August 11, 2020 by Dymphna

T-Bomb: The rare opportunity in WFH

Truth Bomb Tuesday: maybe a bit of time on our own was just what we needed…

Work from home is giving us an interesting reset.

I think it’s giving a lot of people the opportunity to really reassess how work fits into their life.

Actually, that’s probably the first big change. Rather than asking how do we fit life around work, we’ve started asking, how do I fit work into my life?

Do I check emails before or after I get out of my pyjamas?

But one of the things I want you to watch out for is how you ‘are’ now that you’re not in the office, or at the worksite, or wherever it is.

And I say that because there’s this part of our mind devoted to helping us ‘fit in’.

We’re social creatures, and we have a biological need to belong.

But we know that there are some behaviours that bring us closer into the fold of the group, and some behaviours that can see us cast to the outer.

Baking cookies will help us make friends. Rocking out Cold Chisel covers in the break room might mean that we become social outcasts.

(Well, if you have a singing voice like mine anyway.)

Anyway, there’s a part of our mind that is always filtering ourselves. Always running our expression through a filter called ‘socially acceptable.’

But like most functions of the mind, this can be a good and a bad thing. And I think most of us probably have our filters set a little too tight – we’re a little too harsh on ourselves. We give ourselves very small boxes to play in.

But now, for a lot of people working from home, they’re able to experience a lot more time ‘unfiltered’.

The mind’s not so worried about how you’re coming off, because it’s only you and the cat in there in your home office.

That’s kinda liberating, right?

There’s a great opportunity here to realise how much filtering become unconscious, and how much is actually unnecessary. Do you find yourself worrying about how you might appear, even though there’s no one around?

Our filters can be on so much and for so long, that they end up just ‘jammed on’.

We have to find ways to reset them and turn them down.

It’s also possibly a great opportunity to learn about ourselves.

What are you actually like when that filtering part of your mind relaxes for a while?

What comes through? What side of your self wants more air time? Are you singing more? Are you moving more freely, with more swing in your hips or roll in your tummy? Are you wearing comfy clothes and going barefoot?

This is a fantastic opportunity to do what I call ‘data sampling’ – really getting to know what lights you up and turns you on.

Most people never get to do this. But if you’re serious about carving out a life you truly love, the first step is actually figuring out what you truly love.

So WFH might be the opportunity you’ve needed to get some space from your social filtering, and go deep with what you’re really about.

In that sense, this is a fantastic opportunity. You might not get another one like it for a while.

DB.