Penny Castle's Blog

Friday Finds, Favourites and Fails











Body Glove, Healing Hands SPF 15

What Makes A Perfect Moisturiser?



There have been so many questions about moisturisers that I made a clip explaining the three major components.

We live in a world where our skincare is defined by what is wrong with us. But what if it isn’t us? What if it’s our moisturiser?

Watch The Video

The post Make sure your moisturiser has these appeared first on The Penny Castle.

Friday Finds, Favourites and Fails











Natures Nourishment Day Cream SPF 15 (Marula)

The Challenge: Find A Mascara That Does What It Says

Every week-ish I accept challenges from the members of the Facebook Group Old Dogs, New Tricks to solve their things-I-should-know-by-now questions.

The Contenders:








Essence All Eyes on Me
Waterproof


R45


The Claim:Length, curl, thickness and separation.Result?

Finds, Faves and Fails: African Extracts Hand Cream SPF15

I’m outraged that South Africans live under a giant hole in the ozone, we wash our hands a lot but it's almost impossible to find an affordable, high-quality hand cream that contains sunscreen?

I’ve set myself a challenge to find one for you and I’ll share with you what I’ve found.

Summary
Rating (out of five)
 
FAIL

Rash
Ingredients are meh
Didn’t feel great












Claim And Performance

Rating (out of five) 

To nourish hands and promote strong, healthy nails while leaving my hands feeling silky, smooth, protected and hydrated.

Nourished? No

Strong Healthy Nails: No Change

Silky, Smooth, Protected and Hydrated: No

Other: Slight Rash

Ingredients and Science

Rating (out of five) 

The ingredients are mostly antioxidants with an anti-inflammatory ingredient and a UVB filter (not UVA).

You can see the full breakdown here

Packaging

Rating (out of five) 

The packaging is indisputably pretty. BUT…

The tube comes inside a box – more junk to dispose of.

The ingredients are on the box, not the tube so it’s difficult to establish the contents after disposing of the box.

How To Use / How I Used It

Rating (out of five) 

African Extracts recommend applying this cream daily. With an SPF of 15 and frequent hand washing, this is a non-starter.

Sun is the biggest concern for skin damage, so I recommend reapplying it after every hand wash.

Scent

Rating (out of five) 

It’s highly fragranced. I quite liked the smell but I wouldn’t recommend it for sensitive skin.

Cost

Rating (out of five) 

+/- R60

Availability:

Rating (out of five) 

I bought mine at Dischem but it seems to have disappeared from their website.

Summary:

Rating (out of five) 

This was a big fail for me.

Gave me a rash
Ingredients are meh
Didn’t feel great




Ingredients and Science Details






Bio-Active Rooibos

Ingredient: Bio-Active Rooibos

Claim: Anti-oxidant

Science: The primary bioactive constituents of bio-active rooibos are aspalathin and nothofagin. There are limited studies on the efficacy of these ingredients and their ability to scavenge free-radicals on the skin.

A 1997 study compared aspalathin and nothofagin.to other antioxidants. The results were that these ingredients are better than some other anti-oxidant and worse than others.

Milk Thistle

Ingredient: Milk Thistle

Claim: Anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory

Science: The anti-inflammatory properties were demonstrated in a 2015 study of mice.

 The anti-oxidant properties were demonstrated in a 2013 lab test.

A lab test means that human cells were used in a lab setting (i.e. a petri-dish), not on actual people

Vitamin A

Ingredient: Vitamin A

Claim: Increases skin cell turn over beneficial in both anti-ageing and acne treatments.

Science: 

Vitamin A aka Retinol, Retinoic Acid is one of the proven superstars in the skincare world.

Unfortunately, the African Extracts website doesn’t list this product so it’s difficult to determine how much Vitamin A is actually present.

Vitamin E

Ingredient: Vitamin E

Claim: Antioxidant

Science: Vitamin E is often touted as a skin superstar and there’s good evidence that it has antioxidant properties.

It’s also a preservative used in many skin care products so a pinch of salt is required.

Benzophenone-3

Ingredient:Benzophenone-3

Claim: Sun Screen

Science: Shields primarily against UV-B so it will stop burning but no signs of ageing.

Keratin

Ingredient: Keratin

Claim: Strong Nails

Science: I couldn’t find any literature on the topic use of keratin for nail growth

Vitamin C

Ingredient: Vitamin C

Claim: Antioxidant, Protection from brittle nails

The literature I found refer to oral, not topical Vitamin C.

The post Finds, Faves and Fails: African Extracts Hand Cream SPF15 appeared first on The Penny Castle.

