This post is part of our Monthly-ish Tips series.
Full disclosure, there’s no new tip this week. I simply didn’t get ‘er done. And instead of trying to shoe-horn one in, delivering something sub-par that comes with a lot of stress as its price tag, I’m choosing a little reprieve for me and my team. Because if there’s one thing we all need less of right now, it’s added stress of any kind.
In that vein, I’m recycling a few stress-lowering Weekly Tips from the archives:
- Sometimes we create stress in our relationships because we don’t deal with the elephant in the room. And we all have elephants. Here’s some practical advice for how to minimize their impact in a way that maximizes trust.
- Our stress levels naturally go down when we learn to take ourselves less seriously. Here’s a favorite lesson about how to deal with awkward silence after accidentally saying something you didn’t mean to say to a client (the situation itself is humorous and the humorous response is my favorite). And here’s a humorous way to handle a different situation: a client’s lack of response (scroll down to #3).
- Gratitude can be a great antidote for stress. Three years ago I wrote about a really simple yearly practice that I see now could be easily shrunk to a week or a month with even greater impact. Caution: This little exercise can generate some serious feel-good—for you and for the people who get a mention on your little slips of paper.
Now consider one of my favorite all-time stress reducers, which is scheduled R&R. Carve out a few minutes in the day this week, along with something more ambitious for the future. If you’ll be out of the office in the coming months, append a heads-up to your email signature now, as one client of mine once did (“UPCOMING PTO: Friday, July 3 – Friday, July 10, 2020”). Then use a trust-building out of office message while you’re offline.
(Deep breath.)
Andrea Howe
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