According to Google Dictionary, intuition is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. In other words, it's the gut-feeling people are accustomed to experiencing that influences their actions that doesn't require logic. Ever since the age of enlightenment, people are prone to dismiss ideas without some sort of scientific research to support them. Although science has opened the world to a plethora of possibilities, conveniences, and truths, ultimately, it still serves as only one type of perspective within the big picture. Intuition has been given a bad rep for being too otherworldly due to its psychic inclination. However, the mysterious power of intuition is still undeniably beneficial that the US Navy began a program in 2012 to investigate how members of the military can be trained to use their sixth sense to help them during combat and other missions. The goal of the program is to determine whether or not there are techniques that can improve people's intuition. Don Tucker, psychology professor at the University of Oregon, said the research could improve training not only in the military, but also in sports and many job settings. Tucker also adds, Spider-Man had powers, but maybe the rest of us can learn to use the experience of the intuitive cognition we have. We want to remind you not to underestimate the great capacities of intuition. Here's seven things highly intuitive people do differently. Number one, you listen to your inner voice. Gut feelings are experienced by many, but what sets highly intuitive people apart from others is that they actually listen to them. Sophie Burnham, author of The Art of Intuition writes, Everybody's connected to their intuition, but some people don't pay attention to it as intuition. I've yet to meet a successful businessman that didn't say, I don't know why I did that, it was just a hunch. Due to cultural bias, intuition is commonly regarded as pseudoscience and hocus pocus, which can cause the majority of us to ignore our own instincts that may have come in handy. You don't have to abandon logic altogether to rely on intuition, but it can be incredibly beneficial to learn how to achieve a balance between using both. Number two, you practice mindfulness. Highly intuitive people have a great knack for being self-aware. This is nurtured from their habit of practicing mindfulness on a daily basis. When you meditate, you're able to alleviate yourself from mental fog that leaves you clear-minded and focused on your inner voice. The purpose of mindfulness is to declutter your mind from worry and any loud distracting thoughts that make it hard for you to tap into your inner self. This boosts your knowledge of how to operate and, as a result, you can recognize and use your intuition without having to attach the whys behind your actions. Number three, you have a creative outlet that you often use. Musicians, writers, artists, entrepreneurs, and dancers are able to sustain their creativity because they follow their intuition. Instead of being swept by fear and wondering how they will achieve their dreams, they never stop believing in themselves, nor do they question whether or not it makes sense to go after them. It's only natural for them to follow their heart. It may sound incredibly naive and overly simple to some people, but perhaps it's because it's been a long time since they listened to their own intuition. Intuitive people follow their creative endeavors, regardless of the judgments they receive. Because to them, it feels more foolish to hold themselves back. Where there is intuition, there is also the will to create. Number four, you enjoy solitude. Highly intuitive people don't mind finding a quiet corner away from the busy world. In fact, they enjoy their solitude because it gives them an opportunity to listen to their intuition. It's hard to locate it when you're stifled by traffic, stress, and everyday responsibilities that make it hard for your intuition to roam free and simply be. This is why highly intuitive people also have a tendency to daydream. It releases everyday tensions and clears your mind so that you can connect with yourself on a more authentic level.  As a result, you are able to connect deeply with others. When you pay attention to the small details in your environment and of the people in your life, you can learn to understand how and why things work. This is how your empathy grows when you see how other people are affected by different situations. And you can learn to take on more than one perspective when considering why people are prone to acting a certain way. It's helpful to you because, in turn, you understand how to tune into your own emotions. As a result, you can form deep connections with others. Some people may get the impression that you can read their mind, but in truth, you have allowed your empathy to help you use your intuition that lets you know exactly what they need. Number six, you pay attention to your dreams and subtle messages from the universe. Your dreams and intuition come from the same place, which is your unconscious mind. When you're highly intuitive, you may often pay attention to common themes of your dreams that can be telling you something. In addition, you also notice subtle messages the universe may be giving you, from songs that play every time you turn on the radio, quotes that you come across in books, or the notes you receive in fortune cookies. They can all be incredibly nuanced the more you can make sense of these situations. Number seven, you don't overwork yourself, nor do you attach yourself to negative emotions or situations. When you experience strong negative emotions, they can cloud your intuition. In fact, according to Burnham, when you find yourself feeling depressed or highly angry, this may cause your intuition to fail you. This is why highly intuitive individuals don't overwork themselves, because they understand that they need to feel at peace in order to nurture that special trait. As a result, people with good intuition form healthy habits when they learn how to find balance both in their lives and within themselves. Are you a highly intuitive person? What do you do differently than others? Let us know in the comments below. Don't forget to subscribe for more content from Psych2Go. Thanks for watching!


Welcome to the NTN Nightly. I'm Nisha Charles. This edition stops stories. The Larissus Road Project is nearing successful completion. New dialysis machines have been installed at the St. Jude's Hospital. A stalwart in statistical development retires are St. Lucia's Director of Statistics. All that plus the latest in youth development, sports and the NTN Nouvelle Arcueil. The Larissus Road Project is fast nearing successful completion, paving the way for new opportunities in the south of the island. The project not only provides for a better travel experience, but is a critical link in the government's development plans for VFOR and surrounding communities. Here's Shannon Labourne. The new Larissus Road is approximately 95% complete, with current paving of the finished surface as part of the final phase. This road project has already began to positively transform the VFOR landscape and will be the new link to the multi-million dollar world class here in our international airport terminal, soon to be constructed. Technical experts from the Department of Infrastructural Onsight recently filed for some update and assessment of programs. Permanent Secretary Mr. Ivor Daniel says, from all indications, the newly completed paved surface, as well as other aspects of construction appears to be up to standard. We indicated that we were removing and improving the road safety at the junction near the bridge and that this road would now lead directly into the new terminal. There will be, at this current location, a possible roundabout based on the design that would lead into the new terminal. So I'm pretty much excited about it. The prospect is good. I'm quite happy that we've now begun to put in on the asphalt.  The Larissus Road Reconstruction Project consisted construction of 1.6 kilometers of road, which also included side clearance, general excavation, dual-carriage reconstruction, construction of drainage systems and utility transfer. Project Supervisor Mr. Peter C. Pound says, at all stages, various quality control measures were undertaken to ensure the project achieved the approved requirements. He says there are numerous road safety measures incorporated in the final design. So far we have done all the earthworks. That is in place. We have completed the base and the sub-base. And now if you can see behind me, we have placing of the first layer of asphalt and it's going to be a two-layer operation. We are completing the first layer. Then the second layer is going to be placed, which is going to give a very good driving surface. It is indeed a long stretch and we have some very good safety features that are going to be incorporated in the road project. Of course, we're going to have all our road signs, our warning signs are going to be in place, all the indicators and the necessary road furniture. You will find that in place. Proper road marking is going to be placed on the road surface as well. Also, what we have tried to ensure is that we have a mostly level road track that is going to allow for good line of sight ahead of you so that you can see clearly any oncoming traffic. Also, the curves along the road, these are very smooth curves. So it would be fairly easy to navigate those curves and incidents of vehicles running off the road around tight corners, these would be reduced. The project is being executed by C.O. Williams Construction St. Lucia Ltd, which has 32 years of construction experience here in St. Lucia. Founder and CEO, Sir Charles Williams says he's pleased that most of the construction supplies and workforce for this project were supplied by St. Lucia. I'm very, very pleased with the asphalt that we've put down, the quality, and I'm looking forward. I still come every week, I'm looking forward every week to see more and more. The Department of Infrastructure, Ports and Energy have launched residents and motorists for their continued patience and support during the execution of this project, which paves the way for the injection of new life and investment in the south. It is scheduled for completion within four weeks. From the communications unit, this is Shannon the Bond. The Department of Health and Wellness is continuing its efforts to provide quality health services to St. Lucia and suffering from kidney-related complications. Patients in the south of the island now have more ready access with the installation of new dialysis machines at the St. Jude's Hospital. Dialysis services offered to rental patients in the south of the island is expected to be enhanced, as the St. Jude Hospital recently installed three new states of the art dialysis machines. Chairman of the St. Jude Hospital Board, Wyn Harrow, says he is very pleased that the dialysis machines will assess the hospital in facilitating kidney patients amid the increasing numbers. We have increased the number of dialysis machines at St. Jude's Hospital. So right now we have nine machines. We have installed three new machines, two in the dialysis unit and extra two in the dialysis unit and one in the ICU, the intensive care unit. And as a result, we are able now to expand to the public the number of persons who will be receiving dialysis treatment at St. Jude's Hospital. At present we provide treatment six days a week from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. for