Feeling a little stress is a normal part of the working day but when stress gets to be too much it can affect your judgment causing you to make rash decisions. Or, it can affect you physically causing tension in your muscles, increased heart rate, or aches and pains.
The key is to keep stress at a manageable level. One way to do this is with a simple breathing exercise.
- Sit still in a relaxed position with your back straight.
- Clear your mind as much as possible.
- Breathe in slowly, for a deep breath.
- Hold, but only as long as is comfortable.
- Breathe out slowly.
- Hold.
- Breathe in.
- Hold.
- Breathe out.
- Hold.
Repeat as necessary. Take a few seconds here and there and use this simple breathing exercise on a regular basis to help lower your stress level.
“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” –Etty Hillesum
Step #1 Pay attention to what you’re focusing on.
This step alone can do wonders for you almost immediately. First understand that what you focus on affects your emotional state, or how you feel.
If what you’re thinking about makes you feel bad it affects your energy level in a bad way. If you’re thinking about something that makes you feel bad you will quickly start to feel stressed or tired or just generally have a bad attitude.
On the other hand, if what you’re thinking about makes you feel good it affects your energy level in a good way. It doesn’t really matter if what you’re thinking about it is true or not what matters is if it helps you feel good.
So use this to enhance your career. For example if thinking about the weekend or free time makes you feel good then don’t wait until Friday to daydream about the weekend. But if thinking about the weekend makes you feel bad because you want it to be the weekend now or it makes you yearn for the weekend, then avoid thoughts about the weekend choosing to focus on something to make you feel good instead.
Here is another example. On a recent episode of Dancing with the Stars, Olympian Evan Lysacek was being coached by his dancing pro Anna Trebunskaya. Evan is a top notch technician but was not good at showing emotion in his dancing. Anna asked him, “What makes you happy?” Evan mumbled something about cars and then said, as his face lit up, “my baby nephew!”
He then proceeded to show cute little videos of his nephew on his phone to his coach smiling & laughing the whole time. Anna capitalized on that reaction and brought it to his attention. Long story short, he danced like a whole new man in that week’s competition. Even more importantly, he now knows a trick (shall we say, a Jedi mind trick?) for something to focus on when he notices he is not feeling as happy as he could.
Step #2 Use your strengths in your career.
Strengths as related to careers are activities that you enjoy doing, that you do well, and that you don’t mind doing repeatedly. This new hot philosophy on strengths was developed by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton in the book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths.”
They promote the idea that we can be happier in our careers by focusing on strengths instead of trying to improve weaknesses. In fact, they say that one can advance further and faster in skill attainment by practicing and developing one’s strengths rather than one’s weaknesses (for example, their idea that you can work everyday to improve a weaknesses and achieve only lackluster results). The book is a little long winded because of all the theory and development talk, but when you buy the book you get an assessment code to enter online to take the assessment. The more recent version is StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. The book is much more of a friendly, quick reference which also includes an assessment.
Step #3 Be selfish.
No, I don’t mean selfish in a bad way. It is simply that factoring in everyone else’s opinion of what you should be doing in your work, (or for that matter what anyone thinks about the work you do) is exhausting and fruitless…so be selfish! After all, YOU are the one putting in the time and attention to whatever you choose for your career, and you are the one noticing everyday how you feel about your career (see step #1). So be selfish, and take charge of your career development to make sure your work is life-enhancing.
There’s a difficult time between where you are now and where you want to be that must be managed when you are changing careers. One thing that helps is to focus more on what you want next rather than what you don’t like about where you are currently because that makes the current day-to-day very difficult and keeps a negative vibe going in you. So during times of change, its important to focus on the excitement of what is coming but with an ability to be appreciative of where you are now and how far you’ve come.
Here is a short careerillionaire story. It is a beautiful demonstration of something I’ve been thinking about.
You see, no matter what your work is each day you are in charge of your attitude. If you spend time resisting what you chose to do (i.e. working in order to feed yourself and your family) then you are spending a lot of energy resisting something you have decided to do. What a waste! Since you have decided to do it anyway, why not be fully present in the moment and engaged in your work cheerfully?
As demonstrated in the fast food workers’ story that I linked to above, it is when working while fully engaged in the present moment and with a positive attitude that you profoundly affect the people around you. Not only that, but you also greatly help your own cause. People love to be around such a positive, carefree personality so your networking becomes easy and natural. You begin to allow creativity and intuition to work through you. And, most importantly of all…you just generally become a force for Good!
I have been thinking about the money flow difference between coaching and mentoring and it has been good food for thought. Surely mentors get some other sort of compensation for their contributions (rather than the green stuff), maybe not from the person who sought out their expertise but from somewhere else. Or, maybe they do get something besides money from their mentees. They might receive stimulation for their own development and/or creativity; or they might simply get another set of ears to hear them speak about their passion which may feed their energy and motivation. That could be worth more than money because of the richness of the experience.
Essentially a personal mission statement is about your big picture purpose in life. In 50 words or less, mission statements are concise guiding principles that you can refer to again and again to remind you of why you are doing what you are doing.
The mission statement touches on the idea of life’s purpose and why we are here. Most of us at one time or another have wondered along this train of thought, right? We feel we must be here for a reason, a higher purpose if you will.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could bring money to our family and be working on our purpose in life at the same time? You have probably seen people or known people who have found their mission in life. They are passionate about and proud of the work they do and seem to exude a special type of energy or joy.
Mission statements will evolve as you go through the stages of your life. In fact, it is interesting to save old mission statements as a record of how you have changed over the years. Maybe your mission statement will be essentially the same and only become better defined and distinguished. Or, maybe your mission statement will change dramatically. Either way is perfectly fine.