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Monthly Archives: June 2016

Bregretting the Wreckxit from the Brexit

29 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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Article 50, Berlin, Boris Johnson, Brexit, David Cameron, EU, Jo Cox, Kubler-Ross, Lisbon Treaty, Sunderland, UK, UKIP, United Kingdom

brexit-800x500

One of my most memorable holidays is visiting Berlin with my daughter five years ago. She was 18 then and old enough to appreciate the architecture, history and art that is so evidently on display in this wonderful city. Berlin is a truly great European capital with a real buzz to it, added to by the knowledge that in living memory it was a divided city. The images of the Wall coming down stand on the shoulders of the infamous lines of Kennedy (‘ich bin ein Berliner’) and Reagan (‘Mr Gorbachev tear down this wall’) and are forever etched into my memory. So it was my daughter who came to mind when the Brexit happened last week, partly because it has been called the most important geo-political event since the fall of the wall in 1989 and partly because she is such an avid European.

I thought I would let the dust settle a little and allow myself some reflection time before postulating what lessons we can learn from the Brexit. I, quite possibly, have more invested than most Australians given I hold both an EU and British passport whereas my children only hold British Passports aside from their Australian passport. Barely had word of the result filtered through when I received a text from my generally very loving and supportive child. Here it is word for word (complete with emoji).

‘It makes me so angry and sad – like someone has taken away my rights or something. A generation who was given everything – free education, cheap houses to buy and golden pensions have voted for something they’re not even going to be around for which has closed off my generation’s right to live in 27 different countries. So many future opportunities, experiences, friendships and marriages that have been denied. I used to be really proud of my passport, now it feels completely worthless 😢’

For the whole weekend that followed I was pretty much glued to 24 hour British news soaking up the initial response of shock and disbelief, anger, despair and even defiance and jubilation. It has been fascinating to watch it unfold since. Fascinating not in the manner of an intricate story unfolding, but in a train crash kind of way – right before our eyes.

Here are my thoughts so far with the Brexit result not a week old:

Britain and Europe need to heal but to do so we all need to understand the grieving process. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross is the acknowledged expert on the grieving process having identified a common response she coined as the five stages of grief. She posited that there is a normally laminar pattern to dealing with loss, change, or trauma.

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Following the Kübler-Ross cycle there is obviously a sense of denial with a number of voters saying that they actually didn’t want the result they voted for they just wanted a message to be heard. There has been anger and Britain is today a divided country with some of this anger showing itself on the street. There is bargaining too with some trying to get a second referendum and the Scots going hell for leather for one. There is depression on the way with a kind of funk settling above the UK as the reality finally dawns.

At some stage (and I’m assuming Boris Johnson is a big advocate of this step) there will be acceptance, when everyone comes to terms with what has happened. I have heard some commentators and pro-leave leaders say that the UK needs to just now all pull together to make the best of it; implying the nirvana they promised of a Great Britain unshackled by the bureaucracy of Europe making it free to soar, might somehow be put in jeopardy. I have some sympathy with this viewpoint but I also know that if people are not given the chance or space to heal then the wounds of Brexit become a festering sore. In stress terms we call this stickiness or the inability to let go. This causes regurgitation as the issue gets called back to front of mind again and again, like a toxicity that keeps on giving. Lesson One – UK needs time to heal – we all do.

Secondly there is a new divide in the UK. There was a real sense by some that the leave campaign had an element of racism running through it. There is I think a lot of truth to this and the support for leave by the arch-right UK Independence Party (UKIP) bears witness to this. I don’t think however the new divide is one around race. Nor do I see the division occurring around religion and Islamaphobia. Class runs deep in the UK with reasonably well defined boundaries between working middle and upper class. The vote leave success stories were without doubt in the more working class towns particularly of the north and midlands of England. Sunderland will now forever be known as the bellwether result that sent shivers down the quietly confident stay campaigners’ spines. Sunderland in the north east of England is as working class as you can get. But I do not see class as the great new divide. There is a potential for the north versus south divide to become a chasm. I don’t predict this either.

For me the new divide, as my daughter would attest, is old versus young. It would appear that the real differential in the voting patterns were demographic with three out of four younger voters (25 years and younger) overwhelmingly in support of remaining in the EU. Older people (baby boomers) were pretty much the same for leave. As my daughter rather pointedly texted this group with a dwindling stake in the future appear to have voted for some long-since faded notion of a Great Britain that wasn’t really ever that great in their lifetimes as it happened. Sure there were ‘two World Wars and one World Cup’ in victory terms but this is so in the past as to not be on the Gen Y radar. The  halcyon days of bygone eras are behind us. The UK needs to look forward. Lesson Two – We need to respect and embrace the hopes and aspirations of our young people.

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The final point for me is a comment on the status of politics in the national psyche. Even more so the lack of regard that the public appears to have at a meta level for politicians. This most tragically played out with the death of Yorkshire Labour MP Jo Cox. She, not Cameron, was the first victim of the Brexit and it is a real shame that her death did not galvanise the population into voting for a kinder more certain future. I heard more than one commentator in the aftermath of the Brexit debacle saying that the politicians need to listen to the people. I think the commentators got this wrong. Sometimes the will of the people isn’t right when it is whipped up by lies, half-truths, scaremongering and dog-whistling. When the majority of politicians said that the UK should remain in Europe perhaps it was time that the populace put their disdain for their elected leaders to one side and actually listened to them for a change. Leaders are after all, not just merely a conduit for the will of the people. Sometimes leaders have to make decisions in the best interests of and despite their constituents. To teach politicians a lesson because you don’t like them, means that you have to be prepared to live with the unintended consequences of your own decision. When you venture where no-one has been before (Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty) you just might find fate has played a very cruel trick on you. Lesson Three – Be careful what you don’t wish for.