our sessions, per patients. Harrow also called on St. Lucia's to make lifestyle changes as to avoid being diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and requiring dialysis. Primarily there must be a public relations exercise where St. Lucia's understand the need to avoid seeking dialysis treatment and start looking after their own care. Try to engage in lifestyles where they can avoid the need for dialysis in the future. Currently the St. Jude Hospital has a total of nine dialysis machines available to the public. Reporting from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Health and Wellness, I am Fena Neptune. The Department of Sustainable Development through the increased St. Lucia's capacity to monitor multilateral environmental agreements, implementation and sustainable development projects continues to build the competence of the public and private sector to facilitate the coordination of environmental information to ensure national indicator-based reporting in a coherent and more efficient manner. A training workshop recently concluded which sought to further greater institutional, systematic and individual level understanding of environmental issues among non-governmental stakeholders. The three-week training workshop sought to enhance St. Lucia's ability to meet reporting requirements on its obligations for multilateral environmental engagements. The training sessions covered geographic environmental indicators, conducting vulnerability and adaptation assessments among other areas. The training also sought to further greater institutional, systematic and individual level understanding of environmental issues among non-governmental stakeholders. As individual agencies, the information and training provided in these sessions have direct impact and can put into practical use in your workplace and facilitate further skills training of your colleagues. I applaud the trainers and their skill sets that facilitated your returning day after day but especially commend you all for your dedication and time invested over the past weeks. Sometimes the process of learning can get overwhelming as there is so much to learn and not enough time to devote and to really delve into it. However, I believe that the newly acquired skills from this workshop are adequate to enable you to successfully capture and manage data to improve St. Lucia's ability to monitor reports on progress made. Facilitating the training workshop was chicadir of CanBean Associates Incorporated. Environmental indicators, social indicators, economic indicators are all very related. These workshops have been very challenging and by no means we can say that you would have become an expert in the particular area. However, one of the good things about this workshop we did the last workshop about two years ago is that there will be follow-up on the participants to see how you put what you learn in practice and importantly to grow. The support of agencies including the Global Environmental Fund and UNEP has facilitated the enhancement of the local capacity to generate access and use information for policy development, planning, monitoring and evaluating of environmental impacts and trends. The Peace Corps Eastern Caribbean has rolled out a primary literacy program in conjunction with the Ministry of Education. The program focuses on classroom support for primary school teachers and students using the Eastern Caribbean standard primary curriculum and additional resources. More from Anissa Antoine. The US Peace Corps in the Eastern Caribbean in partnership with the Ministry of Education, the OECS and the USAID are hosting a primary literacy workshop. The three-day workshop will include informative sessions, poses and insightful discussions between the counterpart teachers and the Peace Corps volunteers working to improve literacy education in the Caribbean. Now in its sixth year of collaboration with the OECS the US Peace Corps has conducted baseline assessments on 7,259 students in grades one to three. Leonette Japeer is the original training manager for the Peace Corps Eastern Caribbean. The workshop is intended to have the volunteers and the counterparts hone their primary English literacy skills to be able to respond to the needs of children in grades one to three in infant and primary schools. And our aim through this workshop is to ensure that the participants live with a wealth of knowledge, information, strategies, best practices that they can employ with other schools to ensure that the students are able to make an improvement in their literacy skills. Lisa Sargissian Terence, reading specialist attached to the OECS Education Management Development Unit, expressed her gratitude towards the Peace Corps and volunteers for their collaboration in ensuring students receive the best quality of education. Better literacy instruction is the key to improving children's lives from now and into their adulthood. We at the OECS Commission share the belief that every learner can succeed and that's actually our vision. Every learner can succeed. And we know that this can also be attained through very sound, evidence-based literacy programs. The OECS feels very confident that we are creating synergies through such experiences and that education in the region is addressed in a collaborative manner with partners like Peace Corps. The workshop commenced on Tuesday, March 27 and will culminate on Thursday, March 29, 2019. From the Government Information Service, I am Anisia Antoine reporting. So in Lucian statistician Edwin St. Catherine, who is considered a stalwart in statistical development in the region, is now retired from the public service as Director of Statistics. St. Catherine reflected on his robust tenure in the field with the OECS Commission. He believes that there needs to be more advocacy for statistics in the region, which includes more deployment of available tools. Deploying the use of blogs for analysis of our data, deploying the use of Facebook and Twitter on a more regular and scheduled basis when we have major releases, like, for example, releases on inflation, on unemployment, on the GDP, maybe highlighting specific points that are interesting that people should remember. When there is any policy discourse, they will be better informed about, you know, what is happening. And generally in terms of the structure of the statistical system to have much more regular publication of information. One of his greatest achievements during his tenure was the delivery of greater methodologies for conducting the census. So I try to cut it. I think in 2001, through the use of scanning technology, right, we cut that down to about a year and a half. By 2010, we cut that down to about seven months. St. Lucia delivers census results within seven months of completion of the census. St. Catherine assumed the role of Director of Statistics in 1994 and has worked extensively on the development and conduct of labour force surveys in Caribbean countries. He is a registered expert with the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, on inflation, price index measurements and the development of national consumption expenditure baskets. And this is the NTN Nightly, coming up, the latest happenings in youth and sports with Ryan O'Brien. This list can contribute a small amount of gas in the space, when in TPI, we can try to do everything we can to ensure that we lower the amount of gas we serve to prevent the earth from getting hotter. And we have to lower the amount of gas we serve to mitigate the change. There are many things known all over the world that cause the earth to get hotter. That's what we have to do to make sure that we adapt. We have to do everything we can to prepare and recover for the negative consequences of climate change. We all know that. For example, we can ensure that we protect all that we plant. We can also ensure that natural life that we are able to endure damage at the cyclone and goblins. We can build a channel for the people who need it and a channel for the people who need it. We can do everything we can to live a climate change. We can find information about the national government and the march or even learn to protect the cold and all our citizens. Welcome back. We join Ryan O'Brien for the latest happenings in youth development and sports. Hello once again. I'm Ryan O'Brien with your update from the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports on the NTN Nightly News. The talent of Saint Lucia Special Olympians is improving annually and that realization continues to inspire technical officials who work constantly with potential athletes to compete at World Special Olympics. This comes after another successful outing for Saint Lucia and it recently concluded World Special Olympics in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Members of Saint Lucia's team got an official welcome home last Saturday and National Director, Special Olympics Saint Lucia Junior Emmanuel noted that the team was outstanding in the events in which they participated. They got an opportunity to see how the different side of the world live because in Saint Lucia we are free and to do the things we want, walk around how we want, but then they got an opportunity to learn how to respect rules and the culture while at the same time embracing differences. So it was a great opportunity for them. They performed extremely well on the circumstances. They took a little adjustment. They were able to win gold in the football. We got a silver in track and field by Joshua Henry. We got a gold in Bochi and three bronze medals. So in truth and in fact our athletes performed extremely, extremely well. Meanwhile, the Minister responsible for youth development and sports, the Honourable Edmund Estefan made a special presentation to a sitting of Parliament on Tuesday. Mr Speaker, Saint Lucia's participation at the Special Olympics heralded the essence of pride, joy, respect, love, appreciation and recognition of those athletes in capacities. Mr Speaker, the Special Olympics mission was carved out of the critical need to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic type sports for children and adults with disabilities. This provides them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, to demonstrate courage and experience joy and participate in a sharing environment. Mr Speaker, we know and believe strongly that our athletes who participated in these games are brilliant. They are talented, they are gifted, they are skilled and indeed remarkable. We recognize as a sports focus and committed government that they have a vital contribution to make in our society. This in essence, Mr Speaker, helps them contribute. Meaningfully, as able-bodied citizens, we value to earn a respected place in our society. The Ministry of Development and Sports continued its second round consultation and meetings Tuesday with leaders from the castries and rosso areas to review key recommendations made throughout the ministry's initial round of consultations in late 2018. Eight groups were represented at the dialogue, including the sub-management committee, South Castries Youth and Sports Council, Rosso Valley Youth and Sports Council, Castries Central Youth and Sports Council and Youth Power Group. The engagement provided an opportunity to ensure alignment in the understanding of key needs of these groups from the ministry, while also sharing feedback from the wider group of national stakeholders. Before leaving, a reminder that Youth Exposé set for April 5th at Constitution Park will also be