Category: Work Life

The smallest things irritate you, and you feel anxious or depressed. You’re apathetic, barely able to show interest during office meetings. You feel tired all day, but wide awake at night when you should get some sleep. You have trouble concentrating on the work you have to do.

But since you ignore these signs, you have more muscle tension and headaches. You have stomach problems, and don’t want to hang out with your colleagues during breaks. Your spouse wants to cuddle up with you and watch old movies, but you have lost interest in intimacy. You also find yourself reaching for that soothing glass of bubbly a little more after work.

Unfortunately, as you’re going through these mysterious symptoms, things are getting worse at work. You may be next when they have another round of layoffs.

You now have to do more overtime because of staff cutbacks. The worse your company does, the more you feel the pressure to perform. Although your boss expects more, this increased attention no longer gives you job satisfaction. In fact, you’re beginning to resent it. Because you’re now expected to perform at your best all the time.

Whether you realize it or not, you’re suffering from job stress. Unless you find a way to unwind, things are only going to get worse.

Combat Work Stress

Fortunately, there are many things you can do to feel better. Here are 3 strategies that work well:

Strategy #1:. Manage job stress better.

A good place to start to reduce stress is to decrease the impact your job has on you.

There are three things you can do.

First, assume responsibility for improving your own emotional and physical well-being.

Second, change those knee jerk mental habits. These are things that contribute to a negative attitude and add stress to your day at work. It might be as simple as not getting irritated by your co-worker’s snack-filled desk.

Third, improve your communication skills. You may be accepting more work than you have the time to do just to look like a team player.

Strategy #2: Take up massage as a hobby.

A massage is a great way to unwind. While you can always go to get a massage, these can be expensive. It might be cheaper in the long run to take it up as a hobby.

Take a few massage classes with your spouse. If you both enjoy it, then think about getting your own table and taking turns in massaging each other.

What should you look for when buying your own massage table? Earthlite, a premier massage supplier, offers the following tips, “First and foremost on the list of importance is the quality of the table. It should strong and stable. For this reason alone the cheapest one on the market will not do. An effective table should be well constructed so it will last for a long time no matter how much you use it or how much weight it has on it over time. So, make sure to check the weight limit of the table and ensure that it includes a good warranty.”

Strategy #3: Adopt a healthy lifestyle.

A healthy lifestyle starts with a change in diet and doing regular exercise.

Diet has a lot to do with your ability to cope with stress. A healthy diet can improve your sense of well-being. Medical News Today defines a healthy diet as a balanced diet. “The crucial part of healthy eating is a balanced diet. A balanced diet – or a good diet – means consuming from all the different good groups in the right quantities. Nutritionists say there are five main food groups – whole grains, fruit and vegetables, protein, diary, and fat & sugar.”

While a change in diet will do you a world of good, if you add a great exercise regime, you will feel fabulous again.

A good exercise plan involves three components.

First, improve cardiovascular health through rebounding (jumping on a mini trampoline), jogging, or swimming.

Second, improve flexibility through yoga.

Third, improve strength and endurance through calisthenics or weightlifting.

Although this may seem like a lot to do, you can break it up to just 20 minutes to an hour, exercising just three days a week. On Monday, do cardiovascular training; on Wednesday, yoga; and on Friday, strength training. You can exercise longer and more often, of course, but it’s best to ease into it to develop a realistic routine.

Besides diet and exercise, drink more water to stay hydrated. It’s also important to get plenty of rest when you can. This might include going to bed earlier so you can get more sleep. It might include going to the beach or the mountains when you have long weekends. It might include taking afternoon naps on your day off.

Change Distress Into Eustress

Stress consists of eustress and distress. Eustress is when you do something that you enjoy. You’re not feeling stressed out, but stimulated by your activity. Distress is when your job performance, personal life, and health suffer.

When it comes to distress, the first thing you have to do is notice it. When you’re in a stressful situation, you may think the situation is the problem. In truth, the real issue is your response to it. Distress can sneak up on you.

Once you drop distress, you’ll feel good again. By adopting three simple steps, you can change distress into eustress.

How can you increase your productivity at work?

The interesting thing about productivity is that it’s something that almost everyone wants. Productivity is motivation in action. Generally speaking, people like to feel motivated and alive. After all, it’s much better to feel energized rather than tired, motivated rather than discouraged, and excited rather than feeling that there is nothing worth doing.

Besides tying in with motivation and purpose, productivity brings its own rewards, too. It can make you richer as you contribute more to the social good through your diligence and effort.

If motivation and productivity and all the other good things fulfill our natural teleological urges as human beings, why is it sometimes difficult to achieve the right mindset?