Without a doubt there are going to be very interesting times ahead. For those of us with dual citizenships we can only sit on the sidelines and hope for the best. In Australia we are shielded from this to some degree but the same degree of anger, resentment, futility and cynicism that is ascribed to British politics is very much at play in the Australian zeitgeist. Sounds like we too need a bit of healing à la Kübler-Ross. We’ll know just how much after this week’s general election.

Quantum Mindfulness

20 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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blood pressure, Buildfitness, classical physics, Copenhagen Interpretation, Dan Siegel, Elissa Epel, Leadership, mindfulness, Mindsight, quantum physics, stress, TEDMED, telomeres, telomorase, type 2 diabetes, UCSF, wavefunction

Entrepreneurs-Meditate-Learn-Why-and-How-It-Can-Change-You-Altogether

 

I had the real privilege to attend a masterclass with Dan Siegel recently who is the author of the best-selling book Mindsight. It was a long day and you had to have your wits about you to keep up. Siegel, a psychiatrist by training, ranged over psychiatry, classical (Newtonian) and quantum physics with a dusting of philosophy and neuroscience thrown in for good measure. What is more remarkable is he held us in his thrall from 9am until 4pm without recourse to notes or a whole bunch of Powerpoint slides. Siegel is big on mindfulness and it was a timely attendance for me as we, last week, commenced an 8 week mindfulness course for all the staff. Not only that,  we have extended the invitation out to our tenants as well. It’s all part of the ‘wholehearted you’ approach that underpins our Buildfitness concept embracing body, mind, heart and self.

James Reese

Dan Siegel

What I didn’t expect from a day with Dan Siegel was to consider my leadership style through the lens of physics. It would appear that basic rules of either classical or quantum physics apply to leadership and therefore management. Quantum physics is freaky stuff and you have to expand your mind to all sorts of possibilities when contemplating it. The Copenhagen Interpretation for example deals with a concept known as wavefunction collapse which, if my year 12 physics can hold up, is the notion that the act of measurement affects the system causing the set of probabilities to reduce to only one of the possibilities after measurement. Measurement and the human intervention whether by observation or equipment appears to distort the results. I’m not going to embark on holograms or string theory here not because it’s too hard to understand – it isn’t – but because it’s almost too freaky to accept.

telomeres102

Not in the same league as quantum physics, but also in the freaky and hard to believe category is the benefits ascribed to mindfulness. For mindfulness we can read meditation. According to recent studies mindfulness has all sorts of benefits both in the workplace and in our physical and mental well-being. In terms of keeping your brain alert and responsive those who have partaken in a regular meditation regimen have shown improvements over a control group in the three key areas of adjusted grey matter volume, sustained attention scoring and improved reaction time. For those with a penchant for measurement this data comes from the peer-reviewed journal Neurobiology of Aging (2007). In terms of stress reduction, studies have shown a significant reduction in stress in a cohort that was exposed to mindfulness training. The Consciousness and Cognition Journal (2010) showed an improvement in memory amongst a group who undertook mindfulness. In terms of sleep enhancement mindfulness again seems to be a bit of a miracle worker. Without medication it would appear the science tells us that you get improvements in sleep quality, efficiency, latency, daytime dysfunction and sleep disturbance frequency. In this case the research was from 2005 in the International Journal of Behavioural Medicine. It’s easy to surmise from this that it might also have a positive impact on mood and – sure enough – it does! In terms of depression markers these were significantly reduced in a cohort sample exposed to mindfulness practice. It doesn’t stop there folks. Mindfulness improves our immune system with more antibodies in the blood, as measured by antibody titers, following mindfulness meditation according to a study in Psychosomatic Medicine in 2003. Blood pressure, too, that’s in there. High blood pressure can be lowered and continue to improve with mindfulness according to the Alternative Therapy Health Medicine Journal in 2007. Similarly there has been shown to be improved glycaemic control in those suffering from Type 2 diabetes.

epel-a-600_0

Elissa Epel

And here’s my favourite (given I’m on the wrong side of 50), mindfulness can reduce cellular ageing. A brief description of the ageing process might be in order here. Current thinking is that the shortening of our DNA telomeres is the reason we age. Ageing is dangerous. Aside from the fact it makes us less cool and wanting to dress like our Dad, about two thirds of all deaths are attributable to age-related conditions. Mindfulness has been shown to raise telomerase levels, the importance of which becomes obvious when we know that replaces telomeres. It’s thought that telomere length is associated with longevity and conversely that shortening of our telomeres ages us. Strangely though it appears that the opposite is true of rats…so next time that office two-face pops up look to see if they have crows-feet around the eyes. If you don’t believe me then the article by Elissa Epel et al  in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009. Epel is an Associate Professor from University of California San Francisco and her TEDMed talk is a real mindbender http://www.tedmed.com/talks/show?id=7252  (jump in about 5.00 minutes from the start). It may well get you thinking differently about psychological stress.

So next time you catch yourself watching some meaningless show on Netflix and wondering how you would ever get that 45 minutes back, just think that just a portion of that time (10-20 minutes) per day, rather than numb your brain will enhance it, plus enable you to live longer. After all longevity of life is about the only way to get back all that wasted Netflix time back!

 

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