the former launch to Youth Month. Activities from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. including a Youth March, exhibition, live demonstrations, talent show and concerts. Come out and lend support to the nation's youth. That's your update today on the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports. I'm Ryan O'Brien. And stay with the NTN Nightly. Up next, Prime Minister Hutchinson is here with the NTN Nouvelle Arquio. Small household electrical appliances when faulty can give rise to big problems. If you have just purchased a small appliance from a store and you are concerned about the safety of the item, an appliance has been at home for some time subjected to wear and tear from regular usage. Have it tested by its English above standards. It is better to be safe than sorry. For more information, contact the St. Lucia Bureau of Standards at 456-0546 or email SLBS at candw.lc or visit the website at www.slbs.org.lc St. Lucia Bureau of Standards making quality and standards our way of life. Welcome back. We join Prime Minister Hutchinson for the NTN Nouvelle Arquio. Thank you very much, Niche. Thank you, Madam Department of University of Causability for the information and government services at the GIS and the NTN Nouvelle Arquio. Thank you, Prime Minister Hutchinson. I would like to share with you some of the common issues that we have to deal with. The construction of the Nouvelle Arquio has almost been completed. What we have to do is to work to give the Nouvelle Arquio the opportunity to finish the project. According to the report from the Minister of Construction I have started to transform as much as I need the Ville Ville Fort with the Nouvelle Arquio and the NTN Nouvelle Arquio that I have found constructed to suit. The technical officers visited the project recently to make an assessment for the work that I have done. Excellent. Thank you very much. I would like to say that the work that has been done has been very successful. The construction project of the Nouvelle Arquio consists of 6 km of work that has been done to clean up the work that has been done to clean up the work that has been done to build the system and to place the utility service that has been built for the Nouvelle Arquio. The project manager, Mr. Peter Cipal stated that there are very few questions that are necessary to ensure that the quality of the work is maintained to ensure that the work that I have done to ensure that the quality of the work is maintained to ensure that the quality of the work is maintained at the right level. Today, I have a request to the committee that the work is done to ensure that the quality of the work As you can see, it's an open opportunity to build a new life and a new investment in the past four weeks. This culture has found a new intention to increase and cultivate continuation in the future. For example, the foundation for cultural development in this area is the CDF, which is a two-to-three-season workshop to try and increase the diversity of the culture that is under way to spread it. Director General for the UNESCO organization, M. Marcia Simphorien, tells us that UNESCO is a agency that has been able to export CDF to make its own reality. It's mainly about this culture that is tangible. It means that we, as a nation, can embrace it and live it. It means that we can eat it, eat it, and place it wherever we are. But we can embrace the spirit, for example, music, different folkloric dances, apart from music. We have documented the culture. We don't have any culture, but we can create it. We have specialized documents. It can be used in mass loneliness, in the mass education, in the home farms, we have such a process of documenting its culture. We have a CDF as the Assistant Spokesman. Director General UNESCO also decided to assist the CDF after receiving your proposal. We are sure there is a fair sale. So UNESCO is offering financial assistance to support the professionals and some who do not know how to register their financial information. We have a lot of documents. Everyone says that we have a lot of documents but we do not have net documents. So we have a lot of documents and we have a lot of money. We have a lot of money for the masquerade we have a lot of money for the kutumbas we have a lot of money. So we have a lot of documents to support the activities of the culture and we have a lot of money to buy the CDF for the assistance. We have a lot of money for the CDF which is for the publicity of the organization. Jimmy Clavier declared that the CDF will support the assistance of UNESCO and that the government will support the CDF in a very significant way. We have a lot of assistance. We have a lot of government, a lot of countries. We have a lot of documents. We have a lot of documents. Since 2007, we have been protected. We have a lot of protectors. We have a lot of protectors. We have a lot of protectors. We have a lot of information from the government that we have not done enough to protect the country. That's the reason. We have a lot of different countries that have lost their jobs. We have lost ourselves. We have a lot of money to support the CDF which is a successful place. We have a lot of information about the different countries about the history of the organization. The most important thing is the different organizations that have participated in the activities that can help us to establish the CDF in Monobanad. That's the reason we have a lot of new news today. Thank you very much for your time and for your invitation, because now we have a lot of new ideas. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And that brings us to the end of the NTN Nightly. Join us next time at 7 p.m. with a repeat at 7 a.m. You can also catch up with us anytime on the St. Lucia Highway. Thank you. I'm Nisha Charles.


So perspective number one, conditional security, that John 15 basically means you can lose your salvation. So that's how a lot of people interpret this passage.  They lose their salvation. Now conditional security advocates almost always, without question, have some sort of a workspace salvation in there somewhere. So they will usually say that as well as continuing in your belief about who Jesus is and what he has done, you also have to continue in your works of obedience. Okay, because if you don't, you fall into the James 2 dustbin. So the reason why the reason why they reach this conclusion is obvious, is that John 15 1 to 6 is sandwiched between if you love me, keep my commandments from John 14 15. And if you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love. That's later in verse 10 of John 15. So what are the merits of this interpretation? Where does it come from? Well, the branches are in Christ quote unquote. Okay. And so this is then applied to mean having eternal life, because we can see from other verses in the Bible that being in Christ is interchangeable with having everlasting life. So like John 5 26, son to have life in himself, eternal life in John 6 56, dwells in me and I in him. You've got Second Timothy 11 life, which is in Christ Jesus, Romans 6 23. Now in the King James, it says eternal life through Christ Jesus, but some translations say it. So obviously somebody using one of those translations would use this verse as well. Then 1 John 5 11 to 12, this life is in his son. So obviously we've got these various passages that eternal life is in Christ. And so obviously you can understand why they will make that bridge with John chapter 15 here. And also as well, later in the chapter abiding in Christ or more specifically in his love is tied with the commandments. And naturally, as we had to expose in the previous study, a lot of work salvation folk that they filter in their minds at these marginal notes and theologians commentary. So that when it when it goes in saying if you love me keep my commandments, it works its way around the filter and all the, you know, theological commentary gets wrapped around it. And that turns itself into turn from all your sins that thou shalt be saved. Because you know that that's often how their mind retranslates what the Bible actually says. So there are a few things going on here. Even though the eternal security go to passage in John chapter six and 10 actually mentioned eternal life, the conditional security go to passage in John doesn't at least not directly. Okay, so they are standing on sandy ground when they have to use a passage that doesn't mention eternal life verbatim and make it about eternal life and then wrestle against passages and explain those away when they do mention eternal life. Having said that, to play the devil's advocate as the saying goes, they can easily demonstrate that being in Christ has a clear connection to eternal life from other eternal life versus. Okay, we can't really dispute that, right? So for this reason, we cannot just completely ignore or dismiss this passage to win an argument against them either. We have to be able to address this passage with eternal life in mind. A key focus on abiding in Christ here appears to be about commandments as the explicit requirement for abiding in his love rather than faith since this word does not appear in John 15. And although the word believe was used a few times in John 14, not in the context of eternal life necessarily, although that's arguably an aspect of it, that's now suddenly stopped because you know in John 15 we're moving away from that. So obviously when you look at the passage superficially, it looks more commandment orientated or more obedience orientated rather than faith orientated. And obviously, you know, they're going to be kicking and screaming if we start word swapping and just say it just means to believe. Well, we need to explain why he uses the word commandments if that's what it actually means. So, you know, we did unpack that in the previous study that was what the commandments actually entail in, you know, in this passage. So this is just a brief summary of how they interpret this passage. So sorry, I don't know why I've put it twice there. So being cast into the fire in verse six must mean hellfire as it's not merely metaphorical or allegorical fire. You know, it doesn't represent something else. It means they interpret it as hellfire. Okay. The fruit that the brand branches must bring forth is interpreted usually as works or at least evidence of faith, this idea that saving faith must produce works. If we cannot see these works, then men man sees a branch, but it does not does not see its fruit. The commandments are being applied to more or less anything that Jesus commanded ever, or at least anything that they think you should be obeying, which was already explored and debunked in our John 14 study, seeing why the commandments in this passage isn't really talking about sins of the flesh and really legalists, they often have to arbitrarily pick and choose which commandments they think applies to anyway. So we've seen we've seen the merit and origin of conditional security from this passage. Now let's see its shortcomings and why it's actually easily disproved from this passage. Okay, we can easily disprove trying to use this passage to justify a workspace salvation. We can easily disprove that this passage is some kind of an urgent imminent warning that you could lose your salvation today. Okay, we can easily demonstrate that if this passage did teach that you could lose salvation, let's just suppose it did, it would be irrecoverable. But most conditional security advocates believe you can get your salvation back again. They very conveniently change the rules of how salvation loss actually works when it suits them. So they make rules in this passage that are different to rules that they put in other passages and we'll see that in a moment. So the first problem with interpreting conditional security from John 15, notice who is doing the work according to this illustration and you can see very, very quickly why you cannot logically get a workspace salvation from this passage. It says my father is the husband man. Okay, he's the one that's doing the actual work on the vine.  