Whether an employee, contractor or business owner we need to take care of ourselves. COVID has caused even more stress, concerns, worry that affect business owners which in turn affects employees and staff. Worries for business owners such as competing with other businesses, surviving as a business, juggling responsibilities, growing the business, making money, attracting and retaining customers or clients are some of the highest worries. Worries for employees and staff can be stress, managing conflicting deadlines, prioritising, concern for job security, pressure of too much work, insufficient support and lack of communication from employers. Either way we need to provide ourselves with self-care. We know this but often ignore the worries and stress until it’s too late. Here are some self-care tips which either as a business owner, contractor or employee you can look to incorporate these into your life to help ease stress, worry and concern and increase
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“Focus on what you can control and don't waste energy on the things you cannot” Unknown Determine what you can control We all wish we had a ‘magic stop’ button to stop us worrying, but we don’t and so we have to find strategies to help ourselves. When you find yourself worrying about something whether it is personal or professional, just take a minute or two to examine all the things you do have control over. Then look at the problem you’re worrying about and try and put it into context by putting some sort of scoring on it e.g. 1-5 with 5 being the biggest. Then look how likely this is to happen and what is the likely consequence should it happen. Doing something with our thoughts is one way we can at least prepare for things that might happen, we know we have to prepare for things we
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What are the benefits of using affirmations? They motivate us to actThey help us concentrate on our goalsThey enable us to change our negative thought patterns into positive onesThey influence our subconscious mind to access new beliefsThey help us feel positive about ourselves and boost our self-confidence Affirmations manifest a sense of empowerment and worth. Affirmations are positive, realistic mantras that have the ability to shift or change our mood and encourage us to have a different view of ourselves and the world around us. Affirmations are statements that help us reframe our thoughts into thoughts that are more truthful and helpful. With repetition and practice our brains can and will be trained to re-wire itself to truly believe them. We spend a great deal of time listening to that little voice in our head, usually the critical and negative voice that are hurtful and unhelpful. They cause us to
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Sometimes a thought is just a thought, so what! It can’t do me any harm, can it? I can just let it be a thought without going any further, but do I? Our minds are a very powerful took which helps us learn and grow and manage our emotions. They go through many levels as our mind is very complex and a hive of activity. Our thoughts fly into our heads, loads of ideas may surface, ruminations and regrets start coming towards us and our beliefs take over starting to weigh heavy. We need to remember that how we think influences how we feel and how we act. There isn’t a magic switch to flick our thoughts off to help us regain control of our emotions. They just whir around embedding themselves further and further until we believe them to be true. We can gain control of our emotions, but
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What is an example of a cognitive distortion? Our mind can play tricks on us and influence our thoughts, emotions and actions. These faulty beliefs are known as cognitive distortions. This means we base our decisions not on what someone says or does, but on what we believe they are thinking. We believe we can read minds or anticipate reactions. We don't ask what the other person what they think or feel. We make assumptions and these are usually negative assumptions, which means we end up jumping to conclusions. A List of the Most Common Cognitive Distortions are: Polarised thinking – being or becoming an all-or-nothing person with no in-between – one extreme to anotherOvergeneralising - we make excessively vague or general statements about something or someoneMental Filter – having a faulty thought pattern creating higher levels of anxiety and depression focusing on negative and filtering out positiveDisqualifying the Positive
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If you were to give yourself a score out of 10 for how satisfied you are with your life overall, what would it be? If you were to give yourself a score out of 10 for how much fun you are having in life, what would it be? If you were to give yourself a score out of `10 for how happy you are with your life, what would it be? If you were to give yourself a score out of 10 for how satisfied you are with your job, work, career, business, what would it be? Now, if I was to ask you why you aren’t where you want to be, OR if I was to ask you why you aren’t scoring higher than you did, what would you say? What’s holding you back? Who’s holding you back? Why is this holding you back? What can you do to
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Note to Self: It is in my control to choose to focus my attention on the present. Are you? Feeling uneasy or lost?Having difficulty finishing things?Suffering from a lack of passion or pleasure for things you used to enjoy?Questioning things more than usual?Less connected to the people you are close to or love?Needing to fix yourself or things in your life? If so, these may be signs you aren’t very grounded. We can ground ourselves by trying to be calmer and have an uncluttered mind. Think of your mind as a timeline; are your thoughts more of the past, the present or the future? Sometimes thinking of the past can make us feel down or guilty. Same as ruminating over the future may cause us to feel stressed and anxious. We don’t have control over what has happened or what is going to happen – this is where grounding come
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What changes do you make to your daily habits? Did you know that small changes make a big difference? We tend to overlook the importance of how managing daily habits for the better positively affect our wellbeing and our lives. However we need to start making these changes in the first place. And it’s often the small changes to our daily routine that make all the difference, and which can make big changes in our lives, careers, jobs and personal life. Brian Tracey “Successful people are simply those with successful habits” But what are successful habits? We know that gaining bad habits is easy We know that losing bad habits is hard We know that gaining good habits is hard We know that losing good habits is easy Strange that isn’t it? However, if we at least try then we can say we tried rather than just saying we’ve always
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Brian Tracy says “Your goals must be in balance and cover the three most important areas of your life. They must be in harmony with each other”. We know our goals need to be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound), however, if setting goals whether they are SMART or not were easy then everyone would be setting them and achieving them. However, we know this isn’t the case. We know that for the most part many of us set goals that are UNSMART, unrealistic, unachievable and certainly not measurable i.e. I want to get fit to run one day! If we don’t set goals that provide us with a personal and emotional benefit then we are unlikely to achieve that goal. We need to want to achieve and not feel that we must achieve it. We need to clarify who we are setting or aiming to achieve this goal
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We all have emotions, good and bad, positive and negative, helpful and unhelpful, don’t we? The good emotions we love are: ExcitementJoyLove However, the bad, tough or tricky ones are hard for us to accept, and these are: StressWorrySadnessGuiltAnxiety We do need to accept that ALL our emotions are reasonable and legitimate and there for a reason and a normal part of us being human. But how can we accept the good and the bad equally? We could imagine and see our emotions as visitors! We could acknowledge them coming for a visit, welcoming them in, allowing them to be there, hearing what they have to say, and them seeing them off when they leave. Treating them like visitors might help you come to terms with their visits more easily and dealing with them as you would the good ones, although in a different way. All visitors come with something
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