Coping In Challenging Times

Whether the economy is

impacting you directly or whether your caught in the crossfire it is difficult to survive and succeed during these challenging times. And the times are challenging. Whatever your work related challenge: a reduced workload, an unexpected early retirement, fewer customers, fewer co-workers to share the tasks that still need to be done or the uphill task of retraining and job search this is a time of change and change is difficult.

Transition

You’ve likely heard the expression “when one door closes another one opens”, well this might be so, yet what we need is a strategy to deal with our time in the hallway – our time waiting to locate and open the other door. This period of transition is troubling, most people aren’t great at dealing with ambiguity.

If we life were simple and we only had to deal with the stress related to the changes in our work things would perhaps being manageable. However, life doesn’t always deal us one card at a time. Many people facing work related stress are often also already dealing with time management issues, legal issues, elder care issues, child care issues, loss or any of a half dozen other common day to day stress buttons.

What happens to us when our buttons are pushed. Well it is different for all of us ... yet here are some common stress symptoms: irritability, lack of concentration, feeling overwhelmed, indecisiveness, sleep disturbances, forgetting things, irritability and it’s sidekick more arguing

What to do:

• Breathe. Take a deep breath. Really when you hit the boiling point take a long deep belly breath. Three deep breaths will begin to reduce your heart rate, and even slow your metabolism down.
• Relax. We often get so wound up striving to gain a new client or connect with a potential employer we don’t’ take the time we need for ourselves. So be sure to take care of yourself with massage treatments, yoga classes or meditation.
• Exercise. Don’t squeeze exercise out of your routine. Now is the time to increase your fitness level and draw in all the extra endorphins your body can generate.
• Talk to someone. Who? Anyone really. Don’t keep your stress bottled up. Find a colleague or friend who has an empathetic ear and express your feelings.
• Laugh. You gotta laugh. Even if you don’t think you’ve got much to laugh about if you can find the laugh trigger the stress reduction/health payoff is huge. Laughter causes you to breathe deeply (see above), laughter slows down your pulse, laughter increases circulation and reduces muscle tension.

What else to do:

Essential Communications has a workshop that deals with these stress related issues head on. Check out our Mind, Body & Spirti workshop and come away with strategies to cope in these challenging times. As well, enquire about our individual career coaching sessions