So scripture is very, very clear in this illustration. It's the father that is doing the work. He purges, he takes away.  Now a tree or a vine branch does not do work. It's the husband man that's doing the work. Okay, the branches just either grow through or they don't, but the husband man is doing the work. Now they might try and rebut this saying, you know, as those other verses we looked at clarify, there is work involved based on the commandments, you know, keep my commandments. But if you watched my study on John 14, you will remember that this is a very inappropriate interpretation because first of all, they arbitrarily pick and choose which commandments they think you should obey and not obey. They don't tell you to go wash in the pool of Siloam, but Jesus did quite clearly command go wash at the pool of Siloam. Jesus isn't talking about sins of the flesh with his disciples in these chapters here and turning, you know, turning from them in the John 13, 16 conversation. He's not warning his disciples about the drunkenness and the harlots on the streets in this conversation. Looking at what commandments Jesus actually gave in this conversation between chapters 13, 16, helps us to understand what he actually meant to buy his commandments, things like love one another, abide or continue in me, be of good cheer, believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we can also see, as we looked at in the previous study from John's epistles, how he himself interpreted this same conversation that it means to abide in the doctrines of Christ. And we will explore that later as well in our John 15 study. And also, just in case you haven't noticed, fruit itself is not work. Fruit is the product of work. The husband does work and gets fruit. Any of you that owns a fruit tree knows you're the one that's putting the work in. It's the tree that grows the fruit, but the fruit is not the work. You putting the work in is the work. And the fruit is something that you're expecting to get from that work. Okay. Problem number two, then, is that although there are some exceptions, most people who believe that you can lose salvation believe that you can repent all over and over again and get it back. This is not consistent with the passage though, because once a branch is removed and cast forth, it's withered. And men gather them and cast them onto the fire and they are burned. So scripture is very clear that once the branches are removed, they are burned in the fire. So how can they be regrafted or reattached onto the vine if they have already been destroyed? And this is similar to where they often quote Hebrew 6 to say that you can lose your salvation. But it did say in Hebrew 6 that if they fall away, it's impossible to get them renewed onto repentance. So you see how they're not even consistent with their favorite passages. And this is kind of a side note, but looking at the same verse, notice who is casting the branches into the fire, because it doesn't actually say that the father is casting them into the fire. It says that men gather them and cast them into the fire. Right? Well, Jesus did clearly explain not to fear men because they can kill the body, but they can't kill the soul.  But Jesus is very clear in John 15, it's men casting them into the fire. Now, granted, this particular point is not in of itself a strong argument because the men in this illustration could be interpreted as angels. So it could be angels casting them into the fire. But let's just say that if that is so, that means then that this is an illustration only. So nobody can say, well, John 15 quite clearly says that you can lose your salvation because this is an illustration. It doesn't quite clearly say anything. Because if it quite clearly says you can lose salvation, it's very, very clear. Well, then it quite clearly says that men cast them into the fire.  So we must allow some room for allegorical interpretation here.   So this is, you know, open to interpretation as to what this all really means. Problem number three, then, is that the legalists will try to make this passage such an imminent warning that at any point you could disobey a commandment and immediately lose your salvation. You might do it in the next hour if you're not careful. But this just doesn't really fit the illustration at all. Because an important condition of the father cutting off a branch is that it doesn't produce fruit. Now anybody who knows the first thing about gardening knows that fruit does not just suddenly appear, nor does it grow continually all the time. Fruit takes time to grow. It takes time for the fruitful and unfruitful branches to manifest. A branch doesn't grow fruit continually all the time. It grows fruits at certain times of year. Different times of year depending on the plant species or the climate or the hemisphere. But, you know, it grows fruit only at certain times of year. And different plant species, I don't know a lot about this, but different plant species grow fruits on what's called old wood or new wood. And so even fruitful branches may eventually need trimming and pruning anyway so that new wood can grow and eventually become fruitful later. We'll explore a little bit about that, but I don't know a lot about gardening though. Problem number four is that people try to use this passage as a dire warning passage. But actually this conversation in Chapter 1316 is meant to be an encouragement to the disciples. Not a dire health fire warning because, you know, he says, if you know these things, happy are you if you do them. By this all men shall know that you are disciples if you love one another. Let not your heart be troubled.  Ask anything in my name and I will do it. I will not leave you comfortless. You are clean through the word. So have I loved you. I have called you friends. Your sorrow shall be turned into joy. This is very, very, very encouraging language for something that's supposed to be this terrible warning that you could lose your salvation. Okay. And further as well, building on these encouragements, is that when Jesus encourages or commands the disciples, he very often uses the pronouns you or ye you and the vows specific to one disciple with an occasional he. Whereas anything he says to look that looks like it could be a warning or a condemnation to the world like being cut off or reproving the world of sin, Jesus always says he it they doesn't say you ye as if he's, you know, not talking about the disciples directly. So we see then that when Jesus gives versus that look like they could be warnings, it's not so much about the disciples themselves not abiding, but rather being able to identify others who will not abide and be cut off. And problem number five is that conditional security advocates bend the rules and change the rules when it suits them to do so. Because if I brought out an eternal security verse like John 10 28, you know, that no man is able to pluck them out of my hand or my father's hand in verse 29, they will reply to that.  Right. Okay. Well, how about this one? Then we go to John 6 37 39 37 and 39. Sorry. I will in no wise cast out or I should lose nothing. So we point that out.  Well, okay. So we have this premise then I it's you who walks away, the father doesn't lose you, he doesn't cast you out. But then when it comes to John 15, it says that my father is the one that takes them away. So they will use John 15 as a key proof text for losing salvation, where it's the father that takes away the branches, the branches don't just run off or fall off, the father willing will fully remove them. So they pick and choose the rules when it suits them in John 6 and 10. The rule is that you walk away in John 15. The rule is that you will be forcibly removed. So they're very inconsistent with their own rules about how this actually works. Problem number six as well is that they often use problematic terminology that doesn't really match the passage. So for example, they might say something like, if you stop abiding in Christ, you will be cut off. But the problem is that there are only two types of people or rather branches, I should say, in this illustration. Those who abide and those who don't abide, they're the two options. Abiding means by definition to continue to stay to remain. So if somebody stops abiding and they did not, they did not abide in Christ, they don't temporarily abide and they're in the branch and they're growing through and then they stop growing through and stop abiding. Either they abide or they don't abide. Well, if they only temporarily abided, they didn't abide. Okay, now, as I mentioned earlier in the study, there are parts of the Bible where abiding is temporary, but that's not the case in John 15. So you only have two options. You can't invent a third option where you were abiding yesterday and you're not abiding today. That's not compatible with the passage. Same thing with growing through. Either you grew through or you didn't. There's no, well, you grew through yesterday, but not today. That doesn't work with this illustration. And so that leads me on to problem number seven is that there's only two options. The branch that produces fruit and the branches that don't. So if conditional security advocates insist that salvation must produce fruit, then if a branch produced any fruit at all, it means that the criteria for salvation were met. So a branch cannot be cut off for being unfruitful because it bought fruit. If a branch is cut off and it produced no fruit, but we have to have this fruit to be saved, well, then it wasn't saved then, was it? Otherwise, why didn't it produce any fruit? OK, so you see how they have a self-refuting doctrine. And so we see very quickly the fundamental flaws of conditional security from this passage. They use a passage that says God removes the branches, the branches don't walk away, but then change the rules of operation when you invoke passages whereby God won't lose any and won't cast any out and won't let any be plucked out. So, you know, which is it? They're trying to justify a workspace salvation from a passage where God is the one doing the actual work. A branch on a tree does not actually work. OK, it just grows. They invent a new type of branch to the illustration that the illustration doesn't give because they have self-contradictory salvation requirements for this branch in the first place. And they redefine the meaning of commandments and fruit in this passage to be all about your sin and your personal obedience to all the commanded works in the Bible, when those things are not fundamentally a part of this discussion in John 13 to 16. We've already seen them in my previous study of John 14, what the commandments are in context and how John understood them. Love one another as I have loved you. Continue in Christ, his love, his doctrine, his sayings, his words. Believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Be of good cheer. Let not your hearts be troubled. So, you see how they just turn a comforting passage into a dire warning. It's really bizarre.


