Take A Vacation From Stress By Bringing Your Own Portable Oasis To Work

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Take A Vacation From Stress By Bringing Your Own Portable Oasis To Work – Part I

Have you ever noticed how some people bring good cheer wherever they go, while others, as the old saying goes, “brighten up a room the moment they leave”? Have you ever noticed how some of your colleagues remain calm and serene despite the many demands, pressures, and hassles at your workplace, while others get testy, tense, or moody?

Which group do you fall into to? Are you usually serene, cheerful, and optimistic, regardless of what life serves up to you, or does your mood and stress level each day depend on whether life is going easy on you or serving up challenges?

While some people seem to be naturally resilient - they’re able to respond to challenges and hassles with good cheer and serenity - for most of us, it requires practice. Such practice is well worth the effort.

Your Success Depends Upon This EQ Competency

With the increasing demands, pressures, and uncertainty of work life in the 21st Century, we cannot afford to let our happiness and stress level be controlled by our external environment. Regardless of your profession or position in the corporate hierarchy, your ability to manage your emotional state in the midst of challenging and difficult circumstances will strongly influence your success both in the technical and the people side of your job. Whether it’s getting a product or project completed under pressured circumstances or dealing with a combative co-worker, the more you’re able to manage your emotional state, the more effective you will be. In fact, the ability to manage one’s emotions is one of the core competencies of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), which more strongly influences career success than one’s IQ or technical competency, according to a variety of research findings.

Learn How To Create Your Own Portable Emotional Oasis

So how do you manage your emotional state, how do you maintain your sense of serenity and good cheer throughout the day, even when life repeatedly throws you curveballs? You do this by creating your own “portable emotional oasis.” A Portable Emotional Oasis resembles a physical oasis, it remains hospitable and pleasant, regardless of how harsh and unpleasant it’s surroundings.

We want to create that kind of emotional climate for ourselves, so that regardless of how difficult our surrounding situation, we remain calm and cheerful. To mix metaphors somewhat, we want to create a pleasant internal weather system that is so strong; outside storms aren’t able to overpower it and “rain on our parade.” This strong weather system not only protects us from inclement emotional and situational weather surrounding us, it can also transform the external unpleasant weather. We’ve all experienced people who are like that, they are so peaceful and cheerful, we can’t help but feel good when we are around them. In the midst of difficult situations, their presence calms and encourages others. Their “good weather” spreads to others and makes a stressful situation better.

So how can we be that kind of person, how can we create that strong, positive internal climate, that Portable Oasis, and by doing so, increase our ability to deal gracefully with the demands and pressures each day brings? We can make a habit of engaging in a few simple practices that enable us to create a Portable Oasis.

Knowing Versus Doing

I know for some people reading this article, many of these principles and practices will be new, while for others, they will be familiar. If you’re in the second group, my hope is that you won’t dismiss them by saying “Oh, I already know that” but will instead ask yourself “Am I doing these?” because it’s not what you know - it’s what you do with what you know - that will make a difference in your life.

So, with that in mind, here are a few simple practices that can enable you to spend more of your day – and your life – in an oasis of good cheer and serenity.

Look At How You Start Your Day

How often have you started the day off like this: Your alarm goes off at the last possible nanosecond because you went to bed later than you had hoped. Because you don’t have a second to spare, you hit the floor running. You sprint for the shower, perhaps making a quick kitchen detour to poke the coffee maker switch to “On.” Breakfast, if it happens at all, takes place standing up, or in the car, along with any last minute personal care adjustments made in the rear view mirror at stop lights. If you hit all the lights just right and encounter no school buses or accidents, you will make it to work on time, if not, you won’t. You arrive just under the wire, feeling emotionally out of breath. Even before the first e-mail, voice mail, or request, you’re feeling frantic and stretched thin. Does this sound familiar?

Starting the day off in such a frantic, pressured way creates a sense of emotional unsteadiness which makes us vulnerable to any unforeseen or unpleasant circumstance. Using the climate analogy, starting the day off like this creates a weak, unstable internal weather system, which makes us vulnerable to whatever external weather system blows through. Thus, our internal climate will be powerfully influenced by the external climate. If we are lucky enough to have an easy day, we’ll be in a good mood. If the day brings challenges and difficulties, we won’t.

Don’t Start Off In Frantic Mode

Instead of starting the day off like that, try setting the alarm clock so that you have enough time to get into the day in a more welcoming, gentle way. This obviously means going to bed at a time that enables you to get enough sleep – not always easy, but a key factor in cultivating emotional well-being and resiliency. If you believe your lifestyle won’t allow that, at least try it out for a few days and notice the difference. Then ask yourself if you are willing to do what it takes to create more serenity and calm in your life.

Bring Out Your Best With Intention

Starting your day with intention enables you to set a positive tone and trajectory for the day, rather than letting whatever winds blow your way decide your mood. Starting your day with positive intention not only puts you in an uplifted frame of mind, it helps you notice opportunities to be the best you that you can be, and to act in ways that create an auspicious day. Some of the intentions I use to set a positive trajectory for the day are:

May I bring goodwill to all I meet.
May I bring my Highest Self to all interactions and call forth the Highest Self in others.
May I uplift all I meet.

