Recessions can take an emotional toll along with their financial impact. Keep an eye out for signs of depression, and don’t let symptoms mount before seeking treatment. Your employee assistance professional can help. Resist slipping into catastrophic thinking (“We’ll never climb out of this.”).
Instead, deal with each day as it comes. Plan steps and strategies to regain a financial foothold, and reflect on past successes in overcoming adversity. Feared events, if they come, are usually accompanied by solutions or choices associated with their resolution. Using this resilient mind-set helps reduce fear, and it allows you to feel more in control and less stressed. It also models resilience to those you love.
There are thousands of books on goal achievement, but not all of them have a unique message. In fact, most boil down to four principles stated in many different ways:
1) You must decide precisely what you are going to achieve and accept no substitute for achievement;
2) you must decide that you will act vigorously and relentlessly to make the goal reality;
3) you must recognize progress and lack of progress so you can repeat, add to, or not repeat action steps accordingly;
4) you must abandon preconceived notions of what should or will ultimately work.
Here’s one daily habit you can start tonight.
Set aside 30 minutes each night to review your plan for the following day. Once your day begins, you’re off to the races. It may be difficult to take a breather and plan your day on the run. You have the ability to store a thousand ideas and details associated with your day. However, you can work on only one thing at a time. Planning your day the night before acts as a sorting-out process and calms the nervous system, which has been in hyper mode all day. It’s the equivalent of straightening up a messy workshop before beginning the next project. The benefit is the feeling of being more in control and less overwhelmed by a morass of issues and concerns. And it may improve your sleep!
Southwest Airlines hires only upbeat employees—those who are positive, compassionate, diplomatic, and empathic. What behaviors do its employees practice that spur happiness and corporate success? Can you do the same things? Here are three:
1) Seek creative solutions to work problems. Ideas may not always be accepted, but in your job or among your peers, continue to seek ways of doing things more effectively.
2) Establish a way to celebrate success among your peers. Peer recognition is the most reinforcing.
3) Reduce customer service stress by imagining your customer as a loved one—a child, mother, father, or person who energizes you. Applying this perspective can create a more positive attitude
and reduce stress.