Friday Finds, Favourites and Fails











SBR Repair Cream

14 August 2020 Finds, Fails and Faves
It’s a Favourite: SBR Repair Cream

 

Rating:

You’ve asked me again and again: can happiness be measured, Penny?

When it comes to measuring happiness, it’s a tricky animal to get my hands on. There are four main problems:

The pastThe presentThe futureAdvice



Can happiness be measured? The Time Factor

The first issues are, broadly speaking, time bound.

What wasWhat isWhat shall be.

Most people are remarkably bad when it comes to remembering what happened and imagining what will happen in the future. Therefore, I find it hard to answer the question: can happiness be measured easily.

Can happiness be measured? The Advice Factor

The fourth item is that human beings are remarkably bad at taking advice.

Can happiness be measured? What Was

Let’s jump in with the history, bit. I’ve mentioned many times before how much information our sensory organs collect. Our eyes, ears, mouth, skin are able to collect millions of bits of information in any one moment. Unfortunately, our brains can use about 40 bits of information per second That means all the time we are filtering information. Our first problem in answering, can happiness be measured is what we remember.

Money is a Good Example

For instance, we are taught that having more money will make us happier. This is absolutely true if you are on the bread-line. As you have enough money to survive it stops making a difference. As we know, it’s happiness that makes us more successful, not money that will bring us happiness.

Can happiness be measured? What is

Similarly, we are hampered by the same problem of filtering information when we ask, can happiness be measured in the moment? It’s really easy for us to recall, right this second, pages full of worries. It’s harder for us to think about a page full of things that are going great. This is a requirement for us as humans. We are hardwired to look for danger in every moment. We’ve we spoken about that on other blogs.

What we can do in the moment, is take a snapshot of our happiness. It is subjective, so it won’t stand up against an objective argument. That’s one of the difficulties of emotions. My emotions are completely subjective. I make them up in my mind. You could experience the same event but had feel completely different to me.

Can happiness be measured? What will be

We’ve covered off the past and the present. When it comes asking can we measure happiness in the future it’s even more complicated. That bit of our brain that filters information creates all kinds of problems for us when we think about the future.

The problems with the future

First, we fill in or we forget gaps. Ask any parent or future parent about how they imagine having a newborn will be. They might think about holding a newborn in their arms or the scent of their baby’s hair. They’re unlikely to imagine what it feels like, as my husband experienced, to have your son pee in your eye every night. We tend create a future that is how we wanted to be, not necessarily how it’s going to be.

Secondly, we are really, really bad at imagining the future. Anyone ever pulled out one of those 1950s or 60s B-Grade science fiction movies set in the weird 2000’s? They imagined us floating in our hover crafts. There is nothing in those movies about UberEats.

Thirdly we find it extremely difficult to imagine how we will feel. If anyone doesn’t believe me, look up Christopher Reeve. If you were my age, Superman wasn’t Henry Cavill. It was Christopher Reeve.

He had a bad accident. For the rest of his life he lived in a wheel chair needing assistance to breathe. He became a source of inspiration, for many people because he frequently spoke about his ability to do more, to affect more change and how he had become a better person because of his accident. If I ask you to imagine, right now, what you think it would be like to be a paraplegic for the rest of your life, I’m guessing you wont be the first one signing up.

We are too unique to accept advice

Fourthly and finally answering, can happiness be measured, is advice. Each of us think that we are different and special. For example, unless you are a vintner or wine snob, red wine tastes, for most of us, like red wine. Similarly, the truth is, that unless you are speaking about your area of expertise, most of us are pretty much the same. Not just on the issue of wine. We believe that we are different. Too different to accept most advice.

Can we measure happiness at all?

We’ve covered the past and our poor memories. The present has its own complications We’ve discussed the future and how bad we are at imagining what it will look like. We’ve covered off our distaste for advice. With all these things stacked against us, what is a girl to do?

An option for measuring happiness over time

We can take a snapshot in a moment of time. Using this feature is my best advice for anybody who wants to measure their happiness:

Pick a time of the day, it doesn’t matter whenTake a snapshot of what your happiness wasDo that every day over a period of timeTry and pick a time in your life where you think things are going to be more or less normalKeep measuring.

That’ll allow you to do is get a sense over time of what are the things that increased or decreased your happiness.

A warning

Above all, I want to remind you that however you measure happiness it is subjective. You can’t pass or fail at happiness.

Your turn: Can happiness be measured?

Now it’s your turn. What do you think is the best way of measuring happiness?

The post Can happiness be measured? You’ll find it surprising. appeared first on Penny Castle.

