument, cook a new meal, master a new yoga pose, in a goal-oriented way; this allows us to develop deep connections in our brain
  • Play More:  tap into your inner child, be spontaneous, creative, and allow yourself the time to playfully enjoy a new or novel experience; this helps us make new connections in the brain which increases creativity and memory.
  • Connect:  with a thought partner who is a great listener and helps you elevate your thinking, inspires new ideas, and grows your perspectives.  
  • Unplug: stop analyzing, surrender control, and detach from stress producing thoughts.  Turn down the volume on the executive function of your brain, and allow yourself to disconnect and daydream.  Allow yourself the luxury to wander and daydream, your brain will recharge, and provides space and precursor for sparks of insight and new perspectives to emerge.
  • Mindfulness:  not just for yogis or a passing fad to enlightenment, being able to truly focus in the present moment, and non-judgmentally, creating awareness on sensations, images, feelings, emotions, promotes many healthy benefits, including enhanced attention and creativity.  This takes time, and skill to master, a consistent activity over time to develop the meditation-muscle, but allows for a level of grounding, and ability to hold space for yourself and others; through silence and presence, insights emerge!
What have you done to juice up your creativity during COVID Captivity?

“Just Chill…” Your Brain Will Thank You!

Man and woman lying buried up to head in black sand under tiny umbrellas take essential down time to unplug and clear their minds and bodies for wellness at Ibusuki Beach, Kagoshima, Kyushu, Japan.

“Just Chill…” Your Brain Will Thank You!

Why is it that some of us feel anxious or guilty at the thought of allowing our mind and body to unplug, wander and just simply laze & chill. The seventh “essential ingredient” of David Rock and Dan Siegel’s Healthy Mind Platter is “Down Time.”

Many of us now under stay-at-home containment have the perfect opportunity to create space for and develop a new healthy habit of intentional “non-focus” which allows us to relax and recharge our brains, restore physical, emotional health and motivation, increase productivity & creativity, reduce decision fatigue, and help us to consolidate memories and enhance our learning. Funny how we’re so concerned with recharging our electronics devices, we should treat our brains with the same luxury. Neuroscience research also shows that down time is a critical precursor for insights. Personally, I get my best ideas during a casual walk or jog, when I’m letting my mind wander, daydream and simply chill.

What will you do for “Down Time” this week?

I love this quick read by Beth Janes on why it’s important to schedule more down-time for our brains, read article here.

Take a Virtual Peek out of Quarantine and Carve out “Connecting Time”

Two ethically diverse women sit on a limestone rock over the ocean connecting in a socially distant way in nature to manage stress, maintain positive outlook and physical wellness in Montana del Oro State Park, Los Osos, California.

Take a Virtual Peek out of Quarantine and Carve out "Connecting Time"

Apropos that today’s Healthy Mind Platter Essential is “Connecting Time.” With the world hunkering down in self-containment, even more important to enhance your virtual social connection with others. Research shows taking time with loved ones & friends can improve our physical health & mortality, help us to better manage stress, confront challenges and maintain a positive outlook. Double the positive impact (when not in containment): meet with others outside and appreciate connection to the natural world around us as a learning from last week’s “walking meditation” post. These activities together are a powerful combination. The article I wrote for this post had been my perspectives as an expatriate & the impact and importance of “Connecting Time”, but I’ll save for a future post.


Love to invite you all to virtually peek out of containment: play & share creative ideas to “Connect” with your friends, family, and colleagues around the world.

I pledge to connect “live” with my Singapore colleagues who were expecting my arrival this week to catch up in person. It’s video happy hour coffee & cocktails. What will you do?

Check out this article by Dr. Emma Seppala: Connectedness & Health: The Science of Social Connection. 

Treat Yourself to “Time-In”

Yoga alliance certified instructor Laurel Marshall meditates in Anjali Mudra in tropical paradise Puamana, Maui, Hawaii.

Treat Yourself to "Time-In"

It’s hard to disconnect from distraction: busy schedules & news media frenzy on markets and Covid-19. The present time is perfect to practice Time-In, a Healthy Mind Platter essential. It’s the practice of mindfulness, purposeful attention, in the present moment, non-judgmental. Rather than focus on changing the environment or situation, mindfulness creates awareness, acceptance of thoughts, feeling & bodily sensations. A daily dose helps regulate emotions, enhance attention, creativity, & empathy, reduce stress, and can improve symptoms of anxiety, depression & pain.

