Wellness and Your Work Environment [Episode #516]

This week’s topic is: Wellness and Your Work Environment

We all spend so much time in our work, with our career, whether we are working at home or we’re going to an office. Our work environment, the company culture, is something that very much affects us and it’s a big part of our lives. It’s something that we want to address and make sure that we are doing our part to maintain the healthiest, best possible workspace.

That being said, of course we can’t control everything in the environment and we know that, but what we can do is control our inner world, our reactions, our responses, and also apply some practical tools about how to create the best possible work environment.

As always, we will address this from our cornerstone perspective, being, food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!

Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/

[Questions Answered]

Jodi –  CA

I’m having a hard time separating working from home while keeping up with my healthy routines. I know you speak of rituals. Is there a difference between routines vs rituals in helping me to stick with a healthy lifestyle?

Maria – Idaho

My boss is so hard to work for. I try to let things go but his issues always become mine. How do I prevent myself from taking on his anger and negativity and know it’s not me, and that it’s just him?

Sarah – WY

My coworkers are always gossiping about other people at work and it just doesn’t feel good to me. How can I set better boundaries at work without feeling isolated from the group.

Amanda – Texas

I literally cannot stand working for the company I’m currently at. I’m nervous to make any changes, especially with covid and the insecurities of employment. How can I turn this around so I can have a better attitude and feel better about this company and working for them?

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Inspirational Thought of the Week

Within my outer work environment, I create and align to my inner environment always.

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: 00:00 Hey, Beauties. Welcome back to our Thursday, Q&A Community Show where our topic today is Wellness and Your Work Environment. This is a really important topic because as you know well, we all spend so much time in our work, with our career, whether we are working at home, which a lot of us are now, including myself, or we’re going to an office, our work environment, the company culture, is something that very much affects us and it’s a big part of our lives. So, it’s something that we want to address and just to make sure that we are doing our part to maintain the healthiest, best possible workspace. Now, that being said, of course we can’t control everything in the environment and we know that, but what we can do is control our inner world, our reactions, our responses, and also apply some practical tools that, which we’ll get into today with your questions about how to create the best possible work environment. And as always, we will address this from our cornerstone perspective. So, food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth.

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Kimberly: 01:05 Before we get into your questions today, I just want to give a quick reminder to please leave us a review on iTunes. If you’ve heard me before saying this, and you’ve tuned me out, please, maybe today’s the day you actually do it, which would be amazing and pretty easy and free, and just takes a moment or two. And so, I thank you so much in advance for your time and your energy. It’s a great way to support the show energetically, and while you’re at it, please be sure to also subscribe to our show and that way you don’t miss out on any of these community shows or interview podcasts as life gets busy and busier and busier, and we all kind of lose track of time. So it’s a great thing to subscribe.

Kimberly: 02:01 All right. So, let’s get into our topic today, Wellness and Your Work Environment. It’s so important that we, when we think about self care, when we think about wellness, when we think about elevating our lives, we really look at it in a holistic way. And it’s easy to focus on the essential oil, warm baths and the dry brushing that we do at the end of the day and our GGS that we make before work. But, the reality is that our work is such an enormous chunk of our lives for most of us, that if we don’t address it, and we don’t think about how we can apply our wellness practices into our work, we’re really missing out on that potential benefit. Because again, it’s such a big part of our day. It’s such a big part of our focus and our energy. So, yeah. This is a big one.

Question 1: I’m having a hard time separating working from home while keeping up with my healthy routines. I know you speak of rituals. Is there a difference between routines versus rituals in helping me stick with a healthy lifestyle?

Kimberly: 02:52 I’m going to be reading the questions today. Caitlin is taking a little hiatus with her workload currently, but she’ll be back here at some point. And I’m going to be reading and answering myself, which I have been doing and I actually love to hear your question. So, this is a little treat for me. The first question comes from Jodie in California. She writes, “I’m having a hard time separating working from home while keeping up with my healthy routines. I know you speak of rituals. Is there a difference between routines versus rituals in helping me stick with a healthy lifestyle?”

