Three ways to beat the stress under pressure
Stress (defined): The dog just took your car for a joyride. Your older son caused an explosion at the local power plant. Your daughter has run off with a sheikh that lives in Missouri. Nothing is going right. At all.
So how to you unplug and beat the stress when, no matter what you do, life is giving it to you from all sides? Contrary to what you see in the picture to your right, you’re not going to find any answers under a pillow. Here are three things you can do to beat the stress and keep yourself sane when the hits just keep on coming.
Get Out – Now! When life throws it at you non-stop, just get out. Put everything down, head for the door and leave it behind. I’m not saying abandon it – I’m just saying unplug from the situation for a bit. Not only will unplugging stop the momentum of the situation – it’ll give you a much needed and blood pressure-lowering interlude to help you breathe and think clearly once again.
Get Some Help. Really, any kind of help at this juncture will HELP. Maybe it’s a housekeeper. Maybe it’s sending your teenage son to pickup his sister so you don’t have to make the run. Stress can be alleviated in many ways and sometimes it’s the little things that keep us from losing every one of our marbles. Just ask – help is waiting. Listen to your inner psychic. Sometimes we just choose to not see it.
Get a Second Opinion. Sometimes we need an ear and that’s all we really need to keep from spinning out of control. Have you ever told a friend about your crazy day and they just start to laugh?
It’s great to realize that your life is funny again and not the apocalypse you thought. Pick up that phone, dial a friend and become a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? instead of The Biggest Loser.
How do you find the middle ground in work-life balance?
Is work-life balance really a myth? Every now and then, I pop over and read the fabulous musings of Cali Yost. She’s an expert blogger on the work-life subject for Fast Company and hosts her own site at the Flex+Strategy Group. I like Cali’s content. And I agree with her: work-life BALANCE is something of a myth. She prefers the phrase “work-life fit.”
Fit. I like that. After all, have we ever, for a single day, truly had “balance” in our lives?
Corporations preach it in their recruiting materials and employee benefits books. Day cares and preschools offer to help us out with it. But if I concede that there’s not really a balance and it’s more of a “fit,” then I think we’re well on our way to making some progress in these days that we live that are brimming with non-stop activity.
It’s pretty simple to see when things are off-kilter: we stay at the office too late, answer emails at odd hours from our smart phones and our voicemail inboxes fill up like the laundry basket.
I put together three tips that you can start using TODAY to make your work-life balance a bit more balanced. Put on your life like it fits and stop trying to button that top button when you had the extra helping of your neighbor’s awesome potato salad at the picnic last night!
Work-Life Balance Tip #1: Take Lunch
Yes, I’m crazy. And I’m telling you to take lunch. Whether you work from home or in an office, step away from your work domain for a minimum of thirty minutes. Stop scheduling conference calls during lunch. Don’t answer your phone. Don’t respond to emails. Unplug – and see how much easier it is to plug back in.
Work-Life Balance Tip #2: Hard Stops
Not unlike taking lunch, give yourself a “hard stop” at least two days a week. This means that at 5 P.M. (or whatever time you determine), you call it a day. Not five minutes later and no excuses. Go DO SOMETHING (and enjoy it). Your inbox will still be there in the morning (and your family and friends will thank you).
Work-Life Balance Tip #3: Ask for Help
If you’re simply afraid that you can’t get everything done and the act of trying is what’s putting you off-kilter, ask for help. Hire a virtual assistant, a house cleaner or one of your teenagers to do some of the running around.
Whatever the solution, asking for help doesn’t have to be expensive or worst of all, humiliating. It can be empowering and free you up to do the things you both need and want to! Take a tip from one of my previous entries on how to offer support. It’s easier to lend and GIVE support than you might think!
I just love doing things wrong!
I really do love being wrong. I relish it, I wait for it and embrace it every time it walks into my life. I greet Wrong with a smile and if it were possible, I’d buy it a mimosa at Sunday brunch. Now, I don’t go out of my way to BE wrong, mind you, but when Wrong shows up at my door, I don’t look through the peephole and pretend I’m not home.
Over the years, I’ve discovered a certain power in being wrong. Remember when we were kids – teenagers, even. We couldn’t imagine not being 100% right all of the time! If anyone told us we were wrong, well, they were just…WRONG. I don’t know about you, but as I traveled through Life’s School of Hard Knocks, I came to realize something:
Wrong is Right.
When you open the door to being wrong, you find new ways to be right. That’s reason number one I love being wrong.
Reason number two is this: when you’re wrong, you can try again. Being wrong is life’s little mulligan. A do-over. And half the time, the work is already done for you when you’re wrong (because someone’s done it right and all you have to do is catch-up). Now, I’m not advocating you don’t look both ways before crossing the street, but there aren’t many types of wrong that aren’t recoverable. I love the do-over.
