Welcome to this ANZAC issue

In this month's newsletter
Thought For The Day
Did You Know?
30-Second Stress Buster
News And Offers

Thought For The Day
“Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be."

Did You Know?

• Our Australian readers have just commemorated ANZAC day (25th April). ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and it is day when both countries remember the soldiers who died when they landed at Gallipoli in 1915.
• One of the ANZAC traditions is to wear small sprigs of rosemary in the coat lapel, pinned to the breast or held in place by medals. Did you know that in ancient times, rosemary was supposed to strengthen memory? Greek scholars wore rosemary in their hair to help remember their studies, and the association with remembrance has carried through to modern times.
• Memory is a strange thing isn’t it? Without an annual public holiday it is likely that we would forget the ANZAC fighters…
• On a more local scale: do you have trouble remembering people’s names when you first meet them at work? Is there a report or admin task that you keep forgetting to do? Does this create extra stress in your life? Or do you remember only by continually keeping things at the forefront of your mind, thus never allowing your brain to rest?

If you could trust your mind to remember things, at the appropriate time, would you be less stressed? By understanding how your brain works, you can train your mind. Give these simple tests and exercises ago…

• Working Memory
• A colleague tells you his mobile number but you haven’t’ got a pen or phone handy to record it in – you have to use your mind. It is 092837964.
• Try saying it once to yourself, and you can guarantee you will forget it. Try it now and see. Come back to this email in one minutes time and see if you can recall it then.
• Welcome back, now try breaking the number up into short sections and repeating them five times – you will remember it for a short while – long enough to get to a pen or phone, but then it will be gone. Try it now, go and get a glass of water, and see if you can remember it when you get back.]
• Working Memory is short term, front of mind, and relies on repetition. Like all aspects of the mind, it is more efficient if you break things up into patterns. If you rely on this memory alone to do everything though: not only will you find it hard to remember things in the long term, but you will also become mentally exhausted and stressed out.
  
  
• Elaborative Encoding
• You are presenting a paper to a room full of people you have never met before. How can you remember their names for the duration of the talk, so that you can send follow up notes to them, or so that when you meet one of them in street a month later you can recall his or her name?
• Let them tell you their names as they ask questions through out the meeting, and you won’t even remember them by the end of your answer. Try memorizing this list of names, without all the distracting questioning: Grant Pulley, Sophia Rajkovic, Helen Robinson, Alex Ryan, Cameron Schofield, Phil Somerville. Come back to this email after your next meeting or job, and write down how many you can remember. It won’t be many.
• Or you could try getting the people to introduce themselves with another bizarre fact, such as what their first job was, or what their pet was then, as they tell, you conjure up a visual link in your mind between their name and occupation or the animal. Try it now: ask 5 colleagues around you to give you one of their parents’ names (maiden names included) along with their first occupation. Test your recall throughout today and even tomorrow.
• Elaborative encoding is a type of long-term memory, which is more subconscious. It works by association with the myriad of other memories you already have quietly and efficiently stored. One thought process fires off several that are associated with it. It is more visual and you tend to picture things more easily, so by linking a picture and an association with a new name you will find it easier to store it and retrieve it. Once you have begun to practise this way of storing memories, you can ‘relax’ and allow your subconscious to do all the filing and sorting for you. You will feel much more calm and less stressed.
  
  
• For more 30-second stress buster exercises that you can do at your desk, see our archived newsletters on our website.

• Are you in New Zealand, or do you work in a call centre? You may be interested in attending The TUANZ Contact Centre Conference And Awards in June, in Auckland? Zen At Work will be introducing delegates to ways in which they can reduce stress levels in operational centres. For more details visit the website www.tuanz.org.nz
• Congratulations to the Zen At Work team who recently completed 100 massages in one day at QANTAS. In recognition of this feat, we are giving the Australian readers of this newsletter the chance to win 100 minutes of complimentary massages at your workstations. Simply send us an email via info@zenatwork.com.au telling us why, in 25 words or less, you and your team deserve a massage! Entries close 5 pm 20th May 2005, when one lucky reader will chosen to receive the prize. The winner will be notified by email the following week. Competition open only to Australian residents, who do not contract or work for Zen At Work Pty Ltd.
• Welcome on board to the Time Inc Group, who are keen to de-stress, and have signed themselves up for two classes a week of yoga and pilates, for 10 ten weeks!
• As our list of services continues to expand we have reclassified them to make them easier to remember: -

(1) stress management programmes, such as workshops, seminars and coaching. (2) stress relief services including massage and classes in yoga / tai chi / pilates / martial arts / wu tao / meditation.

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