Kimberly: 03:28 Jodie, I love this question. First of all, thank you so much for being in our community S and D sending a big hug as a fellow Californian. Your question is really interesting, this idea of routine versus ritual. The way that I look at it, sometimes people use certain words interchangeably like smoothie and juice, which are clearly very different things. A smoothie has fiber and is made of whole foods. And a juice has been strained and pressed and is beneficial, but it’s not a whole food anymore. So, when it comes to routines and rituals, I actually do think there is a difference. We get into a morning practice, a morning routine, so to speak, which I define as all the little steps and parts of our lives that make up our total life, make up our total lifestyle. So, in our morning routine, we meditate, we do hot water with lemon, we drink the glowing green smoothie, we take our SBO probiotics.

Kimberly: 04:27 And these become, over time habitual, they become aspects of our day that we don’t even have to really think about. We just create a system. We create a flow and we start doing these different practices. So, to me, practice and routine is a little bit more of a synonym. A ritual is something, to me, again, this is my definition, where you add, you add mindfulness and celebration around something. You make it really special. You bring your intention into it. And so, it becomes a bit more elevated than just a routine.

Kimberly: 05:08 So, for me, a ritual is when we do our circles and we were doing them in person quite often before quarantine, we will get back to doing them. And we’re working on a whole different system for our online Solluna Circle, which I’m really excited to share with you guys in a few months. But, when I do a circle, it is, it feels like a ritual. I bring an altar, with flowers, crystals, sacred geometry, there may be a picture, a meaningful picture or two. And we elevate it above daily life. And it’s a way to really create space and hold space for ourselves and other people to bring in higher intention.

Kimberly: 05:50 So, around the new moon, full moon, I’ll go out on the lawn, I’ll create more of a ritual out of it. I’ll bring my crystals outside. I’ll do a special meditation. I’ll ground, I’ll put my hips on the earth. And we do definitely do a lot of rituals in my house because I love them. We have the, again, I would say even our gratitude practice becomes more of a ritual at family dinner. It feels really special. Everybody has their time to go around and say what they’re grateful for. So, to me, ritual is something that elevates. So, there’s crossover. And when you’re creating a healthy lifestyle, Jodie, if you work on making something extra special to you, it can feel like a ritual. And so, you’re pulling it out of the routine humdrum daily into something more elevated.

Kimberly: 06:43 So, let’s say your hot water with lemon. Maybe you create a little ritual around it. Maybe you have a really beautiful mug that you always use, that’s your mug for this ritual. And maybe before you drink it, you bless the lemon, you thank it, then you do your own little gratitude practice for your healthy body and your life and whatever else you want to bring in. So, you can create ritual within routine. If that makes sense. And to me, it’s really beautiful and really amazing. It is a way to elevate your self-care and it is a way to stick to a healthy practice, healthy lifestyle, because it means that everything can feel special and tailored. And it really is our intention. And it really is how much energy and the type of energy we pour into something that’s often the result and the benefits that we get out of it. So, yeah. There’s my take there.

Kimberly: 07:31 I would say that not everything perhaps would be a ritual because that would take a lot of time and energy. But, if you pick out some things in your morning routine or in your evening practice, for me, the ritual is, the evening becomes more of a, a special setup for my meditation. Whereas in the morning, I’m meditating in the bed with the kids and hubby and it’s circus, but I still do it because it’s better than doing nothing. And for me, ritual comes more in the evening when I am, Bubby’s in bed and Moses is sleeping and it’s just a bit more quiet. And I have time to focus my energy, or again, on special occasions like circles. Lovely question.

Question 2: My boss is so hard to work for. I try to let things go, but his issues always become mine. How do I prevent myself from taking on his anger and negativity and know it’s not me, and that it’s just him?

Kimberly: 08:13 All right, the next one comes from Maria and she is from Idaho. She writes, “My boss is so hard to work for. I try to let things go, but his issues always become mine. How do I prevent myself from taking on his anger and negativity and know it’s not me, and that it’s just him?” So, Maria, this is a wonderful question. I send you lots of love and a big hug out there in Idaho. I think that a lot of us, especially women have issues with boundaries. We have issues, a lot of us are empaths and we absorb a lot of energy from people.

Kimberly: 08:48 And really the most important thing to do here is to really create very clear boundaries that are clear to you, and that are clear to your boss. And if you maintain those boundaries, then they become, they become real and they become strong and they become upheld and they become respected, but it really does start with us. And it starts with us honoring ourselves and knowing that we deserve to be in a healthy work environment, and that we deserve to not have to take on energy of other people and negativity of other people.