Okay, thank you everyone for joining TechSoupConnect's July presentation. We appreciate it as being brought to you by Refuel Recharge and Create Your Change. I am Kat Milner, the owner-operator of Create Your Change, and we want to welcome Tony Wright today for being willing to present to us on your environment, your work environment both usually from home. She is an environmental scientist turned interior designer with a passion for making life more pleasant for people in their working environment. So without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Tonya. So if you could just unmute yourself. Okay, hi everyone. Thanks for joining me today. I'm going to be taking you through a little presentation about how evidence-based design can help you increase your productivity and well-being while working from home. And just trying to set up my slide. Can everyone see that properly? Kat? Yep, can see it. Just fine. Thank you. Great. Okay. So just quickly, I'll go over what we're covering today. Just give a brief intro to me and then we'll go into talking about working from home, going forward post-pandemic, ways that you can measure productivity and well-being, how you can use evidence-based design to help you increase your productivity and well-being working at home. And then we'll be covering physical factors, benefits of nature and plants, in increasing working well-being. We'll be looking at creating structure in your work day and ways to stay connected and build trust between staff and management, which is vital for the success of working from home. We're also, because I really believe in putting theory into practice. So as we go along, I ask you to make a bit of a note of one thing from each section that you can do to increase your work from home productivity or well-being. So by the end, you should have an action plan to take away with you so you can get started right now. So just a brief intro to me. Like Kat said, I'm an environmental scientist, I'm a tier designer. I spent over a decade in science and academia, mostly looking at climate change related research and also doing some teaching at Melbourne Uni. While I was there, I saw all this great research being done, but no one really putting people or publishing papers that there wasn't much happening out in the real world. So I decided I wanted to do something a bit more tangible to make more of a tangible impact. And I left Australia and went to the UK and started working for in the charity nonprofit sector. And while I was working in Oxford, I was asked to redesign the office I was working at. And it made me absolutely fall in love with workplace design and how can people help people and organisations increase their productivity and well-being. And I went on a deep dive into the literature and use my research background to really start to craft really unique design spaces that can help people. So I wanted to start with a question. Are you working still working from home? If you just want to let me know in the chat. And do you plan to keep working from home? Does your office plan to keep working from home? Anyone? Let me see, try and get this. Yes, yes. Okay, okay, great. Got a few people saying yes. So we all know there can be some great benefits working from home. And, you know, there's many reasons beyond just a pandemic while we might want to incorporate working from home into our working schedules, at least part of the week. A lot of workers have decided now that they'd like to be at least two to three days at home and then a couple of days in the office as well. And that's because working from home can give you a better work-class balance. It gives you more flexibility in your schedule so you can start and end your day when it suits you best. And this might make it easier for things like childcare, attending appointments, running errands, getting enough exercise or social interaction and just making some healthy choices for yourself and having the time to do it. It also means no commuting. So the average commute in Australia for full-time workers is 4 hours and 10 minutes per week, which is roughly 15 minutes a day or 25 minutes each way. So actually quite a lot. And not only can you get your time back if you're staying working from home, you can use that time for other exercise, for other activities, like we're saying exercise or even just some extra sleep. And you can reduce the physical and mental effects of commuting. And those can include increased levels of stress and anxiety, higher cholesterol, elevated blood sugar, increased risk of depression. Working from home can also help you save money. So the obvious ones are on petrol, car maintenance, public transport if you take it, parking fees, professional wardrobe, buying lunches out. And it can also help the employer save money in many ways through reduced overheads. And like we're saying, all this adds up to an increased quality of life. So you can have, like we said, more time for physical activity, being able to eat healthier from home, less exposure to illness, which you might get in the office, and the ease for caring for health issue or disability if you have one. And as you all know, it's a lot greener, especially if we're taking those cars off the roads. So they're the pros. Now we all know there are some challenges. If you want to put in the box in the chat, let me know some of the challenges you're experiencing working from home. Okay, Trudy saying hi, Trudy. Trudy saying isolation. Yeah, that's a huge one. Cat is your husband keeps accusing me of being a shard in. Yes, even if you couldn't stay home, I definitely have that a lot as well. And that's something I deal as well with being a sole trader working from home and living alone. So definitely. Yes, I do. I like being at home too. Yeah. Okay, Trudy, you don't want to leave each other. You don't want to stop that one. That can be a big problem too. Yeah, Marina. Yeah, that can be an issue. So Marina saying being at a company, it takes longer time to communicate with the coworkers working from home. And that communication in the ways that we can do that formally. But then also the informal social aspect we get as well can be hard to bring through when we work at home as well. So there are definitely things we need to address. Okay, great. So there's some of the issues you're working on. I put together a few... Oh, yeah. Of the general comes of working from home that people talk about a lot. Because there are some potential pitfalls that we really do need to start addressing if we want to keep working from home productively and keep that as part of this flexible work arrangement option. So one of the biggest issues is the perceived loss in productivity by management. But like we're saying, we're seeing people either working too much. So there's work bleeding. You can never switch off because it's in your home. Or they're actually not working enough because you're getting procrastination happening.  It's just so easy to go to the kitchen and get a snack or there's so many ways to procrastinate around the house. A lot of people are having an issue of potentially there's a lack of a dedicated space. So not everyone's lucky enough like I am to have a separate room where I can have a home office. A lot of people are needing to work out in shared spaces like living rooms or kitchens. And so this is really leading to a real lack of work-life balance. And like we're saying, you can never really switch off because it's always there. It's in your home. And like Trudy and others were saying, we're isolated from our colleagues. We're lacking community.  And like I said earlier, there's this perceived loss of productivity. But how do we even measure productivity or well-being? So my next question to you if you want to pop in the chat is, are you measuring your productivity and well-being in general working from home? And if so, how are you making that happen? So if you just want to write something in there, in the chat, so Trudy saying no, so not currently measuring it. And that's the thing that we're finding a lot actually is there's this perceived lack of productivity, but no one's actually measuring it at all. So it's all just mental and maybe, as in a lot of cases, for a lot of different work tasks, productivity can actually increase when you're working at home because of those lack of distractions. So Kat's saying that she wants to do both, but she's not sure how to track it. Yeah, that's a good point. And Trudy's asking how to measure as well. Well, that's what we're going on to next.  But it sounds like no one's really has a system up in place at the moment. So if we just take it back to a definition, generally speaking, productivity is defined as a ratio of output to input. So in organizational operational terms, that means productivity can be described as a ratio of company turnover to employee cost. Now, that's when you're looking at a whole company level. But we want to maybe just focus in on how we can do things as an individual when we're working from home and keep a track of it for ourselves. So again, there's three main ways that people try to measure work productivity. They're management by objectives, where you get a specific set of goals and targets agreed on between staff and management to achieve for every kind of task or work that you do. The second is quantitative productivity. And that's where you set goals and targets, like KPIs, to achieve within a certain timeframe. And the third one is measuring by profit. And that just means tracking revenue. So basically, if the revenue is increasing, that means employees are more productive. Again, that's a bit more of a company-wide one. But to track your own productivity working from home, it's probably easiest to start with the first two methods and work on setting yourself specific targets and goals and seeing how well you can meet them. So have a think about the kinds of tasks that you're doing in your day. And that's where tracking yourself can come in handy. I don't know if anyone's currently working on if they've got any KPIs that they set themselves. But maybe just start combing through what you do and trying to put some specific goals that you can track. And then you can set up your own, basically, productivity surveys. So although there's no single definition of well-being, most people agree that it requires meeting various human needs, some of which are essential, so like being in good health, as well as the ability to pursue one's goals, to thrive, and really feel satisfied in life. The OECD's How's Life report identifies there's three pillars for understanding and measuring people's well-being. The first being material living conditions, that's really like our survival, quality of life, and then sustainability. So well-being can be measured using a number of different staff surveys. And the common ones I've put up here, which include mental health surveys that are used by government health organizations, as well as staff satisfaction and safety surveys. So the big ones are the anxiety, depression, hazardous drinking. Those are the rare ones that if you go to a GP and you're saying I'm having trouble, say with depression, they'll get you to fill out those specific surveys and they're scored. There's also a survey called the Workplace Incivility Scale, and then you have surveys you can put out about if you've been experiencing bullying or harassment in the workplace or even when you're working from home. In either way, when you're measuring productivity and well-being, it's really important that you establish a baseline so that you know where you're starting from before you make any changes. Like we've seen here, no one seems to be currently tracking their productivity or well-being. So it's important that we start doing that and create a baseline, a start point, and then you can start putting in some of these changes. And that way, when you re-measure it, you'll be able to see exactly how much these little interventions you're putting in these changes in your environment helping you increase your productivity and well-being. And then you can just keep on monitoring using the same surveys and the same KPIs, say, at regular intervals, say weekly or monthly, and just set aside some time once a week or once a month to check in to see how you're going and if you're still on track. So evidence-based design can really help you when you are looking at trying to increase your work productivity or well-being. And in case you don't know, evidence-based design just means constructing a building or a physical environment based on scientific research to achieve the best possible outcomes. So while it might seem obvious to me coming from a science background to base any changes or design of a space on data and evidence, it's actually not the norm. So for me, I find that quite strange because it's logical for me to face these decisions on something if someone's