The third reason I love being wrong? That’s easy: I love learning. If I could be wrong about something every day and have a new Right presented to me, I’m living right. Whether it’s business, a conversation with a friend or a quandary at the grocery store, being wrong gives me the chance to emerge better on the other side. And I can learn how to not make the same mistake again.
Now that you know why I love being wrong, why do YOU love being wrong? What does it bring to your life and what do you learn? Go out and hug a Wrong today – you need them (and they need you)!
Appreciate your opposite!
Forget the battle of the sexes. When it comes down to gender issues (and yes, we ALL have gender “issues”), men and women each bring something unique to the collective bargaining table. But in the heat of life and business, it’s easy to overlook the benefits of men and women being different – we’d rather see those differences as negative. Well, this morning I’m going to turn your head in another direction and give you a list of three things that men and women each do that they do better than the opposite sex! Now, these aren’t absolutes or stereotypical characterizations – they’re tools to help you change the way you think. Last week, we talked about the value of having a trusted business colleague to bounce ideas off of. Well, this week, I’m that person and I’m going to share some fun tips about men and women in business and in life!
Three Things Men Do Better than Women
- The Technicals - From installing a ceiling fan to figuring out why the back door is making “that noise,” men are just good with tools and gadgets. They’re raised with them – they take shop. Gals took home ec.
- The Research – Guys activate that hunter instinct and will tell us what kind of car we should buy, the best schools in the area in which we want to live and can find most anything we task them with finding. They love to hunt, gather and bring it home.
- The Solving – Men are problem solvers. Not to say that women aren’t, but it goes along with The Technicals. If something needs fixing, they’ll get it done.
Three Things Women Do Better than Men
- The Listening – While guys are great at fixing, sometimes things don’t need to be fixed. They just need to be heard.
- The Translating – We are great at hearing one thing and distilling the meaning. Granted, we are excellent at jumping to conclusions as well (not so great), but it goes along with our listening skills. We can hear, distill and then come out with something on the other side with great prowess.
- The Organizing – Maybe it’s our maternal instinct, but women can rally a crowd, plan a wedding, throw a fundraiser or get 16 kids to a little league game on time. We’re great at nurturing and every good organizer is a pro with taking care of the details.
Now, before I get the reaction from some of you as I did from some of my best girlfriends, let me explain. These differences correspond with the years of research done by Carol Gilligan, the foremost leader in gender differences in the world. (I had the privilege of training with one of Carol’s colleagues early in my career.)
Carol’s research shows that men speak in the voice of ‘justice’ and women speak in the voice of ‘care.’ Each ‘difference’ translates into leadership, consensus building and influence methods that you use everywhere in your life.
I want to ask you – what’s one thing that you think men do better than women and vice versa? We all see situations differently and it’s great if we can appreciate the people in front of us for how they’re built instead of who we’d like for them to be. Share with me in the comments section! Forget the battle of the sexes: how about a consensus?
Who do you lean on in business?
I’m not talking about left or right, conservative or liberal. I’m asking you: do you lean? More importantly, do you know HOW to lean?
Business is never a solo endeavor. On Tuesday, we spoke about things to consider when scaling your business. Today, we’re taking that idea one step further: who do you lean on in business? Leaning isn’t about not being able to support you and the weight of your day to day yourself. It’s about having a trusted business mind at your side at all times.
When you find someone in your business life that can not only lend an ear but their business savvy, it’s an incredibly empowering feeling. Business can be a lonely path to follow, what with worrying about competitors, bills, food on the table and keeping clients happy all at once. It’s key that you find a trusted colleague who has a soft shoulder to land on.
Sometimes it just helps us to know that we’re not crazy for thinking what we do about our business situation. Other times, it helps to have someone who will flat-out tell us we’re being crazy about our business situation! We get so wrapped up in our own day-to-day that we can’t see the forest for the trees sometimes. I don’t know about you, but I sure do value a little reality check every now and then!
Learn while you lean.
The other benefit of having a trusted business colleague is learning while you lean. When you share things about your business experience with someone, they’ll undeniably share things about their experience with you. If I made a list of how much I’d learned from other people’s business experiences – oh, honey – that would be a blog and website in and of themselves! Why would you deny yourself the gold mine that comes with learning from someone else’s mistakes and successes? It means you don’t have to make the same missteps and can take better, more purpose-driven steps toward you own goals.
So, my friends: LEAN! Find that shoulder, that ear. It feels great to take the load off every now and then.
If you have an experience to share about how you’ve found the hidden gold in a trusted ally, let me know and let’s start our own little “leaning” community right here.