I ventured on a 10-day silent meditation in the Japan Alps to master Time-In. I realized, rather than meditating 16 hr/day, I simply needed to make time daily, to focus, observe sensations around me wherever I am. I love to cultivate mindfulness in walking meditation; observe sensations of each step, breath, smell, color, sound, warmth/chill on my skin.

How will you incorporate mindfulness into your day? Note your feelings: before, during, after & get hooked on Time-In.

Check out this article by Mark Bertin: A Daily Mindful Walking Practice.

It’s Play Time!

Adult playing like a child making snow angels to increase brain connections, creativity and memory.

It's Play Time!

The Healthy Mind Platter Essential Ingredient” we explore this week is “Play Time.” The essence of play time is allowing ourselves to be unstructured, social, creative, and playfully enjoy new experiences. Stuart Brown, of the National Institute for Play, states that “Playfulness enhances the capacity to innovate, adapt and master changing circumstances. It can help us integrate & reconcile difficult or contradictory circumstances. It can show us a way out of our problems.” Neuroscience reveals play as a basic emotional system & essential for adult creativity, learning, & emotional regulation. Play helps relieve stress, improve brain function, stimulate creativity, improve relationships & connections with others.

Life can feel too serious. Our days busy & scheduled; allowing time out to spontaneously play may cause feelings of guilt. Flip the script from guilt, to permission.

What activities make you laugh, and playfully and spontaneously welcome in new experiences each day?

Check out this article by Lawrence Robinson, Melinda Smith M.A, Jeanne Segal Ph.D., and Jennifer Shubin: Benefits of Play for Adults. 

Why “Sleep Time”​ is not a Luxury, It’s an Imperative.

Fluffy Koala Bear sleeps on a Eucalyptus tree to increase memory function, creative processing and emotional regulation.

Why "Sleep Time" is not a Luxury, It's an Imperative

Sleep Time is this week’s Healthy Mind Platter essential ingredient of focus: sleep, and our ability to refresh mind and body, and consolidate memory.


I have massive amounts of empathy for all living and working regional or global jobs based out of a country in the Asia Pacific Region, working for a US based MNC. During my expatriate years, the day would often start far before the crack of dawn with my US colleagues beginning their day in the US, and then wrapping up with the tail end of the day with those same colleagues just starting their day again. It’s up at 5:00am, quick calls, shower, then off to the office. For my day job, the region time zone for me spanned the start of day in New Zealand through to Pakistan covering 3am to 8pm Singapore time. Once able to sign off from regional meetings, grab a workout, shower and dinner, it was off to US calls with the global team that would often start at midnight.Combine that with upwards of 70% travel and sleepless nights on planes, sadly I was wearing 4-5 hours of sleep as a badge of honor. Together with my regional colleagues, we made a humorous video of things we did to stay awake during our late night calls in an effort to sensitize our global colleagues to our need for sleep and timezone friendly meetings. There is no escaping the challenge of business across time zones, but I realize I was my own worst enemy, by prioritizing others needs for my time, over my own personal sleep time. It was all optics and ego, about how strong one could be in the face of no sleep, the ability to push through and persist. What I didn’t recognize was that I had sub-optimized not only my physical health, but as well, my cognitive functioning around memory, creative thinking, decision making, learning and emotional regulation. It’s a recipe for physical and mental health disaster. I fortunately had an incredible doctor in Singapore Dr. Stephen Tucker, who exposed the fact I was slowly killing myself with my poor sleep habits, and got me focused on one of his 4 pillars of health “Sleep Time.” He became one of several important accountability partners in my quest for taking back and rebuilding overall wellness and resilience.

Research abounds on the impacts that sleep has on us physically and mentally.  It’s suggested that 8 hours, on average is ideal, notwithstanding outliers of course.  How often do we catch ourselves saying, let me sleep on that one, before making a decision?  It’s not just cliche, but research by Healthy Mind Platter authors Dan Siegel and David Rock uncover that during sleep, our brains integrate information in highly novel ways and make connections that we may not be capable of seeing while awake. Sleeping allows us to consolidate memories to enable us to integrate what we learn into long-term knowledge.