There is usually one reason for not feeling good about your work: you have lost touch with why you are doing it. Your work has become routine and you have lost track of your goals.

Consequently, the best ways to get motivated and productive is by reigniting your sense of purpose.

Here are 5 steps, some of them unusual, to help you get your sense of purpose and direction back:

Step #1: Revisit your goals

Whether or not you are in business for yourself or you work for someone, you’re doing it because you have specific goals in mind. These goals usually extend beyond paying for a roof above your head and to put food on your table. Goals that excite you are “thrive” goals, not “survive” goals.

If you have lost touch with your goals, now is a good time to list all the things you want to be, do, and have. These usually fall into the categories of health, wealth, love, and happiness.

Step #2: Visibly express your goals

Once you’ve created or revamped your goals list, then put it out in front of you. This can be in the form of a statement or image: a statement that you’ve written out on a note card on your desk or some image hung on the wall that symbolically expresses your goal. You might even create a vision board of all your goals. The basic idea here is to fire up your will and desire every time you see your goal statement or images.

Step #3: Compete with your previous performance

By keeping records of your work, you can compete with yourself. For instance: if you’re selling something, you can compete against your previous sales figures; if you’re building something, say a website, you could compete with your previous design; or if you’re organizing a project, you could compete on the speed or efficiency that it gets done compared to previous projects. With just a little imagination, then, you can come up with a baseline performance metric that you can then try to improve.

Step #4: Stand up on the job

Sometimes you may not be performing at your best because the work is repetitive and you begin to feel sleepy and bored halfway through it. This feeling of indifference can also occur even if your work is interesting but you are working after a heavy lunch. So, one way to wake up is to stand up. The alternative to sitting at your desk is to get a standing desk. In fact, even Leonardo Da Vinci is known to have used a standing desk.

There are numerous advantages to standing when you’re working, even if you’re writing or using a computer. You will feel better because your legs won’t hurt as much, your back will not ache, and you will have an improved posture. A height adjustable desk will allow you to set your work materials in a comfortable way in front of you.

Step #5: Plan your work and work your plan

Often when work is chaotic, you can begin to lose your sense of purpose. You are conflicted and confused about what to do or when to do it. While it is important to prioritize your work before the start of your working day, it’s even better if you spend the last half hour of your working day planning for the next day.

This has five advantages:

·  First, you have a clear idea of what needs to get done.

·  Second, you don’t feel frustrated at not accomplishing everything you set out to do because you have given yourself the next day to get it done. It’s a way to finish the day strong.

·  Third, you might get ideas on how to do the work better when you’re reflecting on it during the evening or in the middle of the night.

·  Fourth, when you get to work the next day, you have a clear idea of what to begin.

·  Fifth, by planning ahead, especially a day ahead, you establish a pattern for your work that puts everything you do into clear focus.

Find Your Vision Again

So, a loss of productivity can often simply be the result of losing track of your goals and the meaning behind why you’re working in the first place. In other words, it’s a loss of interest. While insufficient motivation and productivity can be due to ill health, fatigue, setbacks in life, or psychological issues, it is often be just a loss of your overarching vision.

Ever notice that you remember best the parting words of a conversation? The last sentence your spouse says in the morning as you walk out the door. The concluding words of the team meeting.

A song that sticks in your head is most likely the last one you heard on your commute.

The identical principle applies to your work day. The concluding actions of yesterday ring loudly as you greet tomorrow-becoming-today.

Here are three strategies for you to finish your day strong so you prepare for a productive tomorrow:

Complete a Task

Interruptions are a given, an expected, regular occurrence. You grab the hose and put out fires daily.

The byproduct of these chronic productivity hiccups is incompleteness. You struggle to complete a task and that’s an emotional drain.

Find a task, even a small one, to complete before you leave for home. Arrange your desk. File papers or documents. Make tomorrow’s to-do list. Anything.

Completing one task at the end of your day creates a positive sense of satisfaction that greets you the next morning. It’s refreshing to walk in and re-experience yesterday’s success. It launches your confidence for completion in a new day.

Commit to fun with family and friends

You read a lot about work/life balance which looks great from 50,000 feet. Yet from where your feet hit the ground, it’s a tough act to balance.

Do this one thing: commit to fun with your family and friends. Define fun with them. Playing “Pretty, Pretty Princess” with your daughter. Tossing football with your son. A romantic meal you cook at home for your honey. Shooting hoops with the guys. A spa trip with the sisterhood. It’s all fun!

Commit to fun. Schedule it. Budget it. Do it.

Increase your productivity with it.

