Whether you’re a high-performing leader, ambitious overachiever, or simply someone managing day-to-day responsibilities on a consistent basis, stress will inevitably begin to mount up in your life. This compounding stress will not just weigh heavily on you, but has the potential to affect those around you as well. So how do you best navigate work stress and its impact at home?
First, it’s important to realize that stress is not inherently bad. When you’re an entrepreneur, stress comes with the territory of operating your business. Due to this fact, it would be unwise for us to assume that we’re going to be able to avoid stress in its entirety. Stress is natural. However, it’s the actual unmanaged stress that can literally kill you. How then can we avoid this from happening? Perhaps, one measure to take is to have people in your life that are willing to reflect back to you when they see that you’re not managing that stress well. The type of people that can recognize your mood changing and are willing to ask if you’re OK. Because, odds are, these friends and family members are going to feel your mood change prior to you seeing it. So give them permission to provide you with that vital feedback when they notice it’s happening and be willing to accept it.
Another important measure to take to reduce mounting stress is to double down on shutting it down. In other words, don’t let the stress from your workday permeate your home life. For instance, when you walk through the door at home make a conscious effort to tell yourself that you’re going to shut that stress down for a certain period of time. This can even include something as basic as putting your phone in another room and not walking around with it on your person. While this does not eliminate the stress completely from your life and you'll have to return to it at some point, it does allow you to rejuvenate by enjoying some important moments of catching up on laughter or the more peaceful activities of the day. If you can make an effort to double down on shutting it down for just moments of time each day, then you’ll notice a huge benefit in terms of alleviating that build-up of stress.
All of these things take practice. It’s not an overnight process. Initially, the doubling down might simply mean the intentionality to start. Don’t get frustrated if you’re not immediately meeting your primary goal of shutting your work stress down for a certain time period. The goal is to see that, by doing this, you’re refueling and giving yourself what you need to fight through the stress of your day-to-day work life. So we encourage you to keep practicing this de-stressing tactic until you master it. It’s worth it!