A positive work environment and promote teamwork isn’t always easy to achieve. Are you that manager who gets called in every year by HR because if your staffs’ low engagement scores. Or perhaps you’ve inherited the shell shocked survivors of yet another transformation. Well if, so you have come to the right place. Today I’m going to share with you my three top tips for getting a team from the cast of The Office to the cost a offices they don’t make TV comedies about.

Today we are talking about creating a positive work environment that promotes teamwork. Let’s get started.

Tactic number one is to stop threatening your team. Now I know you’re not running towards them with a knife. At least I hope you’re not running towards them with a knife. It does impact on how our brain functions though. Let me explain.

Tactic 1 for creating a positive work environment that promotes teamwork

The two bits of our brain that we are really interested in for this conversation is the bit here. Your cortex, that’s the part of your brain that is logical and reasonable. We often call it the director of the brain. It’s the part of your brain that can make sensible decisions. It can learn, can. It can close a deal. It’s the part of your brain that we really want to work with when we’re at work.

A Bit About Brains

But at the back of our brains here we have something called our amygdala. The amygdala is a fantastic piece of kit to have in your brain. What your Amygdala does is look for information that tells us there’s a threat. For example, imagine you are walking down a road in the middle of the night. You hear footsteps running towards you. Your amygdala kicks in and senses danger. It shuts down your cortex. This is not the moment where you want to be thinking about the impact of changes in policing policy. Instead, it forces your body to push all your energy into your large muscle groups. This allows you to fight or flight. Flight means, run the hell away! It’s really, really useful if you like to walk down dark in the middle of the night. However, you amygdala has a problem. It can’t distinguish between you running towards your staff member with a knife, or an unreasonable deadline.

So number one, when I say stop threatening your staff is think about the language you use. Too often, I go into businesses where managers say things like, close this deal or you’re out of here. All of these things get the Amygdala going and then shut down the clever piece of your brain.

My tip number one: Stop threatening your staff.







Tactic 2 for creating a positive work environment that promotes teamwork

You won’t really believe me when I tell you what my tip number two is. It begins with giving everybody the highest possible performance rating. This work comes from a man called Benjamin Zander. He the director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. He also ran a course for musicians. At the beginning of every semester he announce that everyone would be receiving an “A”. All the students need to do this term is prove they are worthy of it.

A Real Example

I want to tell you about a client of mine who was brave enough to try the strategy. This team that had big marketing budgets. They had been top performers for years and years. However their sales figures had been on the slide for a number of months. To compound it all they were going through a massive renovation. That meant that they were crammed into awful little offices. They had no way to show off their products.

What their manager said was that they had all met there target for month. All of the would receive their performance bonus for month. All they had to do was prove to him that they were worth getting it. You know what? The team, had not only their best sales month but that best sales year even without having a showroom.

My tip number two. Make sure you’re giving you team an “A” before they begin. All they have to do is tell you why you were right.

A Question for You

We’ve talked about my two top tips and now it’s your turn.

Think about the best boss you had. What did they do to create a positive work environment and promote teamwork? Write your answers in the comments below. We want to see what we need to doget that pumping environment in our offices.







Tactic 3 for creating a positive work environment that promotes teamwork

If you are like me and you are massive fan of Chip and Dan Heath. You might have already heard about my strategy number three: look for the bright spots.

Think about performance of all the sales people in your organization. Some of them are doing great. However there’s might be one person who is failing dismally. Managers tend to focus time on that person who’s doing dismally. Whereas we should be, they posit,on asking whatthose amazing performers doing differently. Then we can do more of that and push it through the whole organization. This is a great strategy for helping people boost their performance. In addition, if we rant about the poor performer their amygdala switches. on Their cortex switches off. Therefore, it almost guarantees that the poor performers are going to fail.

We can’t go and our ask those high performers what they’re doing, they can’t tell us. What we actually need to do is watch them. However, I do mean sitting there with a piece of paper and writing down everything that happens, every minute. You’ll be able to spot what it is that they do differently to their peers. After that, you can make sure it’s something that everybody in your team is doing.

Those are the 3 Tips for creating positive work environment and promote teamwork

In conclusion , those are my three top tips. You can turn your team from the cast of The Office to the cast of an office that isn’t a TV comedy show.

An extra

I’ve got even more for you. Click on this link. You will find a quiz that can tell you how happy your team is. It also gives you even more tips.

Don’t forget. Add your thoughts on how to create a positive work environment and promote teamwork in the comments below!

The post A positive work environment and promote teamwork: how to hack it appeared first on Penny Castle.