Kimberly: 09:26 So, there’s a couple of ways to do, to create healthy boundaries. The first is to make it out in the open and to have a discussion with your boss and just to say, “Hey, I’m struggling a little bit with X, Y, Z, and I really care. And I show up and I do the best that I can, but when there’s a lot of negative talk or when it’s like this, I’m just having a hard time. So, I’d like to really focus on my projects, whatever ideas you have with a little bit of space or without the extra commentary, or if we could create this more, writing emails versus having to talk on the phone.” Or whatever it is, whatever it looks like to come up with suggestions and to bring them up, so it’s a discussion and it’s mutually agreed upon.

Kimberly: 10:18 The other way of creating a healthy boundary is where nothing really changes externally, as far as the way that you’re doing your projects, the way that you’re communicating as far as making an actual physical change, but you put up the boundary in yourself. Which means you hold, you create a higher space, so to speak. So you, it’s a space of neutrality and politeness. And, but it’s not a space where emotional negativity can creep in. And it’s not a space that where someone can dump and project their feelings. So, you maintain that space with dignity and you live it out and you operate that way. And then, should your boss sort of push that boundary and start to project again, or create some negative negativity, what you do is you don’t react. You actually just stay neutral.

Kimberly: 11:21 And so, a lot of times what that does for people is it holds up a mirror. So, if you’re not overly positive and you’re not overly negative, you’re not flailing and screaming and protesting, but you’re also not supportive and buying into it and feeding into it and entangling your energy in it. So, if you just remain neutral and a bit separate from it, then that’s a really great way to maintain a healthy boundary. And after a time, if someone isn’t getting the same reactions out of you, and it’s not feeding that energy, they’ll just have to start looking inward or try to get that energy from someone else. So, I wish you the best of luck, Maria. It’s really important that you get clear with your boundaries.

Kimberly: 12:11 From a cornerstone perspective, I would say food wise, when you’re working on strengthening your boundaries, strengthening yourself, it’s a great time to have some power protein, smoothie, some almonds, some nuts, grounding fat, grounding protein, just so you feel really resilient in your body, body wise. When you’re around these situations, you want to maintain a strong posture. You want to have your shoulders back, your heart open, your head lifted, so that you are really communicating from your heart and your head. And then, emotionally it is important that you don’t take things personally, that you don’t let your mental health and get zapped, that your stress doesn’t go up, but that you clearly define what is yours and what is someone else’s.

Kimberly: 13:00 And spiritually, as always, it is a great practice to see the light in that person, to see the best parts, to know that they too are a fellow brother or sister on the path, and you have love for them. But, at the same time, being on the spiritual path doesn’t mean that you are a pushover. You can still be discerning and know that you can step back and hold space, but maintain your space and maintain those healthy boundaries as well. So great, great question, Maria. And unfortunately that is the reality where sometimes we work with people we don’t necessarily choose to. But, with these techniques, I hope you’re able to create a much healthier space for yourself.

Break

Kimberly: 13:49 All right, Beauties, we have a short break and I will be right back after the break to answer your next two questions.

Question 3: My coworkers are always gossiping about other people at work, and it just doesn’t feel good to me. How can I set better boundaries without feeling isolated from the group?

Kimberly: 14:07 Okay. All right, Beauties. We are back from our short break and we have two more questions for you all on the topic of wellness and your work environment. Our next question comes from Sarah, who is from Wyoming. And she writes, “My coworkers are always gossiping about other people at work, and it just doesn’t feel good to me. How can I set better boundaries without feeling isolated from the group?” Oh, Sarah, good one. And Ooh, yucky. I mean, there’s, gossiping is one of the worst things I think. It never feels good. And you may feel like a little bit of a rush almost in the middle of it, but it never really feels good. And it especially feels awful afterwards when you sit in that energy, because gossiping is separation, it’s about unkindness and you would never want someone to talk about you.

Kimberly: 15:12 And so, when we talk about other people, we just, yeah. We just bring in an unkind energy that isn’t our true nature. And the fact that, Sarah, it doesn’t resonate with you means you are in touch with your true nature and this doesn’t resonate with it. So, kudos to you. I think it’s amazing. I know this can feel a little bit tricky to navigate because you don’t want to be out of place with the group. But, I will say, coming from personal experience, that this is something that I have also navigated, and it’s a little bit similar to what I was saying about Maria, where we hold space for people and we don’t necessarily throw them away or walk away when they’re doing behavior that we don’t want to, we don’t approve of. But, at the same time, we don’t get entangled, we don’t engage.

