Motivation - Stress Is Not The Enemy
Stress and Work/Home (AKA Whole Life!) Enjoyment
Which parts of your job are stressful?
Are you bringing your work stress home?
If you are, is that having a positive impact on your home life?
Which parts of the rest of your life are stressful?
Are you bringing your home stress to work?
If you are, is that having a positive impact on your work life?
The point of this exercise is to recognize when we let stress negatively impact our lives. Once we have identified and named areas where we are bringing stress from one area of our lives to another, and where it NOT having a positive impact, we can move to make changes conducive to improving our whole lives.
Sometimes this looks like changing our schedule to improve our overall productivity.
Sometimes it means recognizing where we could prevent complaining, etc, and focus on being present with our loved ones and creating positive moments rather than bringing negativity in from other parts of your life.
**This is not pretending reality doesn’t exist, or forgetting about it. This means take the time and space you need to process things so you can let go of things out of your control and get back to living and enjoying your life, at home and at work!**
Be aware and conscious of processing on purpose when you are stressed about something in the past or future. This way you can let go of things you can’t control and enjoy being present on purpose at home or at work. Wherever you are, enjoy and dive into the life in front of you right at this moment!
For example, don’t let a rude co-worker ruin your date, or your dinner, or whatever you do outside of work. You can absolutely deal with, kindly confront, grab a manager to talk through the rude coworker situation when you are back at work…but why let it fester and affect your life?
Similarly, you may be having a rough time with a friend or family member that makes it hard to focus at work. Reclaim control over your mind, and focus your energy and attention in the present moment at work.
One of the best tricks for this is to very intentionally relate the work you are doing to your personal purpose and values.
By doing this, you frame that you are doing what you are doing for a good reason, so you want to be your best at it!
Being your best means letting go of the internal drama around your personal life until you are outside of work and in an environment conducive to processing through that situation or frustration, either with the person involved, or with a counselor, or with a friend whose intent is to help you to process and/or move forward.
Transforming Stress Into Positive Energy
This TED talk examines and answers this question - how to make stress your friend!
https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend
We find our lives more enjoyable when chasing meaning instead of avoiding discomfort.
What is the point of avoiding discomfort? To enjoy life more, right? So this approach of increasing life enjoyment by increasing discomfort is counter-intuitive.
It makes sense that chasing meaning in your life is more important than reducing discomfort…and yet can be hard to grasp the significance well enough to apply it, because it seem so obvious.
This is where it is helpful to recall the fact that your brain believes avoiding discomfort will automatically increase life enjoyment. Because avoiding discomfort is enjoyable in the moment, your brain will choose momentary comfort over long term enjoyment. So you need to be on the lookout for opportunities to CHOOSE your path to enjoyment by stepping into discomfort intentionally to improve your life in the long run. In other words, be willing and ready to strategically sacrifice short term comfort for the improvement of your life in the long run.
To combat your brain’s natural response and seize control of enjoying our lives you must continually remind yourself of your dreams that create meaning for your lives, and of your capability to take on challenges.
You need to FEED your inner self and your dreams by doing the following:
Connecting with our inner values, and our inner dreams helps motivate us to take steps toward our dreams..
Finding motivation and drive through the practice of goal setting, and by learning new things.
Intentionally designing our lives to align with our inner values and our goals also fuels our dreams.
Knowing you need to embrace discomfort is not enough – you also need energy!
It takes energy to choose temporary discomfort in sacrifice to your dreams and goals. In order to cultivate the energy required to chase our dreams and live in alignment with our inner selves, we must ensure we take care of ourselves first. Do the following, along with any other things you know to fill and fuel yourself, and embrace challenges and discomfort willingly – discipline = freedom!
Get enough sleep
Eat enough nutrients
Exercise regularly
Truly connect with other human beings in our lives
Those are the non negotiables…what are the other things you need to do to fill your tank?