Spirit in the City

I have worked with many organisations in the city and frequently am told by women that they feel jaded and out of touch with their soul. When it is work, work, work life can feel pretty dry and meaningless and it can effect self esteem. That is why when I was approached by Rabbi Dovid Sebban to speak at a monthly luncheon I saw an opportunity to provide an “injection” of spirit into women at work.

Do you feel like the city needs more spirit? Do you feel conflict between career and soul?

Any questions or comments – I’d love to hear from you – contact me or post them here.

This week, journalist for the Herald Sun, Collier Kim called me to ask this question.

Kim was facing a challenge she believed was probably common amongst parents and worth building a story around.

She told me that with Christmas coming up, she wanted to buy toys for her children but wondered when enough was enough. She confessed that she bought toys all year round as well, often to reward her children for doing well at school or at sport. Kim said she found that sometimes buying a reward was the only way to get her children to do chores and, truth be told, she was blowing her budget.

Kim also felt pressured to buy what other parents were buying their kids and so was uncertain as to how to proceed.

My advice to Kim was to work within her budget thereby role-modelling for her children the ability to hold back and be measured.

It is my view that the ability to delay gratification is an important life skill and waiting for special occasions like Christmas and birthdays is a good thing. I explained that happiness in life does not derive from material objects but rather from being in good relationships, and having values to live up to. In other words, a smile or hug or special attention will bring more long-lasting satisfaction after success than a toy that will be discarded in a week. Moreover, teaching values like striving for excellence and orderliness will give her children an internal motivator (rather than the external motivation of a toy) and will get the results Kim desires.

Finally, when Kim goes against the social current and does what is good for her family, both her self-esteem and the self-esteem of her children will flourish because they will be acting from a sense of autonomy rather than following others mindlessly.

You can read the article by Kim in the Herald Sun here.

What do you think?

Anxiety is an uncomfortable feeling of fear or imminent disaster and is a normal emotional response to danger. However, when anxiety is present, and there is no real danger, it can be classified as dysfunctional. While everyone feels anxious from time to time, some people experience these feelings so often and/or so strongly that it can affect their everyday lives.

Often people confuse anxiety disorders with stress. Stress is a normal reaction to a situation where a person feels under pressure. For example, it’s common for people to feel stressed or uptight when meeting work deadlines, sitting exams or speaking in front of a group of people.

Stress can be highly adaptive because it gives you the energy and drive to fulfil your task. However, when these feelings are ongoing, happen for no apparent reason or continue after the stressful event has passed, they become maladaptive. Untreated or unrecognised anxiety disorders can lead to secondary conditions such as agoraphobia, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, or tragically in some cases, suicide.

Symptoms

Anxiety can be accompanied by physical effects such as heart palpitations, fatigue, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, stomach aches, or headaches. Physically, the body prepares the organism to deal with a threat. Blood pressure and heart rate are increased, sweating is increased, bloodflow to the major muscle groups is increased, and immune and digestive system functions are inhibited (the fight or flight response). External signs of anxiety may include pale skin, sweating, trembling, and pupillary dilation. Someone suffering from anxiety might also experience it as a sense of dread or panic.

Although every anxiety sufferer does not experience panic attacks, they are a common symptom. Panic attacks usually come without warning, and although the fear is generally irrational, the perception of danger is very real. A person experiencing a panic attack will often feel as if he or she is about to die or pass out. Panic attacks may be confused with heart attacks.

Anxiety does not only consist of physical symptoms. There are many emotional symptoms involved as well. Some of them include: Feelings of apprehension or dread, trouble concentrating, feeling tense or jumpy, anticipating the worst, irritability, restlessness, watching (and waiting) for signs (and occurrences) or danger, and, feeling like your mind’s gone blank. There’s also nightmares and bad dreams, obsessions about sensations, deja vu, a trapped in your mind feeling, and feeling like everything is scary.

One of the most common symptoms of anxiety is fear, which includes the fear of dying. “You may…fear that the chest pains [a physical symptom of anxiety] are a deadly heart attack or that the shooting pains in your head [another physical symptom of anxiety] are the result of a tumour or aneurysm. You feel an intense fear when you think of dying, or you may think of it more often than normal, or can’t get it out of your mind.”