actually done the research and the data's in. And this is the problem. I feel like there's so much research being done and they're releasing their findings in these journal articles and that they can directly help you to increase your productivity and well-being working from home and in the office. So that's what I do is basically read through the scientific literature to bring all that knowledge into my design work and I've put together some of the basic principles and some information for you in the rest of the slides that you can easily take home and apply to your own work spaces. So the biggest effect on productivity is made by physical factors that can relate directly to your psychological and physical comfort. So the main ones I'm going to talk about today are lighting, temperature, noise, air quality and having a dedicated space to do your work. So in terms of lighting, the main productivity drains are having a lack of natural daylight, your workplace being too dark in general and they're being glare from light sources either directly into your eyes or reflecting off of your screens. So the best practice is to obviously try and maximize daylight as much as possible. That means either working near a window or if you have a skylight. I know it's not always possible depending on where you have to work at home but if you can try and get as much natural daylight as possible that is the best thing you can do. Also try and keep your vertical surfaces bright. Now the big thing is having no glare on your computer screen. So as you can see in the diagram I've included here, if you have a window it's actually better to position your desk perpendicular to the window than either facing it or the window being behind you because that way the glare is not coming either straight to your face or onto the screen itself. And make sure if you have a desk light with you make sure the light is not reflecting straight onto the monitor because that's going to cause glare as well. In general terms warm white colour bulbs are best at 150 lux which is around 90 watts in LED light. They're more pleasant to than other conditions and also in studies they people perform better in word categorization tasks. So keeping that warm light. So this is where you can write down something for yourself. Have a bit of a think about is there something you could easily do to upgrade your lighting in your workspace currently? Do you need to shift where you're working? Maybe move your desk around? Do you maybe need to bring in some other lamps to increase the lighting? Because like we're saying the maximum is actually 500 well the best optimum amount of workplace lighting is actually 500 to 800 lux. And there are little monitors that you can get that are quite cheap or even just apps on your phone that you can use to measure your lights of the space. Okay so moving on to temperature. So thermal comfort is described as state of mind which expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment and basically it's subjective so it can vary from person to person using based on a broad range of factors that can be age, gender, metabolism rate and the time of year so the season. In an office thermal comfort is measured by analyzing the number of discomfort complaints that you get but at home you can just tailor it to yourself and that's why you only have to worry about you. Studies have indicated that temperature change within an 18 to 30 degree Celsius range can influence performance on office occupants in tasks like typewriting, learning performance and reading. So generally speaking the temperature range of 21 degrees to 25 degrees Celsius is a stable temperature for office productivity so you want to be trying to keep your home office within that 21 to 25 degree Celsius range and just note that there's a decrease in occupant performance by 2 per cent per every one degree Celsius increase in temperature within 25 to 30 degree Celsius. So you can see that actually changes in temperature have a huge impact on our productivity so make sure that you're monitoring your temperature which you can do with a simple Samantha to keep it between that 21 to 25 degrees. So when we're talking about noise basically we can also call it acoustic comfort and it's really important to workplace design that's because continuous and prolonged noise at high levels can induce can induce and increase stress levels over time and obviously increased stress is going to decrease your productivity and well-being. So we can see here we've got a neutral sound pressure of a typical air conditioner in an air-conditioned office is between 45 decibels to 70 decibels and as you can see down the volume we've got a bit of a scale going on here. So a private office is about 40 decibel noise level recommendations so we want to keep it about that which actually is the average home noise and just to put that also into a bit of context a refrigerator hum is around 40 decibels so you want to make sure that you're trying to keep it around them and as you can see in here actually we've got office noise around more than 70 decibel and that's actually at a level if it's prolonged that can start increasing that stress those stress um and like we say just as temperature is really affects productivity so does changes in noise so for the same temperature change that we had of one degree Celsius so that two percent of productivity difference is actually the same every time we change the decibel from for 2.6 decibels so again noise is hugely impactful um on our productivity and well-being and just as a little tip uh nature sounds especially the sound of water and running water can actually help you to relax and reduce stress so it's not just about reducing general background noise you can actually start using noise um sounds in a beneficial way as well so maybe think about the noise levels where you're working at home um where do you think they would fall on this scale so are you is that other other people working at home with you at the same time do you have kids running around um but do you have your own private office that you can close your door and really be on top of those noise levels and once you've put think where you you know where you land on the scale maybe try and write down something um that you could do to improve those noise levels to have a bit of a think about that and jot something down okay so now we're going to move on to a really big one which is air quality um so you may have heard of sick building syndrome or building related illness and they were first documented in the 80s um basically sick building syndrome is used to describe a situation in which the occupants of a building experience acute health or comfort related effects that seems to be linked directly to time spent in a building now that can sound kind of nebulous and it kind of is but the symptoms are wide ranging and can include dry itchy sore or burning eyes um alongside irritated nose or sinusitis symptoms respiratory irritation headaches lethargy and mental fatigue so all of these things pride together obviously reduces your work efficiency and also increases ascenteeism um so have a think have you been experiencing any of these symptoms do you think you've experienced that at home or in the office maybe you've experienced it in the office a bit more um have a think about if you've been experiencing that in your workplace just going through sick building syndrome the causes now these are quite wide ranging as well they can be chemical contaminants like um volatile organic compounds um biological contaminants like pollen bacteria molds uh inadequate ventilation electromagnetic radiation which can come from our computers tv's microwaves basically any electronic device or psychological factors are an even an issue so excessive work stress poor communication um also poor inappropriate lighting like we've talked about as sense of sunlight noise like they're saying bad acoustics poor ergonomics and humidity so basically that's telling you what is causing sick burning syndrome so have a think about um are you experiencing that maybe the pollen bacteria molds could be an issue working from home um and also your devices could be a big one as well so maybe have a think about how you could be mitigating those effects so air quality in general um at least for our purposes today can be broken down into two main categories they are contaminants and ventilation so a good workplace with good air quality actually has higher work performance in office tasks such as text typing proof reading and even mathematical tasks um so when we break down the main contaminants we have like I said before the volatile organic compounds um or aldehydes now these are the main contributors to poor air quality um they're ubiquitous both indoors and outdoors um VOCs are organic chemicals that are emitted as gases from products or processes um and for the most part you can actually smell them when they're present so typical sources of VOCs indoors include things like cleaning agents disinfectants air fresh air freshness dehumidifiers paints in your in your wall your furniture um all of those products can have VOCs in them um now another one is carbon monoxide so um in contrast to the VOCs carbon monoxide is actually impossible to smell taste or see um and at low and moderate concentrations it can cause fatigue chest pain or impaired vision and at high concentrations it can even be fatal so um sources of carbon monoxide are usually things like generators um poorly maintained boilers or furnaces um and automobiles and vehicle exhausts from nearby idling vehicles things like that um um next we have particulate matter so again found inside and outside their mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets suspended in air so things like dust pollen smoke soot um they're all the um all the particles themselves are different sizes but the ones that are most of concern to us are the smallest which are about 10 micrometers in diameter um diameter or smaller and that's because those small particles can actually be inhaled um and inhalation of particulate matter can affect the heart and the lungs um so indoor examples um of particulate matter could be things like um produced by fireplaces uh smoking cigarettes um or other activities like that and then there's a few others that are on the radar which are things like radon carbon dioxide nitrogen dioxide and methane and just on the right there i've included a table that gives you the recommended um indoor air quality um by the living building institute um yeah by the international well building institute and that's just there for your reference um basically indoor air quality sensors are available to purchase um and they're pretty much the only way that you can measure these contaminants some homes may already have things like carbon monoxide sensors fitted when it comes to um ventilation um ventilation basically moves outdoor air into a building or a room and distributes the air within the building or the room so the general purpose of ventilation in the building is to provide healthy air for breathing both diluting the pollutants which originate in the building um and removing pollutants from the room um building ventilation has three basic elements they are ventilation rate which is the amount of outdoor air that's provided in in the space and the um quality of the outdoor air air flow direction which is the overall air flow direction in the building um which should should be from clean zones to dirty zones and then air distribution or airflow pattern and that's um where the external air should be delivered to each part of the space in an efficient manner um and airborne pollutants generated in each part of the space should be removed in an efficient manner as well um so there there are three main methods um that may be used to ventilate a building and they are natural ventilation mechanical and then a hybrid mix mode um natural ventilation is the natural forces that drive outdoor air through um purpose built building building envelope openings um and those are just a fancy way of saying windows doors um chimneys uh and things like that in your home mechanical mechanical ventilation is basically using mechanical fans to drive ventilation um so they could be fans could be installed directly in windows or walls um or using air ducts uh things like that um and then we have hybrid or mix mode ventilation and basically that's just a mixture of both so you get both um natural driving forces um and also using fans as well so basically it's harder to monitor adequate ventilation without equipment um but you can increase the ventilation rate of your home office area consciously um just by opening your windows and doors to the outside um and then this can be hard depending on the weather like especially recently you don't really want to open your windows um but maybe just try and do a quick