E32 | Experimenting with Energy: A Conversation with Chris Baréz-Brown
Chris Baréz-Brown is the Founder of Upping Your Elvis, trainer, speaker, and author of such books as “Wake Up” and “Shine”. In his work, Chris helps people find and channel their energy by helping them understand what it is and how to increase it, and how to deploy it in a useful way.
Chris works with diverse types of businesses to break down dysfunctions, and inefficiencies, to help bring more humanity into the workplace. Chris emphasises the importance of creating friendships at work, which builds trust and makes work more enjoyable.
He also recently launched the social enterprise Talk it Out, which encourages people to achieve better well being. Tune in to get a better understanding of how to harness your own energy to create a more positive work and life experience.
On today’s podcast:
- Understand the creative genius inside yourself
- How to manage your energy
- How to stop sleepwalking through our working lives
- How to manage the feedback in your head and use it to stimulate positivity
- Talk It Out – a social enterprise having an impact on mental health
Links:
Creating a More Fulfilling Life by Finding Joy in Your Work
We’ve all had them – good days and bad days. But how do you stack the deck to increase your chances of experiencing those good days at work?
Chris Baréz-Brown, bestselling author, and founder of Upping Your Elvis, believes it all comes down to energy. And he’s taken an initiative to create a better world by helping people in business and in life harness their energy.
Over the course of his career, he’s gained insights into what drives us toward negativity and how we can break the cycle to create a more joyful life.
We are Primed to Negativity
At the core of each of us has a negativity bias. This is evolutionarily hardcoded in our brains as a safety mechanism to keep us from danger. But in our moderately safe work lives, this triggered reaction has a tendency to cause us to react negatively to new ideas and information.
To create a more positive outlook first recognise that this triggered reaction happens in each and every one of us. It doesn’t make you a negative person just because you have negative thoughts. Instead, we each have a choice to turn those negative responses on their heads and manage that feedback in a way that is useful for growth.
Achieving Awareness and Clarity
The fastest way to refocus your subconscious when you have a negative reaction is to breathe and depressurise the situation. Create space, take a moment, and reflect.
The more you care about the work you are doing, the greater the chance you will be primed to react negatively to a suggested change or critical feedback. By taking the moment to reset and reflect you create the opportunity to change your behaviour in a positive way.
Optimising Your Workspace for Better Energy
When not in a fight-flight-freeze moment, you can work on changing your energy in general. A quick and easy fix for channelling your energy in a positive way begins with your workspace. Remove unnecessary clutter, raise your so you are standing and free to move about. This will help wake your body and clear your mind.
Schedule your day for gaps so you have time to reset and recharge between meetings or tasks. In fact, Chris recommends you vary the time of your meetings as well, and to always keep them under an hour.
Whenever possible get moving. Take walking meetings or move meetings to different environments. This can produce amazing results and really channel your creativity. Our bodies are meant to move, and walking can have a remarkable impact on the productivity of a meeting.
Make an Effort to Make Friends
We spend about one-third of our lives at work, so the people we spend this time with can have quite an impact on personal wellbeing. Friendships formed at work can grow into long-lasting relationships that will be a benefit beyond your time in your current position.
Also when you build friendships in the office you open up the opportunity to be more of your true self at work. When we are our true selves we are more likely to be successful. Success and friendships will bring joy to your work and ultimately joy in your life.
Book Recommendations
Chris is the bestselling author of books that help you harness your energy:
- Wake Up: A Handbook to Living in the Here and Now
- Shine: How to Survive and Thrive at Work
- How to Have Kick-Ass Ideas
- Free! Love Your Work, Love Your Life
Other books Chris recommends:
- The Joy of Work by Bruce Daisley
- Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn
- Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way by John Parkin
- Calm by Michael Acton Smith
- Do Design: Why Beauty is Key to Everything by Alan Moore
- Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins