💎 Friday Gems #17 (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Social Anxiety, Inclusive Design)

Ideas to help you unleash your potential!

This week has flown by because I have been heads down, looking back at my story of going from being stuck in my career to being free to achieve my creative potential. I am also working on the Low Fidelity philosophy as well as the framework to help people who feel stuck in their careers and help them develop the resilience they need to face their inner challenges to make an impact in their life and achieve their potential.

I want to help people develop the confidence to show up and make an impact in their life, career, and the world.

Stay tuned for more information, ideas, offerings, and opportunities for me to help you realize your potential. 🚀💜

On to this week’s gems!

💎 Online mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) training course

We all feel stressed at one point or another. Whether it's from the demands at home or from work, stress affects our mental and physical well-being. It affects our sleep, our mood, and our relationships, and it can affect our performance negatively to the point we get burned out. One way to tackle the stress in our lives is through Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MSBR), which was founded by John Kabat-Zinn in the 70s at the University of Massachusets Medical School.

In MSBR, an instructor teaches participants mindfulness techniques to bring more awareness to the present moment, which helps to reduce overall stress and develop a deeper sense of calm.

Thanks to my coach Oli for this free online 8-week MSBR course by Dave Potter of Palouse Mindfulness. These days everything costs, and having a tool to help you reduce your stress, pain, anxiety, and depression for free is wonderful.

https://palousemindfulness.com/

💎 How to overcome social anxiety

At its core, social anxiety is a fear of negative evaluation and rejection by others.

Reading the description of social anxiety in this article, I realized there are certain situations I avoided as well, such as going to community gatherings where there are people who are much more "successful" than I am. These moments made me anxious and nervous. For some reason, I feel like I don't live up to a standard of success, which of course, now I realize is only in my mind.

Many other situations can bring up social anxiety, such as giving presentations or interacting with strangers, which can aggravate our social anxiety disorder (SAD); the abbreviation seems unhelpful too.

Try this

However, the good thing is that social anxiety is treatable:

• Become aware of when and where social anxiety shows up for you

• Identify the negative thoughts that show up as a result.

• Examine the evidence for your negative thoughts. There may be some truth to them, but are they true in your current situation?

• Focus on a balanced alternative. Consider the evidence and come up with alternative and realistic ways of looking at the situation.

Read the full article for helpful techniques to overcome social anxiety disorder.

💎 How to lead inclusive design critiques

Design critiques can be great. They help teams explore ideas collaboratively and move forward with the best ones. Design crits can also go wrong if not done well. I know I have experienced a wide range, from great crits to ones where all you hear are opinions without any objectivity.

I love the ideas shared in this article to:

• give teams extra time to process the information on their own time

• letting people write their feedback so the loudest voice does not control the conversation

• amplifying voices of those who are underrepresented

• verbally checking in with remote participants to have their voice be heard

Even though this article focuses on design critiques, the insights can also be used to make meetings collaborative and inclusive.

Source: Design Depot

Let me know in the comments if any of the gems resonate with you. I always love hearing from you.

Thanks for reading, and have a fantastic weekend!

Rizwan

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