ventilation um like every time you take a longer break and that way you can try and get up to those 8.4 air exchanges per 24 hours and if you look at the diagram like pull up here just in the corner um it can show you how the air is going to be moving in your room so if you've got one opening two on the same side on a different side now the best is actually this cross ventilation so if you can have a window on one side of your room and a door on the other and just leave those open that's going to get the air to pass through really quickly and easily so have a think if there's a setup where your home office is if you can do that um just quickly every few hours just to get an exchange of air so it's really important to have a dedicated workspace when you're working from home um and this can help you optimize your workflow which will increase your efficiency and then your productivity um workflow is also helped by having everything you need to conduct your work together in one spot and that's close to you giving yourself visual and acoustic privacy from other members of the household can also really help in reducing your stress and increasing your productivity if it's at all possible it's best to have an entirely separate room like a study or a home office uh when you're working from home and that's one where you can have a door that you can just shut at the end of the day um and that will help you to really delineate work from home life um which is a really big help in that work-life balance so having a separate room also allows you to reduce your potential distractions as opposed if you're sitting at the kitchen table and stuff's going on um it can reduce your work-lead like I said you can just close the door at the end of the day it's really delineated work-only space and reduce your stress and again improve your work-life balance now if you can't accommodate an entire room um to your workspace uh just from who you're living with how big your house is um and you have to use a shared space in your house it's important to create a permanent and dedicated space even if it's just a nook somewhere or an edge of a table um this will really help you increase your work efficiency by reducing the setup time and help you to get some of the psychological advantages of having that separate room so again reducing those distractions having the close proximity of all the equipment you need things like that now have a think about the space where you're currently working at at home are there any ways in which you can improve it is there any way if you are working in a shared space is there any way you can give yourself a separate room for your home office I know that's a big one and not always um immediately obvious one of my clients who was working from a desk in the corner of their open land kitchen dining area actually just recently converted her playroom her children's playroom um into a her dedicated home office room um this was a room that was currently just um the kids didn't really use it they mostly just used it to um store toys and kind of just became a bit of a dumping ground for that so what we did was take a lot of those things out there they downsize of that put some storage in there so now that room is now her dedicated office but then can also still be used by her kids um when she's not working so have a think is there a better place to be put in your home office um than where it currently is now we're going to move on to workstation ergonomics which i'm sure you've all done in the office in the workplace at one point or another and having the correct ergonomic setup is just as important at home as when you're in the office and the outside is that you only have to do this once so the diagram on the right um shows the correct posture um so the most important thing is being the height of your desk and the keyboard um and the height of the monitor so that way you're not putting any strain on your body and opening yourself up to injury so basically just working out where if you naturally just put your shoulders back um and bend your elbow that height of your where your arm naturally sits and then also making sure that the top of your monitor is just in line with your eyesight um make sure you've got all the equipment that you need um make sure you've got a proper office grade desk chair that is adjustable so you can make those movements for yourself um and make sure you have all the accessories you need like the rest wrist for your keyboard a foot rest is um you're a bit shorter and you can't get the right desk height um or a fatigue mat if you're doing a sit-stand desk that really helps with your standing for extended periods of time um and if at all possible do try and get a sit-stand desk because it's so much better for your health than being seated for eight hours a day um but only if that's possible so just have a think have you actually done a proper workstation ergonomic adjustment for your home office setup um and if you haven't think about doing that and there's plenty of resources online so you can take a picture of this one um for how it should be set up um and have a think about what do you need to upgrade always making sure if you follow this diagram as well um that you put the things that you're using most commonly closest to you and spreading out because again we shouldn't really be leaning forward too much and changing um putting pressure on our lower backs and things like that okay so now we get on to nature and there's actually so many benefits of having nature um and indoor plants in your home office basically humans have a high level of happiness and well-being when we're in the natural environment so we're trying to harness that and bring that inside so when you do bring any kind of natural environment or green inside your home it carries on that positive effect and it can increase your satisfaction it's funny like we we crave nature so much that even passively viewing natural stimuli through a window not even in the house but actually through a window can also reduce our stress um and elevate a positive mood the use of nature and plants from windows have been reported to help to reduce anxiety and tension and also um assist in increasing productivity and well-being and if that's not enough they also help you actually improve your indoor air quality filtering out pollutants a lot of different indoor plants can do that in fact um studies have shown that you can even get a reduction of 10% in workers absenteeism by the introduction of nature into a workspace so um it's just incredible incredible gains you can get just by bringing some nature in or giving yourself a view of nature and again in fact we crave it so much that studies have also shown that looking um even just looking at a computer generated image of nature for 40 seconds can decrease that stress and increase focus so it's a great thing to do um in between tasks and during little breaks um if you are thinking about uh introducing indoor plants into your home office um like I said it's a really quick and easy way um to increase your air quality and reduce your stress just make sure that if you have a pet um to be careful on which plants you choose because some indoor plants especially um a lot of the ones that purify air actually can be toxic to animals so just make sure that you're choosing pet pet friendly versions um so now we're getting on to the more um well-being side of things as well and that's creating structure um in your day and that is so important to maintaining the work from home productivity and well-being um basically creating and sticking to a regular structure can help tackle some of the main issues with working from home um and help you to increase your productivity reduce um any overworking or work creep um the flexibility of working from home means you can define your own work hours so make sure they're the ones that the most convenient and productive to you so you can actually set your hours around other commitments you have whether that's childcare um or your own say exercise um gym things like that uh classes just remember everyone's different so the beauty of working from home is that you can actually work to work around when you are most productive so have a bit of an experiment to find out the most productive time of day um that is when you're most productive and then structure your work day around that um scheduling work blocks in your calendar can also help stick to your schedule um and reduce procrastination and increase your productivity you might even want to try experimenting with some different time management techniques like the pomodoro technique which is 25 minutes of work five minute breaks and it gets a bit more complicated just look it up if you haven't heard of it um also you need to make sure you're scheduling uh regular daily check-ins with either supervisors or colleagues at the beginning and or the end of your day it's a great way to keep your structure going and making sure you're staying on track um it's also really important to make sure you're taking regular breaks including macro breaks exercise and mealtimes and we'll talk a bit more about that on the next slide but just have a think about how your work day is currently structured and if there are any ways that you can improve that um so just quickly because I know we're um running out of time I'll just go through this basically your ideal break schedule is about 52 minutes of work followed by well you should get 17 minutes of rest for every 52 minutes of work people like to break it up into different ways so again you can experiment for yourself but make sure you're getting at least 15 minutes per hour of concentrated screen work and 15 minutes per two hours for less strenuous work um so just figure that out biggest thing is that breaks need to be away from your computer screen you need to be not doing anything visually demanding so make sure you're not looking up at anything too close or at that kind of arm length um don't be doing any repetitive motions and make sure you're practicing on refocusing your eye in the distance as well during um breaks is also really great to be doing some exercises and stretching it can be either done seated or standing and there's many shoulder rolls neck um different um exercises and stretches you can do and even take it into some basic yoga poses and if you do have that sit-stand desk make sure um that you're using it you're standing up at least 15 minutes every hour and to get the best health benefits from that sit-stand desk you can be standing more like 30 minutes to 45 minutes per hour um so the lack of trust between the staff and management is the main reason for organizations not wanting to continue with working from home arrangements so it's really important for both sides to invest time and energy in building these trusting relationships um ways to include uh ways to do that include maintaining regular regular communication like we're saying those daily weekly check-ins um just be aware that because the majority of our communication is actually non-verbal it's important to get to see the person that you're speaking to um so we can pick up on body language so try and encourage everyone to turn on their cameras when they're having the virtual meetings then we also want um to be open and transparent it really helps if you can provide a space for staff to share and discuss and collaborate ideas around working from home um and setting those targets and again the biggest thing is setting those clear expectations and the work output and deadlines um also people need to be sure that they have the right equipment when they're working at home um not everyone has everything personally so you need to make sure that you as the employer or if you're an employee um your management is providing you with all of the correct equipment so whether that means sending out some company-owned devices chairs laptops things like that make sure you've got everything so you can be as productive as possible um then we'll just quickly just say um ways to maintain communication and culture so like we were saying before some people are experiencing some isolation um a really good way around this is to start setting up if you're a part of a team morning or afternoon phone calls or video calls each day have a bit of a mental health check-in say hi a lot of workplaces have really helped um found it helps if they just have check-ins that aren't about work at all you can actually get to know people a lot better um and then it's not the stress of those deadlines so just have times where it's purely social interaction like you would get if you're in the office just in the kitchen or chatting around um the office and you can also do things like set up um you know on platforms like Slack have dedicated just non-work chat um channels or even just have an ongoing virtual kind of like study buddy um you can have I do that