Cut off the TV

If you go to sleep immediately following the evening news or an episode of The Walking Dead, guess what your subconscious works on overnight? Fixing the national deficit. Catching a murderer. Running from zombies.

Instead, cut the TV off at least 10 minutes before you go to sleep. Write in your Work Positive Gratitude Diary. Give your mind something positive to process overnight. Wake up more refreshed.

Finish your day strong and create a better tomorrow. Do more in an hour than most business professionals do in a month so you can leave the office earlier to do what you love with those you love as you Work Positive in a negative world.

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), coach, and speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they get out of the office earlier. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.

Article contributed by Dr. Joey Faucette 

Remember the saying, “Do what you love and love what you do and you’ll never work another day in your life?”

Sounds great, but how do you do that?

Here are 3 Ways to Positively Love Your Work:

Love What You Do for Work

The physical and mental activity of your work must reward you emotionally in order for you to love what you do.

For some people, it’s mentally knowing a difference is made, whatever that might be. For others, it’s the physical exertion that creates an endorphin rush. You love your work when you intrinsically value it and enjoy most of the associated activities.

When that value is lost, you may have transitioned to another phase or season of your work. Working with a career coach around purpose is helpful to again love what you do.

Love Who You Work With

In the WEconomy, team is a given. You work with others to create and leverage more than your “I” can do.

You attract others to your team based on your core values, priorities, and unique contribution. Your core values and priorities create a commonality of why we do and how we do. Your unique contribution is complementary within the team.

Examine within yourself who you love working with and why and conversely who you don’t and why. Change what you can about the relationship. Either accept what you can’t change or transition to another team or workplace. Working positive is challenging enough today without dragging yourself to work because of a stressful team environment.

Love Who You Work For

Ultimately you work for two groups of people: your customers/clients and your family.

Your customers/clients are those persons whom you attract into your business in order to solve a problem they have. They need or want something and you supply the product or service that conveys the answer.

Do you love your customers/clients? If so, tell them as often as possible. If not, find some more to your liking. You also attract them based on your core values, priorities, and unique contributions.

More importantly, you work for your family. You work to achieve some measure of financial independence to invest time into your family relationships. You work to provide responsibly for the needs and desires of the persons with whom you chose to enjoy your most intimate relationships.

Let your family know often, especially this week, how much you love them and love working for them.

As you do, you now know how to love what you do and do what you love. So enjoy your Work Positive lifestyle!

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), Positive Success Coach, & speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they leave the office earlier to do what they love with those they love. Discover more at www.GetPositive.Today.

I was lying flat on my back in the grassy outfield, trying to come around. I had drifted back from my third-base position for the Little League team White Sox into shallow left field to catch a fly ball. I missed the ball with my glove and instead caught it with my forehead.

Someone said, “Son, you’ve got to keep your eye on the ball.”

Little comfort when your head is killing you and your ego is dead with embarrassment.

And you find out later that regardless of how much you keep your eye on the ball, it won’t help.

I needed glasses. My focus was off.

How do you know when your focus is off at work? That you’re not catching the positive ways to increase sales with greater productivity so you get out of the office earlier?

Here are 3 Keys to Sharpen Your Focus and Accelerate Your Productivity:

Deflect Distractions

For some people, the sky falls daily.

You know who they are. You cringe when they walk towards you. You sigh when they come up on Caller ID.

Deflect these distractions of negativity with two steps:

Step 1: Grab the handle

What can you learn from this Chicken Little? You can discover a lesson…at least that the sky fails to fall daily.

Step 2: FLUSH!

Flush the negativity, and any distracting emotions with them. Clean your mental bowl often.

Define Reality

You can imagine your business at its best. Or, you can worry. Same mental function.

Dale Carnegie once said, “If you can’t sleep, get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. The worry gets you, not the lack of sleep.”

Define your current reality and move forward instead of sideways with worry. Timeline your project and do it one step at a time. Examine your cash flow and track back to your marketing funnel and sales conversions. Where do your customers come from? Go get more of them.

Do the Unfamiliar

Change your routine and you force focus. Your creative innovation emerges from the disruption of the familiar.

Do unfamiliar little things first. Commute a different route. Change the way you shave or brush your teeth or shower in the morning.

These small disruptions emerge into larger ones that focus you on creative solutions to customer problems and requests, making you more productive.

When you deflect distractions that may be unfamiliar.

When you define reality, that may be unfamiliar, also.

To focus on the positive at work in this negative world, do the unfamiliar.

And Work Positive as your sales increase and your productivity grows greater so you can leave the office earlier to do what you love with those you love!

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), coach, and speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they get out of the office earlier. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.