Aligning Work With Your Strengths

February 26, 2023 Melanie Hawken

I burnt out in a spectacular fashion a few years ago. It broke my life dramatically and the experience took me by surprise. It acted as a catalyst to evaluate why I got so sick and what was wrong with my life. Of course, burnout is usually multifaceted and doesn’t have one simple source. I believe that one of the contributing factors was that my work was not aligned to my strengths.

It takes courage to be yourself

October 15, 2022 Melanie Hawken

I’ve been thinking about how we become so conditioned by other people’s expectations of who we are and who we ought to be. I attended university in Cape Town and I had to wait a year because my father didn’t want me to leave home. I wonder what the cost of that year of earnings equates to, compounded over my career? Anyway, in my wisdom, it was worth the wait and I found a good career path, nice and respectable. I’m learning now that I have other talents that could be used to make a more fulfilling career path for me in future.

Manage expectations to manage stress

August 26, 2022 Melanie Hawken

In my book Harnessing Stress, I wrote about how expectations can be a source of stress. What we expect of others can lead to disappointment, what others expect from us can lead to stress and what we expect of ourselves can lead to a great deal of unhappiness if we don’t manage it.

Perseverance is not always the answer

July 10, 2022 Melanie Hawken

I enjoy reading entrepreneurial books and articles. I have a fascination with people’s passions and what makes them do what they do. I’m also a fan of research and while running a business I wanted to know more and to ensure I was doing the right things. I remember reading some quote about how success is just on the other side of feeling like giving up. Reading that advice was really detrimental for me, in fact. You see, I’m not a quitter. I persevered so much that my health collapsed. To be fair, I didn’t heed the advice in the same articles of weeding out toxic elements and doing what you love.

Follow Your Bliss

June 18, 2022 Melanie Hawken

I’m crazy about MasterChef Australia for a number of reasons. I am, of course, really interested in people who are changing their careers and who have the courage to switch paths, sometimes quite late in life. It’s so interesting to see how the contestants often comment on how they have grown as a person so much more than they anticipated. They entered the competition to gain skills and a head-start in becoming a chef. Not only do they all (not only the winner) pick up new skills in their chosen profession, but they push themselves to grow. In doing so, they discover a profound flow experience in the creation of food. It is a creative exercise and requires imagination, skill and knowledge. What an amazing journey they are taken on and it’s no wonder there are tears as each contestant is eliminated from the competition.

Are you Co-dependent?

May 22, 2022 Melanie Hawken

In my corporate life I spent a lot of time mentoring graduates and I can tell you that it was the best part of my experience. Better than the projects that saved the bank millions. I felt appreciated and I knew that I was making a difference. The relationships were mutually beneficial even though the graduates thought that only they were getting something out of it. They were enthusiastic, grateful and eager to learn. I found working with them enormously rewarding.

Firebreak

May 13, 2022 Melanie Hawken

This weekend I went on a women’s retreat. On the first night I admitted to the ladies that I was really there to escape my children. Of course, I also went to renew myself and spend some time alone. It is the first time I have attended a retreat and I’m glad to say that there were no intolerable team exercises or war cries. The activities included art, dancing and reflection (including guided meditation).

Laughter as medicine

May 1, 2022 Melanie Hawken

It is well-documented that laughter is good for you. In fact there seems to be quite a movement to stimulate laughter as a mechanism to reduce stress. I met someone once who conducts team workshops to laugh together for this very purpose. In my research on methods of healing, I’ve also come across Laughter Yoga, some sessions of which end with ‘laughter meditation’. I understand the benefits of laughter, but I also know that this is just not for me. Just as some people simply are not interested in meditation or a gratitude journal, forced group laughter is just something I can’t bring myself to do.