Bo Lozoff, author of the wonderful book It’s a Meaningful Life – It Just Takes Practice, offers some excellent intentions to start one’s day:

May my behavior today express my deepest beliefs.
May I approach each and every task today with quiet impeccability.
May I be a simple, humble, kind presence on earth today.
May I leave each place at least a little better than I found it today.
May I truly cherish this day, knowing that it may be my last.

Although starting the day off with intention is always helpful, it is especially helpful when you are facing a challenge, such as dealing with a difficult co-worker. Rather than letting their difficult behavior bring out the worst in us, we can let our positive intention bring forth the best in us, and perhaps, let our actions bring out their best.

To strengthen your intention, you can picture yourself acting in ways that reflect your best self. See yourself responding to that difficult co-worker with grace and confidence. Instead of responding to sarcasm with sarcasm, see yourself responding in a direct and mature way.

Prime Your Attitudinal Pump

Because our attitudes and beliefs largely determine our emotional response to challenges – and therefore our stress level - we want to make sure we bring useful, empowering attitudes and beliefs into our day. This strategy for creating a Portable Oasis requires special attention because we get bombarded with negative, self-limiting messages every day, whether from advertisers, politicians, pop psychologists, or our co-workers. This continual barrage of self-limiting messages literally hypnotizes us in a negative way. We begin to unconsciously absorb these messages and respond to the world based on these self-limiting, disempowering attitudes and beliefs.

This is why we must consciously examine and challenge our own disempowering attitudes and beliefs, and why “priming our attitudinal pump” with empowering, resilient attitudes is so important. Priming your attitudinal pump increases the chances that an empowering perspective and attitude will be triggered when you face a challenge. You can prime your attitudinal pump by reading something empowering just before you go to sleep and first thing in the morning.

Rather than filling your subconscious mind with doom and gloom, and murder and mayhem (i.e. the news) prior to retiring, read something uplifting and growth enhancing. Same thing in the morning.

First, doing this gives your unconscious mind something useful to work with as opposed to something counterproductive (remember GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out). Giving it useful input enables your unconscious mind to generate useful outcomes for you. Second, and related to priming your attitudinal pump, it increases the odds that those empowering attitudes and perspectives will be triggered in response to a challenging situation. Because they’ve been on your mind, due to your reading about them, they’re the attitudes and perspectives you’re most likely to recall when a difficult situation arises.

It’s like when you find yourself using an uncommon word in a conversation soon after you heard your conversational partner use it, or vice versa. Haven’t you noticed that? That particular word wouldn’t ordinarily come out of your mouth, but because your brain was primed by their using it, it popped out.

We want to increase the odds that empowering, useful attitudes and perspectives will pop out of our minds and help us out. Priming our attitudinal pump makes that happen. So for instance, let’s say you read Steven Covey’s book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” one morning and read the part about “Seek first to understand.”

That will be percolating in your unconscious mind as you go about your day. Let’s say you are getting ready to confront a co-worker about something. “Seek first to understand!” will likely pop into your mind, and allow you to respond in a far more effective way than if you first sought to “Show them why they’re wrong.”

Let me give you a personal example of how useful priming our attitudinal pump can be. One morning I was waiting for a call from a friend and colleague. I was annoyed with her, and even though I knew my feelings were irrational, I was having a hard time snapping out of it. I found myself imagining our upcoming conversation and imagining that I would be cold and aloof. Again, even though I didn’t want to be that way, that’s the direction I was heading. Then, I sat down and read a few pages from “Awakening the Buddhist Heart” by Surya Das, one of my favorite “first thing in the morning or just before going to bed books.”

Here are a few of the lines I read in the section about making sure that what comes out of our mouths uplifts others:

“Find ways to keep your words gentle, loving, accurate, and positive. Do this even if you are annoyed and upset.”

“Use your words to encourage those around you.”

“Use your words to help your loved ones feel nourished and supported.”

As a brief aside, notice how none of these suggestions are Rocket Science. Nothing complex or novel here. But, this an excellent example of the difference between knowing and doing. We all know that being this way is important, yet often do we forget? (You might want to reflect on your relationships right now and ask yourself if you are doing these things).

As I read the above reminders, I found myself struggling, torn between two competing desires. On one hand, my “small self” or “lower self” wanted to indulge in feeling hurt and angry, while my “higher self” knew that doing so was incongruent with how I wanted to be in the world, and how I felt about my friend. I also knew that, since in my work I encourage others to bring their highest self to interactions, I wouldn’t feel good about myself if I wasn’t doing that. Knowing that indulging in anger and resentment and pettiness wasn’t an option, I begrudgingly acknowledged that I would be mature. Because my attention was so focused on these ideas and had caused me to deeply think about how I wanted to be, when my friend called, I was able to rise to the occasion and deal with the issue in a mature, kindly way.

So, to put this into practice, start off and end off your day with reading that offers empowering, uplifting ideas and perspectives. Besides the two excellent books mentioned earlier, you might pick up one of those daily mediation books, or any of the other many inspiring books available, or email me at the address at the end of the article, for a list of references.

Now It’s Time To Do

Remember that it’s not what you know, but what you do with what you know that makes a difference in your life. So now, rather than saying “OK, I know this stuff,” ask yourself if you are doing these things and if not, practice them.

In the next installment, we will talk about three other simple practices that enable you to take a vacation from stress, while you spend your day in your own emotional oasis.