Kimberly: 16:06 And the way to do that is to go on, have your conversation and should the gossip come up, you just don’t really engage. You just kind of, I’m going to make a couple of noises, but you make it clear that you’re not participating and you do it in a non judgey way. So, you let them talk and you don’t say, “Hey guys,” it’s almost like, “Mr. Rogers said, we’re not supposed to talk bad about other people.” Nobody likes being scolded, right? So, that’s the type of behavior that may make you feel like an outcast. But what you do is when the subject changes, or maybe you change the subject to something positive, then you go full in, you bring your energy, you bring your glow, you bring your light and you bring your love. And eventually people start picking up that you don’t like gossip talk and they will veer the conversation to where the energy is. People will always go where the energy is.

Kimberly: 17:08 There’s this great business book by Kenneth Blanchard and it’s called Whale Done. And he talks about creating a really healthy work environment from reinforcing positive action. And so, when someone on your team does something that you really like, you pay attention to it, you compliment, you focus on it, you give it energy and life. But, if someone doesn’t do something that pleases you, you may have to address it, especially if you’re a manager or supervisor, but you don’t over-focus on it. You don’t bring extra energy to it, which keeps it alive, right? So, we focus on what is working and what is feels good, and what brings light and truth and authenticity.

Kimberly: 17:52 So, in these conversations with your coworkers, talking about positive things, peaceful things, loving things, inclusive things. And then we steer away from the gossip talk. And you’ll see over time, just by your presence and your discerning, loving energy, and without being judgey, then you will be able to steer the conversation that way. And this again is so important from a wellness perspective, because gossip doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel like truth. So, it starts to sit more in the energies of like… Oh, there’s baby Moses… A little bit of shame and guilt, which are very low vibration emotions. And when we have shame and guilt inside our system, our overall energy gets lowered. Our vitality goes down, can even affect our hormones.

Kimberly: 19:10 But, I love this question, Sarah. And I know it’s very… One second, here. But I love this question, Sarah. And I think that it’s so relatable to so many people that you may not like something, but also we don’t necessarily want to go against the group.

Question 4: I literally cannot stand working for the company I’m currently at. I’m nervous to make any changes, especially with COVID and the insecurities of unemployment. How could I turn this around, so I have a better attitude and feel better about this company and working for them?

Kimberly: 00:11 Our fourth and final question comes to us from Amanda, who is from Texas. She writes, “I literally cannot stand working for the company I’m currently at. I’m nervous to make any changes, especially with COVID and the insecurities of unemployment. How could I turn this around, so I have a better attitude and feel better about this company and working for them?”

Kimberly: 00:36 Amanda, first of all, thank you so much for being part of the community, and I send you a huge hug and I love your question. I think it feels very honest, and I know what it’s like to feel caught between, hey, this is what I’m feeling. I don’t want to be here, and then the practicality of life. I need to make an income and keep my lifestyle going.

Kimberly: 01:06 I think that once you make the decision to stay, which it sounds like you’re doing right now, which I don’t think is a bad decision because it’s a very personal one. I’m not sure what field you’re in. I’m not sure how you’re feeling about things in a larger sense, long term, if this is the field that you want to be focusing on long term. But I will say that there’s things that you can do in the second part of your question, about your attitude and feeling better about being there now.

Kimberly: 01:45 We know, no matter what, you’re there now, right? That’s the situation now. So rather than creating resistance, which is said to increase suffering, Eastern philosophy, which comes from Buddhism and Hinduism and yogic philosophy, always says that suffering is increased when we resist. It means we kind of tighten up and bear down and grip our teeth. It ends up hurting more and affecting us more, versus if we just surrender and relax into what’s in front of us. It doesn’t mean that we don’t take action to move forward or to make shifts. It doesn’t mean that we do nothing, that we become inert. But it just means that we find a way to find more harmony and peace in the moment.

Kimberly: 02:35 What it sounds like, Amanda, is that you’re stuck between wanting to go versus staying right now. Let’s assume that you’re going to stay for now. I would just say to not come into work with dread, but I would come into work from the standpoint of having done your morning routine, really nourishing your body. Back to what were talking about, the morning rituals and routines of the hot water with lemon and the taking your SBO Probiotics, meditating, having some quiet moments to yourself, hopefully, and drinking your Glowing Green Smoothie®. These are some of the morning components and really coming into work just feeling nourished and feeling as fortified as possible.