You know there’s a ton of workplace gossip and those whispers around the water cooler. They’re getting louder and louder. Your first instinct might be to shut it down. However, today I’m going to give you four ironclad reasons why you would shut down workplace gossip at your peril. And how listening in could be your ticket to the top.

If you want anything like my clients, when you find out there’s workplace gossip, you want to shut it down. In other words, you want to get everyone back to work however that is a really bad idea.

Reason #1 to Listen to Workplace Gossip

Above all, the number one reason why you shouldn’t shut it down is because gossip tells you what’s going on.

I know that it could feel sort of awkward for you to hang around at the water-cooler. People aren’t going to talk a lot when you first arrive. However, as my father who’s a Yorkshire-man used to say, you’ve got two ears, one mouth use proportionately.

That’s exactly what we need to do. If we listen we find out that we begin to understand the things that people are talking about. We can also see how passionately they feel about that particular issue.

A Real Example

For instance, let me give you a real example from one of my clients. The internal auditor’s from head office were due to arrive the following week. However, there was a backlog of the filing that needed to be done. The admin manager had suggested to the team that they worked at the weekend. When she started listening she realized that she had made this decision in isolation. Everyone already had plans for that weekend.

She used that opportunity as a chance to ask the team what ideas they had. After that, They came to a compromise. The team agreed that they would work late all during the week. That way they could take the weekend off and still meet the auditor’s requirements. It’s such a simple technique. It can take a team from nah, nah, nah all the time to having high morale and high engagement.

Reason #2 to Listen to Workplace Gossip

The number two reason why you really want to listen to workplace gossip is because of our brains. We as human beings are hardwired to be looking for risk in any situation. We can’t help it. It’s just the way our brains work. Listen into workplace gossip when there is change going on and you will be able to hear the concerns of the team. Your team can often see the potential pitfalls and risks.

That allows you to do two things. First:it allows you to address concerns directly. You could do it through a meeting or through your communications. Second, their concerns may well be legitimate. You might need to make a change to whatever it was you were going to implement.

Reason #3 to Listen to Workplace Gossip

The third reason why you would want to tune in to office gossip is similar to number two, and it’s going to require a little more emotional intelligence. We want to know how emotional people are feeling about the issues.

Items one and two told us what people were concerned about. Number three is about how many people are talking about this and how loudly are they expressing their opinion.

A Real Example

Let me give you an example. Again this comes from one of my clients There was one person at the water-cooler talking loudly about what was wrong with the organization. When I listened, I noticed the other people were sort were trying to leave of making that, okay, time to go now noises. The savvy manager go, okay, I’ve got one individual who feels really strongly about this, but it’s not an issue that’s shared by everybody. And then gives you information on whether this is something you really need to attend to en-masse, or whether you’ve just got one person who’s got an axe to grind.

Reason #3 to Listen to Workplace Gossip

The fourth reason for paying attention to workplace gossip is possibly the most important. If you ban office gossip, it will go underground. What do I mean by that? Underground is when people still have workplace gossip and they still have things that are upsetting them. Remember our brains are hard wired to find the issues that could be risky or upsetting. If you try and ban workplace gossip, people are going to drift off in groups of ones and two or it’s going to go onto a Whatsapp group or email and you lose the opportunity to listen in and understand what’s going on in your organization.

Remember that if you can’t hear it:

You don’t know what people are talking about. You don’t know have important and urgent this is for your team. You also don’t know what are the things that people are really concerned about. You’re not able to modify your approach to deal with that.

Number four is the real biggie.

Don’t. Ban. Office. Gossip.

It will go underground. If you click on this link, I have created a download, especially for you. It’s called the Gossip Grader. Using it will allow you to write down a list of all the work place gossip that you are hearing. Then use the tool to grade it in terms of importance. That will help you know, which is the work place gossip that you should be attending to first.

I really hope after finding these four iron clad reasons why you shouldn’t ignore workplace gossip, that you are onto it:

You’re remembering, you’ve got two ears and one mouth and you’re using them proportionately. You’re going to download the Gossip Grader so that you know where you should start in terms of attending to issues in the workplace.



Here’s a video I made of this material.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel: The Top of the Food Chain. Videos drop on my channel every Tuesday at 8am EST

Final Question:

Where is the place in your office where everyone hangs out when they want to have a chat about what’s going on? Is it the water cooler or the coffee station, for instance? The smoking area? Write it in the comments below.

Don’t forget you can achieve more when you’re happy and it’s your ticket to the top.

The post Workplace Gossip: 4 Ironclad Reasons to Ignore it at your Peril appeared first on Penny Castle.