with some friends as well which is really useful to keep you on track and just have some social like informal social interaction so hopefully you've put down something for most of those things the biggest thing is just making some action now so maybe try and write down something that you can do as some really small action that you can do as soon as we finish this webinar so you can really start getting the ball rolling okay um so that's me does anyone have any questions let me just have a look in the chat we've got yeah great Trudy yeah you told me about that beautiful view you have of your garden yes absolutely even just on a micro break just putting your eyes to refocus out in the distance um and just having that relaxing beautiful garden view that can do so much to decrease stress and and refocus you um so Kat said um if you can't have a dedicated room what about using screens to create a dedicated space yes absolutely um Kat anything you can do to create this visual privacy so that's a really big thing um as humans as well psychologically we don't usually like our backs facing out into the room because we don't like the idea of not knowing who's behind us and so anything you can do to just to create a little bit of a pod for yourself if you have to be in an open living space anything you can do like that will be great um and Trudy said you can never understand in the workplace where managers don't acknowledge great work yes that is the biggest thing and that's important to building this trust um because if you feel appreciated you're going to do better work as well so honestly it's like best of both worlds um yeah it's so important to tell people how much you appreciate them and how much they're valued so make sure you keep doing that um and Marina said you'll be taking kind of breaks and works yes great Marina make sure if you can get outside every hour um that's great just have a bit of a longer walk remember to be taking your micro brakes as well um so I think that's us at 5 p.m cat did you we need to wrap up or does anyone have anything else yep well I just want to make sure that we appreciate you Tonya for taking your time and sharing your specialty with us today I know I learned an absolute ton today and I hope everyone else got a lot of value out of today we will be sending out the recording so keep an eye out for that and I just want to thank you again Tonya and everyone for joining us today of course thanks so much Kat I know there was so much information in there I wanted to get some really good content for you guys so I hope you can go through it again yeah you got some uh amazing content for you packed so much into such a short time and I want to thank everybody again for being patient with the technical issues that we had or at the beginning of the the session today so uh don't forget to come and join us uh next month we're going to have Wendy Perry of workforce blueprint with us and that should be a lot of fun as well so I'm going to go ahead and stop there recording um great


Hi friends welcome back to my channel and welcome if you're new here. My name is Jen I'm a certified weight loss and nutrition coach and I'm on the WW or the Weight Watchers blue plan. It's Monday So it's another meal prep. I have three Fantastic recipes for you. This is a very easy simple meal prep, but everything is so incredibly delicious I'm so excited for these to be my breakfast lunch and snacks this next week So if you're excited for another meal prep give this video a big huge thumbs up And don't forget if you're new or you're not yet subscribed Of course, I'd love to have you hit the subscribe button and don't forget to ring the bell right next to it So you never miss a single video check out the description box down below where you'll find my recipe website All three of these recipes are on my website. You'll also find nutrition coaching I can do your macros calorie set you up for success when it comes to either losing weight or Maintaining your weight whether you're on Weight Watchers or not I also offer 30 in 60 minute one-on-one coaching sessions if you want a little bit more individualized support I'm here to help you links discounts to all of my favorite things Including anything I shared with you today and my Facebook group head on over and join us there as well Are all linked in that description box. So we have some cooking to do we have three incredible recipes to make So let's get started We have a four ingredient breakfast meal prep which makes it super easy We're doing a sausage breakfast muffin. So you're going to need some sausage I'm just going to use the Jimmy Dean fully cooked turkey sausage crumbles This just makes it easy low calorie low point lots of protein light shredded cheese the biscuit heart smart So make sure you get that when it has less calories and points and of course some eggs So what we're going to do first is go ahead and crack in our four eggs and then lightly beat those together with a fork Now we're going to add in the entire package of the turkey sausage crumbles One cup of light shredded cheese and one cup of the biscuit heart smart baking mix And then we're just going to stir this until it is fully mixed together I have my oven preheating to 350 and I'm going to spray all 12 of my muffin cups Using this scoop. I ordered this pack off of Amazon. It came with multiple different sizes of scoops I'm going to scoop in some of the mixture It is very very thick which is exactly how you want it to be and then I can always go back and add a little bit more But I'm going to do one full scoop per cup So I went ahead and just patted them down as flat as I could with the back of that scoop These are going in a 350 degree oven for about 18 to 20 minutes We want them nice and golden brown on top. The muffins just came out of the oven. These look and smells so good I'm going to let them cool for just a few minutes We'll pop them out and I'll be back to share points and calories So the muffins are three smart points per muffin on all plans. So not bad at all 116 calories my recommendation or what I'm going to do is actually just pair this with some fresh fruit I may have one or two muffins. It just kind of depends on how hungry I am But these are fantastic because you have lots of protein and your carb from the baking mix cheese sausage You can't go wrong. So this is breakfast for the week For lunch this week I'm making a drizzle me skinny recipe. We're doing buffalo chicken Squares so you're going to need again some light shredded cheese about a pound of chicken I'm just using chicken tenderloins buffalo sauce of your choice the recipe called for ranch dressing I'm just going to use ranch seasoning mix. Feel free to use dressing.  So I'm going to cook up these tenderloins We'll shred them up and put together the recipe while the chicken's cooking We're going to take one can of the crescent rolls and roll that out on the bottom of your cookie sheet Make sure you pinch any of the seams closed We're going to put this into the oven 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. We just want it to get a little bit brown While the crescent rolls are in the oven, we're put together the filling So I added six ounces of the low fat cream cheese. Here is my shredded chicken So I'm going to add all of that This is about a half of a packet of ranch seasoning. So I'm going to add the other half of the packet One cup of light shredded cheese and the recipe calls for about a third cup of buffalo sauce So I'm just going to use the rest of what's in my container And if I need more I will add more and then we're going to stir this together until fully combined Here is the chicken mixture. This looks so good And using the ranch seasoning packet did not affect it at all So you can save quite a bit of calories and points by doing that The cream cheese and the buffalo sauce was enough liquid or moisture to blend it all together So now we're just going to spread this out evenly over the crust. This looks so delicious Okay, now we're going to take that second pack of the crescent rolls And we're going to roll that out and lay that right over the top as even as you can and again try to pinch those seams closed And the last step before it goes back into the oven is taken egg wash This is some of these liquid egg whites from Costco So we're just going to do a nice egg wash right over the top So it gets nice and golden brown and then this is going back into that 350 degree oven for at least 20 minutes or until the pastry dough on top is cooked completely through And is nice and brown.  These look absolutely incredible I'm going to slice these up with a pizza cutter into 20 squares. The recipe makes 20 servings I'll be back to share with you what they look like give you points and calories Is there a place with sun all year round And peanut color so I cut these into 20 squares So this right here is the size of the square You can see all that yummy buffalo filling in there So let's go over the points and the calories Per square again, the recipe makes 20 servings Each square is only three smart points on both the blue and purple plan And four on the green plan only because you do have to account for the chicken And each square two crusts and all of that amazing cream cheese filling is 170 calories So what my plan is to have probably one to two squares per day And then I'll just have some extra vegetables or fruit that zero points with it I can't wait for this. It's going to be biscuit flakiness buffalo chicken. Absolutely delicious For dessert this week. I'm making a healthy version of deep dish chocolate chip cookie pie Who that's an outfall, but this should be absolutely incredible. First, you're going to need some salt Medjool dates Almond milk of your choice or any nut based milk vanilla extract Two cans of white beans Quick cooking oats Chocolate chips. I'm just using the lilies oil Unsweetened applesauce and baking soda and baking powder First thing we're going to do is add 12 pitted dates You can see here that I removed all the pits and two thirds of a cup of almond milk to a blender Or food processor and pulse this until it creates a fine paste Once you've pulsed the dates and the almond milk, we're going to add in the two cans of drained and rinsed white beans One cup of the quick cook rolled oats Quarter cup of unsweetened applesauce. That's about all I have left in the jar here Three tablespoons oil. I'm just using avocado oil two teaspoons vanilla extract two teaspoons baking powder Half a teaspoon baking soda Now we're going to blend this again in your food processor or blender until it is smooth So I've transferred the mixture from my blender. So this is what it looks like. It smells really good Don't be scared of the beans you guys. You're not going to be able to taste them It's just going to add a nice creamy texture to the pie Now we're going to stir in one cup of lilies chips and we're just going to fold that in to the mixture Now we're going to transfer the mixture into a springform pan I did go ahead and spray it with some non-stick cooking spray and I'm preheating my oven to 350 degrees Another recipe I'm so excited for this is going into the oven for 30 to 40 minutes or until it is firm because remember This is a cookie type of pie deep dish chocolate chip cookie pie is out of the oven I'm going to allow it to cool for just a few minutes before I pop it out of the spring pan And then I'll be back to share serving size points and calories So here is the cookie pie. You guys I had to try just a little bit of it when I pulled out this slice It tastes like an ooey gooey Warm chocolate chip cookie. It is so delicious. I cut it into 12 slices So this is one slice and one slice is a five Smart points on both the blue and purple plan and six on the green plan 207 calories, that's it you guys for this huge wedge Of chocolate chip cookie pie and like I said, it tastes exactly like a chocolate chip cookie no taste of beans It's absolutely incredible. Definitely make this. Thank you for joining me on another weekly w w meal prep I hope you are as excited as I am about these three recipes. Like I said in the beginning I can't wait to dig into these all week long Don't forget all of these recipes are on my recipe website That is linked down in the description box along with nutrition coaching Links and discounts to everything I shared with you today as well as all of my other favorite things And of course my facebook group so come on over join that community as well If you enjoyed this meal prep, don't forget to give it a big huge thumbs up It really helps out my channel and of course I appreciate it And if you're new or you're not subscribed subscribe I'd love love love to have you and ring the bell next to it So you never miss a single video especially a meal prep every single monday Thank you for hanging out with me today. Happy monday friends And i'll see you in my next video Bye