The article 7 Ways Sleep Affects The Brain and What Happens if it doesn’t get enough by Alice G. Walton for Forbes, summarizes the key impacts nicely, and emphasizes: Sleep can feel like an indulgence, especially when we’re busy or stressed; and it’s often the first thing to go at these times. But as the research shows, sleep isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity, and brain will probably rebel if it doesn’t have enough. So it may be time to change our attitudes about sleep and give it a little more attention than it usually gets.

Hindsight is 2020 and now that I have embraced my need for sleep as an essential ingredient for my overall health and wellbeing, I have made some important trade off decisions to ensure I get my 8 hours average sleep. Winding down mind and body is key. Knowing when to turn off the social media, and email onslaught, slowing down my mind with short meditations before bed, and watching what and when I eat before I sleep allows me to actually fall asleep when I get to bed. Not keeping a phone beside the bed, and checking emails if I wake up during the night which only serves to spin back up the mind activity. Making sure I am in control of my calendar, and am thoughtful and more disciplined about making commitments that erode my ability to get sleep has been a journey over time to develop new behaviors and habits. Having an accountability partner to keep me on track has been a big key to success.

What new habits can you welcome into your life this week to make space for sleep? Who will be your accountability partner to empower your thinking and help you reinforce your new behaviors into sustained habits?

Check out this article by Alice Walton: Ways Sleep Affects the Brain.

Get Up & Move: Physical Time

aurel Marshall surfs a long right wave at Keramas reef in Sanur, Bali, Indonesia to improve executive cognitive functioning.

Get Up & Move: Physical Time

This week’s Healthy Mind Platter Essential post is dedicated to “Physical Time.” Developing a daily habit of aerobic activity helps our mental and physical health; promotes memory and learning, response speed, impulse control, ability to focus, while reducing stress, anxiety and depression.

I personally feel the benefits during and after a surf or run; I’m in a great mood after a rush of endorphins, and have found myself to be able to think more clearly, have a balanced response to situations, improve performance, not to mention getting a better nights sleep and reducing stress and anxiety – all touted by Heidi Godman, Harvard Medical School brain health research. Check out the article here.  

Juliette Tocino-Smith packs in a ton of great information for those looking to delve deeper into the impacts of exercise on the brain in her article: 10 Neurological Benefits of Exercise.

What new activities will you try out this week to invite “Physical Time” into your life and wellness journey?

Focus Time

ale Asian executive on wellness retreat holds headstand yoga pose on a dock overlooking the water near Mount Fuji, Japan.

Focus Time

Following last week’s introduction to The Healthy Mind Platter, developed by Scientists Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, and Dr. David Rock, today we focus on a central component of our mind platter: Focus Time. I reflect back upon long days in the office, heading home exhausted, wondering what I truly accomplished. A continuous flow of distractions – in meetings constantly pinged through chat apps, emails; office time filled with fly-bys, fire-drills, urgent interruptions; the thoughtfully architected schedule that falls apart after the first morning crisis. It occurs to me that I’ve not protected any time alone to focus and concentrate on critical things that require my 100% attention. The benefits of today’s 7×24, “always on” connectivity culture can be the biggest threat to our brain health and performance. Our brains are not designed to be multi-tasking magicians.

If we can carve out time in our busy days to focus our attention on one task that allows us that sense of mastery or completion, we gift our brains the time to make deep connections. When we allow ourselves adequate focus time, we feel more in control, in balance, in flow, and have a stronger ability to regulate our reactions, responses and stress levels. After two full days of focus time this weekend in an advanced postures yoga class, I learned just how effective I could be, going deep within mind and body, visualizing and feeling the connections as concentrated on one pose at a time. I realized not only a sense of accomplishment and mastery, but a feeling of empowerment as I learned how to maintain focus and block out distractions. It’s empowering, recognizing that feeling of “flow” when you are so focused on one thing, in the moment, and then translating it to other areas of your life.

You don’t need to flip yourself upside down in an inversion to practice Focus Time. Think about one important task or challenge that you wish to make progress on in a goal-oriented way? How can you carve out time this week to focus exclusively on this task? How will you seek to remove the distractions that have been keeping you from this important activity? How will you build a habit of “Focus Time” into your daily mind platter?