Often we have negative thoughts or feelings come up, what we can do is either try and run from them, or to get into conflict with them, to start a war with them. And it's a different opportunity here, the opportunity is to actually figure out where in your body that feeling is, could it be frustration could it be stress, lack of connectedness and identify where that really sits in your body. Bree Nicholls founder of The Being Way

Dive into the First Steps - Leadership and Wellbeing podcast every week with Michael Barnett as he speaks to New Zealand business leaders who share their stories of pressure, looking after their mental health and wellbeing; as well as the key learnings that they have applied to their personal and business lives.

There absolutely is a body clock. But there's more than one, we have a series of circadian rhythms, one measures or regulates our sleep-wake cycle, and that's the one that they're most likely referring to. What people don't know is that there are also other ones that regulate digestion or our endocrine system. Kirsten Taylor Chief Executive of Sleep Drops

Dive into the First Steps - Leadership and Wellbeing podcast every week with Michael Barnett as he speaks to New Zealand business leaders who share their stories of pressure, looking after their mental health and wellbeing; as well as the key learnings that they have applied to their personal and business lives.

The easiest way to stop doing something is to start doing something else. That way, there's not a grief process involved. Switch to giving yourself something new and extra to do. So you can trick your brain into being excited about the new habit rather than grieving the old habits. Kirsten Taylor Chief Executive of Sleep Drops

Dive into the First Steps - Leadership and Wellbeing podcast every week with Michael Barnett as he speaks to New Zealand business leaders who share their stories of pressure, looking after their mental health and wellbeing; as well as the key learnings that they have applied to their personal and business lives.

I think one of the most important and widely evidence based things for dealing with that is meditation. And sometimes people go, Oh, you know, I can't meditate, everyone can meditate. Meditate just means sitting there and observing your thoughts. Bree Nicholls founder of The Being Way

Dive into the First Steps - Leadership and Wellbeing podcast every week with Michael Barnett as he speaks to New Zealand business leaders who share their stories of pressure, looking after their mental health and wellbeing; as well as the key learnings that they have applied to their personal and business lives.

Stress is the number one reason why people don't sleep well. Theres about 10 different reasons that are really common for everybody. But stress is right at the top of that list, so that is the one that we focus on the most, because it is so common. It also gives us a great place to start, because if we can balance out stress and cortisol then we can impact positively on sleep. Kirsten Taylor Chief Executive of Sleep Drops

Dive into the First Steps - Leadership and Wellbeing podcast every week with Michael Barnett as he speaks to New Zealand business leaders who share their stories of pressure, looking after their mental health and wellbeing; as well as the key learnings that they have applied to their personal and business lives.

"To be the best version of ourselves, we want to be focused, we want to be engaged not only with work, but with the people around us and what's going on. And there's research that shows up to 47% of the time, we're not in the here and now. I mean, that's huge. That means nearly half of the time we're thinking about the past, we're thinking about the future. So, what does that say about where our mind is at, at any given time?’’  Carley Nicholson, Workplace Resilience Trainer & Coach of Vitality Ltd

Dive into the First Steps - Leadership and Wellbeing podcast every week with Michael Barnett as he speaks to New Zealand business leaders who share their stories of pressure, looking after their mental health and wellbeing; as well as the key learnings that they have applied to their personal and business lives.

“I'm a believer of writing, writing things down. I generally find that sometimes when I've had to catch myself up, I react too quickly. So just stopping and breathing. Generally, people wonder why you say something like that. Walking away from a computer is always a good thing I've found my particularly later on in the day, and things when you're getting stressed, and you're trying to get something done, it's very easy to be a keyboard warrior, it's very hard to be reflective. So actually try not to be as quick to respond to people and walk away for a moment and just let it sink through and think through things.’’ Andrew Fairgray, Chief Business Officer of 2degrees

Dive into the First Steps - Leadership and Wellbeing podcast every week with Michael Barnett as he speaks to New Zealand business leaders who share their stories of pressure, looking after their mental health and wellbeing; as well as the key learnings that they have applied to their personal and business lives.