In an article published in Coaching Today magazine, Ana highlights the importance of wellbeing as a foundation for all coaching work 

They discuss the significance of coaching for wellbeing and its potential to create social impact. Wellbeing should be seen as the foundation of all coaching work, integrating various dimensions of human experience rather than focusing solely on specific aspects. They discuss the importance of integrating wellbeing into all aspects of life, not as a luxury, but as an essential component of human experience.

Dr Nacif advocates for a compassionate, client-centred approach that values the client’s journey and personal experience over rigid goal-setting or quick fixes. She also warns about the dangers of commoditisation of wellbeing in the era of social media, warning against unrealistic expectations and the potential alienation of those without resources.

Read the full article here.

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Is the pursuit of wellbeing killing the joy in you?

The world has changed, dramatically. One of the benefits of the new world order is that more people
are talking about wellbeing and, hopefully, some are also taking steps to improve it.

Wellbeing in the era of Covid-19 has many dimensions, from how to negotiate boundaries when
working from home to how to have sex safely (not kissing and wearing a face mask help, according
to guidelines by the Terrence Higgins Trust), but the latter is a subject for another blog.

Buried in the plethora of tips and advice on how to improve wellbeing, I can’t help but think that we
are in danger of setting people up for failure by giving them a list of ‘wellbeing tasks’ which are
unattainable and, potentially, not even helpful.

Wellbeing is highly personal and, while we all recognise the foundation stones for wellbeing, backed
up by available research in the field, how each one of us engages with these principles is up to us.

Time and again, I hear my clients saying they feel guilty and inadequate because they are not able to
do everything they think they should be doing to achieve greater levels of wellbeing. It’s not
surprising as the list can be endless. Whilst it can be enjoyable (for some) to embrace all the
different aspects of wellbeing, for others, an endless wellbeing ‘to do list’ can become a draining
chore.

One way of dealing with wellbeing overwhelm is to do less, not more. One of the wellbeing models I
use in my practice, both with individuals and organisations, has only six areas (PERMAH):
Positive emotions
Engagement (fully immersing yourself in an activity; being in flow)
Relationships (strong and positive connections)
Meaning (a sense of purpose)
Achievement (accomplishment)
Health (eating well, moving regularly, sleeping)

Now, how you incorporate these different aspects of wellbeing is deeply personal to you and not a
to-do list. Teams and organisations wanting to improve the wellbeing of their staff also need to take
time to reflect on how they could potentially foster these aspects in the workplace, whilst
considering individual differences and needs. You don’t even need PERMA do that (but I think it is a
useful model).

A good place to start is to reflect on what wellbeing means to you. Take notes if that helps, or draw a
picture, or write a poem. Do whatever suits you in terms of capturing your own version of wellbeing.
From there, think about small daily steps you can take to connect with your personal vision of
wellbeing. I’m a big fan of small things: they can have a significant impact on our lives.

I’ll give you an example of how this approach has helped one of my clients. I will call her Lucy (not
her real name, of course). One of her daily wellbeing to-do lists read something like this: yoga (1
hour), cook at least one meal from scratch a day (1 hour, including sourcing ingredients – this could
take even longer depending on the menu); meditation (30 minutes); read for pleasure (30 minutes);
talk to a friend (30 minutes); paint (30 minutes); write a reflective journal (15 minutes). More
generically, she also had on her list: spend quality time with the children and my partner. All good for wellbeing, right? Of course, but instead of feeling energised and content, Lucy found herself
totally exhausted trying to keep up with her schedule. She also felt frustrated as some of these
activities kept being postponed to the next day, only to be neglected once more as life got in the
way. This is not to say that Lucy won’t be able to build these things into her life, but she may decide
to scale down her choices, so that they bring her joy, instead of misery. Before making these
decisions, I invited Lucy to think about the small things in her life that brought her joy.
Unsurprisingly, many of these little things take nearly no time at all and bring us joy every day, but
we have to notice them. This puts us in a better place to deal with the unavoidable adversities of life
and to make choices about how we want to live out our wellbeing in a way that is kind,
compassionate and generous – not like a strict task master.

There are no three, five, seven, or ten ways to wellbeing. There are billions of ways to wellbeing — as
many as there are people on the planet. Your way is unique and will bring you joy. So give yourself a
break, do less and enjoy more.

• PERMAH is a wellbeing theory developed by Martin Seligman, one of the founders
  of positive psychology. According to this model, these are the five core elements of
  psychological wellbeing. This model has been empirically tested and can be used to
  improve the wellbeing of individuals, teams and organisations.

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When resilience is not good for you

In my professional life, not one week goes by without me receiving a report, some academic
research, an article or a think-piece about resilience – what it is, how to increase it, how to use it,
how to share it…ad infinitum. I’m a big fan of resilience as a concept that supports people through
challenging times. However, even before Covid-19 hit us hard – whether personally, professionally,
or both, changing our world forever – there were already issues around resilience being viewed as a
silver bullet.
Resilience is our capacity to recover from adversity, and research shows that it can support
wellbeing levels, reduce stress and improve our health, amongst other things. The good news is that
we can learn to be more resilient, and increasing our resilience levels will support our overall
wellbeing. The bad news is that resilience is not the answer to chronic stress and fatigue, neither is it
a panacea to systemic organisational shortcomings and detrimental work practices that harm people
and organisations. Helping employees to become more resilient is a positive move, providing it is
part of a wider wellbeing strategy designed to support individuals and teams which also takes into
consideration the potential internal changes necessary to enable people to flourish in the
organisation. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, and employees are being sent to ‘resilience
training’ with a view to giving them the tools ‘to get on with it’, despite difficult challenges that are
well beyond their control.
Resilience is a well-researched concept and a vast field with various models and theories, which goes
beyond the scope of this article. Among many approaches available is the Penn Resilience
Programme (University of Pennsylvania), which asserts that there are six variables to resilience: self-
awareness, self-regulation, optimism, mental agility, self-efficacy and connection.
Resilience variables
Self-awareness is about how aware we are of our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and what
actions we take as a result.

Self-regulation is our ability not only to notice what is going on for us, but also to change the
outcome, for example, you notice you are getting angry with a work situation and, instead of
reacting, you are able to press the pause button and decide how to respond instead.
Optimism is about our belief in a better future.
Mental agility is our ability to look at a scenario through different lenses and from different
angles, assessing how to solve problems and move forward.
Self-efficacy is a sense of our ability to do something and an awareness of our strengths and
capacities to master our environment
Connection is having people around us whom we trust, who are supportive and on whom we
can rely.

Developing resilience

Work can be done at both personal and group level to develop these characteristics and
increase resilience in individuals and their teams. However, we have to be mindful that
developing resilience is only part of an organisation’s strategy to support employees’
wellbeing. If the setbacks and challenges experienced in the workplace are symptomatic of
deep and ingrained damaging work practices, no amount of resilience training and
development that will change that. Resources, including time and money, are better off being
spent on developing wellbeing practices that may start to address some of the systemic
issues present in the organisation. Resilience is great, but it’s only one piece of the jigsaw.

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