Focus on Strengths, Partner for Weaknesses

March 12, 2022 Melanie Hawken

I was recently reminded of an exercise I did in around 2009 when I was struggling to adjust to having a child and a career. It’s called Gallup’s Strengths Finder. I bought the book, did the online test and digested the findings eagerly. According to the test, your main strengths don’t really change over time. So revisiting them now was quite meaningful. These were my top five:

How Strong are your Boundaries?

January 30, 2022 Melanie Hawken

One of the things that contributed to my recent health collapse is poor emotional boundaries. I didn’t have strong boundaries established and that meant that anyone could impose almost anything on me. I wasn’t firm enough, even with my children, in articulating what is for me and what is for them.

Best Possible Future Self

December 19, 2021 Melanie Hawken

I have always been a goal-driven person and instead of New Year’s resolutions, I’ve set goals. I pulled out an old journal in which I wrote them down and had quite a bit of fun reading about myself twelve years ago.

My traumas made me better

October 3, 2021 Melanie Hawken

I recently read an excellent book, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. It’s about what happens to our brains and bodies as a result of trauma and how to treat it. Even events that seem fairly tame or punishments that parents deem reasonable, can be experienced as a traumatic event by a child. We are changed by these events. Not only in the way we think and behave, but we experience physiological changes. Van der Kolk writes, “trauma produces actual physiological changes, including a recalibration of the brain’s alarm system, an increase in stress hormone activity, and alternations in the system that filters relevant information from irrelevant.”

Are Your Beliefs Serving You?

September 11, 2021 Melanie Hawken

My area of expertise is stress management. However, I don’t focus on the typical lifestyle interventions that many others focus on: deep breathing, exercise and meditation. These certainly work and I incorporate them into my own life as part of my stress management strategies, but this is only part of the picture.

An Entrepreneur’s Lessons from Gardening

July 16, 2021 Melanie Hawken

With the latest wave of COVID in full force in South Africa, our family has been spending a lot of time at home. Fortunately, we have a large property with a lovely garden, although it needs a great deal of work. At times when I’m feeling bored or I need a little escape from my family, I work on our garden.

How Deliberate Practice Supports your Growth

November 22, 2020 Melanie Hawken

Perhaps you have heard of the 10-year rule or the 10 000 hours that are required to become a master at something. This is known as deliberate practice, a concept made famous by Anders Ericsson, a Swedish Psychologist who conducted significant research on the subject. He studied what makes people world-class in their area of expertise, be it violin, ballet or chess.

Tools for Preventing Stress

October 25, 2020 Melanie Hawken

I am fascinated by stress. One of the favourite parts of my work is interviewing people about how they engage with stress. In writing my second book, Harnessing Stress, I found that many people have developed habits to prevent stress. Through experience and in knowing themselves well, they have created rules to ensure they keep their stress levels low.

A Career or Business Pivot

October 11, 2020 Melanie Hawken

I love learning. It’s part of who I am and I’ve realized that life does not seem right unless I’m expanding my knowledge or skills in some way. It’s easy to satisfy this need in a full-time job and as an entrepreneur as there are always opportunities to create new offerings and collaborations.

How to Boost Your Motivation

August 12, 2020 Melanie Hawken

It’s not easy to maintain self-control, especially when things are difficult. Personally, I’ve found life very difficult over the past few months with the pandemic, lockdown and load shedding in South Africa. I’ve noticed that many people have abandoned their diets and have had difficulty staying focussed on their business objectives. So how can we keep motivated and working towards our goals?

Lessons from Burnout into Lockdown

August 8, 2020 Melanie Hawken

A few years ago, I experienced a burnout. I developed a stress-induced autoimmune disease and suffered from chronic fatigue for three years. It had a significant effect on my life. Lately, with South Africa being in lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic, I have noticed a few similarities and differences between that period of my life and now.

What is the Pandemic offering you?

August 1, 2020 Melanie Hawken

In the first week of 2020, I drove from my home in Johannesburg to Durban to spend a week interviewing my grandmother about her life for a book. It was fascinating to hear about how life was as a teenager for my grandmother during the Second World War in England.

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