This week’s blog features one of my friends as a guest Blogger, Barry Demp. I’ve known Barry for about 6 years, and have always enjoyed interacting with him and learning from him. He has been a well respected coach in Michigan for over 20 years, and is a popular speaker and regular blogger. I’m sure you’ll glean some helpful tips in this week’s blog about dealing with stress this holiday season.
Enjoy!
Lori
Lori T. Williams, Owner/Managing Attorney
Your Legal Resource, PLLC
10 Stress Management Tips for Business Owners and Professionals
By: Barry Demp, Business and Personal Coach
Barry Demp, Michigan Business and Personal Coach
It can be tough to make the switch from work to the holidays, and it’s important to manage this transition so that you can enjoy some real down time.
As you prepare for the holiday season, ask yourself: what things could I stop doing? For instance, you might set up an out-of-office message to let clients and colleagues know that “I am unplugging and will not be checking my email.”
Even if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas yourself, you’ll find it tough to carry on with work – the majority of your colleagues and clients will be unplugging, and it’s a good chance for you to do likewise and potentially spend some time with family and friends.
Expectations surrounding the holidays can be stressful: unfulfilled expectations upset people. Try to be accepting, loving and welcoming – while taking care of your own needs.
Here are ten ways to avoid and manage stress during the holiday season:
1. Learn the art of saying “no” with respect and integrity. But if you do say “yes”, make the best of things. Look for the value, the fun and the connections. Even if something didn’t work in the past, you can make it work this year.
2. Stop doing what you do not like doing. Focus on doing fewer things, and doing them better. Being a jack of all trades can be very stressful and exhausting.
3. Schedule time for recharging your batteries: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Take more naps, take a walk in nature. Build free time and opportunities for self-expression into your life.
4. Be powerful, instead of being forceful. Learn to stand for what you believe and not use force against things. Exerting force is exhausting.
5. Do a brain dump to capture the wide variety of urgent and important items running through your mind: perhaps Christmas shopping or writing your holiday cards. Prioritize these items, allocate time for them and then put them in your calendar. Your schedule will hold them until it is time to act.
6. Learn to be “fully present” to each person and each task before and during the holidays. Multi-taskers tend to actually not be more effective and many experience far high levels of stress. How you spend your day and who you spend it with is really what makes up your life. At work you may not have the choice – but during the holidays, you do.
7. Choose to be happy with what you have and who you are. Your break from work can act as a mini-sabbatical: a chance to experience a shift in perspective.
8. Work on your optimism muscle. Optimists tend to be happier and less stressed than pessimists. How can you go into the holiday season in a loving, giving, sharing way – and still have fun? Try not to think, “I could have been somewhere else.”
9. Contribute to others. Givers tend to gain far more than they give plus it feels great! Remember, the best things in life are not things: Christmas does not have to be about expensive gifts. Work on developing meaningful relationship: they will be there long after the new tech device breaks down.
10. Smile more. It is hard to be stressed when you’re happy. Bring more play into your life. If you forgot how find a child (perhaps a niece, nephew or grandchild) and ask them for coaching!
As you ease back out of the holidays into the New Year, ask yourself what did I experience over the holidays that really filled my life up? How can I keep these important (not necessarily urgent) things in my life?
Look for ways to stay in touch with friends and relatives during the year: perhaps through Skype, email, or even sending photographs or letters. You could even take a vacation together.
What new practices and habits do you want to take into the New Year, to bring a reduction of stress in the year ahead – while still accomplishing your personal and professional goals?
When patterns are broken, new worlds will emerge. What patterns have you broken over the holidays? How can you move forwards in the New Year?
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Barry Demp is a highly-experienced Michigan Business and Personal coach. He is author of two short workbooks, Time Management Strategies and Tactics and Masterful Networking: the latter is available for download from his site, Demp Coaching. He blogs regularly about self-development, with a focus on professional life.