Kimberly: 03:24 If you could do a walk or do some sort of movement or yoga or exercise in the morning, I’m not sure what time your work starts or what your child situation is, but that might also feel really good. Our body cornerstone, if you’re filling it up with good energy and prana from movement, it feels good. Walking in nature, going outside again, or doing some sort of a practice, a yoga practice, even if it’s modified, and feel so good to your body. So that by the time you come to work, you are feeling flexible and open and strong. That can feel also protective because you’re feeling good from your body, and so it helps you hold space for yourself.

Kimberly: 04:05 Emotionally, again, I think this mental health, we create more stress the more we dread and the more we overthink. So I think you have to come to some kind of peace where you say to yourself, “I may not stay in this forever. I plan to change my work position in a little bit when things settled down on a global scale. But for now I’m going to be here, so I’m not going to add more stress by resisting it and dreading it. I’m going to show up for myself by showing up with my best energy every day.“

Kimberly: 04:39 “Again, it doesn’t mean that in the future, I’m not going to shift, but right now I’m going to take every day as it comes and I want to nourish myself. I’m also going to just nourish all the cornerstones of my life. So besides work, I’m feeling really grounded in my body. I feel that I am finding more and more depth in my meditations. I’m eating really well, and I’m taking probiotics, the SBO Probiotics. My gut health is increasing. Everything is getting better. This is one part of my life that I will shift in the future, but for now all these other parts of my life that I can control, I’m actually working on improving.”

Kimberly: 05:19 Again, tied in with that our fourth cornerstone, which is spiritual growth, I would say as part of what we said, just being consistent with your practice. Even if it feels distracted at first, even if it feels that your mind is wandering, just sit.

Kimberly: 05:34 If you don’t have a definite technique, just start listening to your breath coming in and out, and centering yourself on your breath. Then you can start doing a simple count. Let’s say four breaths in, hold for four, or pause for four, and then exhale out for four. You can just start to do something like that, that can feel like a calming rhythm. That can be the beginning of your practice, where you start to align to your breath and you start to tune out all your focus to the outside world and all the to-dos and the stress and everything out there, and you start to come back inward.

Kimberly: 06:13 Inward is our wisdom, is our true beauty, is our connection, our confidence, our power. Everything actually comes from the inside and it builds, and it starts to shine on the outside. We know that from a beauty and food perspective. We know that from so many different things. It could go on and on and on.

Kimberly: 06:35 But anyways, Amanda, I hope that helps. I hope that helps you think through some tools and really building your lifestyle as you go through and creating less resistance. You’re going to go through this time anyway, and I hope you go through it with more ease and enjoyment.

Thought of the Week

Kimberly: 06:54 All right, Beauties. Well, that is all we have for today. I love this topic. I’m going to leave you with one last closing thought of the week, which I wrote right before the show. It just sort of bubbled up in me, and I wrote it down here. Within my outer work environment, I create and align to my inner environment always.

Kimberly: 07:23 I heard the topic for this week and I didn’t read the questions first. But just thinking about work environment, it made me think that there’s always layers and there’s always ways to go deeper into the now, into the present moment, into our practice, into what’s really real, right? Yogananda will say that it’s funny that the things we think are so real are temporary and sort of like a dream in the sense that we put so much importance on them. But what’s really real is connection and love.

Kimberly: 08:01 So we can be in any environment. We can be in a crappy work environment, we can be in a job that we don’t really love. And in one level, we are taking right action, we’re researching, we are thinking through, we’re analyzing, we’re creating self-awareness. Where do I want to shift? What’s my next move? At the same time that we’re doing that, we have our inner environment that we nurture and we cultivate. It is blissful and it’s where, again, our confidence comes from, it’s where real joy comes from. So we can experience that and work on that, even in the midst of an outer environment that’s not as ideal, so something to think about.

Kimberly: 08:47 Tools that I have for you are over mysolluna.com, including our free ebook that I highly you download on getting started in the four cornerstones, including, and especially a beginner meditation practice and some tips and tools for getting into your space. If there’s one thing I would wish for all of us it’s to deepen our practice and connection with ourself, which I think bolsters everything, including our energy and our wellness and our true beauty. Everything comes from that deep, deep, inner connection.

Kimberly: 09:21 So I thank you so much. I wish you so much love as you go into the rest of your day and your week. I will be back here Monday for our next solocast or interview podcast. Till then, take care, so much love. I’ll see you over on the website. I’ll see you on Instagram.