Posts Tagged ‘guilt’

I’d like to share an experience I had recently as an example of what we deal with many, many times in our lives – dilemmas that we create in our own heads through self-talk.

Get the self-talk right and it’s bliss; get it wrong and it can be miserable and even lead to divisions.

As I mentioned my mum arrived to stay with us for a couple of months. At the same time, as I have just moved to a new country I was trying to get my business up and running here in Oz.

I was being invited to meetings and networking gatherings, and various opportunities were presenting themselves to me. At the same time Mum would only be here for a couple of months.

Do I spend time with Mum or do I attend networking meetings and get out there meeting people and promoting my business?

So therein lies the dilemma!

However, it wasn’t as straightforward as that. When faced with difficult situations, just to complicate matters, we then need to deal with the self-talk, which at times creates untruths.

The judgmental self was telling me that Mum would be expecting me to spend time with her – she can’t drive, so needed me to take her everywhere and had come all this way not just to sit in a house all the time.

Then there was the “I need to get the business up and running as quickly as possible”; my plan was to start promoting the business as soon as I came back from the Sydney ECI Coaching Conference at the end of November.

Not only was the judgmental self ruling those thoughts, it also started to build up feelings of resentment, guilt (and I don’t even do guilt), annoyance and frustration.

So I sat myself down to look at the facts of the situation.

Of course, there were no facts regarding the thought process concerning my mum, as this was all in my head and nothing had been checked with her.

And yes, I had made plans and set goals regarding my business but they are never set in stone and all I needed to do was defer them.

After looking at the true situation, I focused on what my real needs and wants were: what was important to me and what would make me and others around me happy?

I realised that if I still lived in Scotland, I would never have spent this much time in my mum’s company.  Also, I had no idea when an opportunity like this would come my way to find out more about Mum’s life, passions or best memories – all the things we very rarely talk about. Here was a chance to make some fabulous memories of our own and here I was wallowing in self-talk about something I can easily delay for just a couple of months, which is nothing in the bigger scheme of things.

My decision was made

– enjoy my couple of months with my mum and really start pushing the business in February.

Since I made that decision, work has come my way without me doing anything, and Mum and I have made so many great memories that will be treasured for a lifetime.

Just remember

– check that your self-talk is built on facts and make sure the decisions you make are for the right reasons and will make you happy!

Stress is the mental and physical condition that results from strains that exceed our capabilities at the time.

However excessive stress, which remains over a consistent period of time, can produce mental and physical disorders.

Burnout occurs when we lose motivation

…because work/activity ceases to be meaningful. This leads to frustration, fatigue and a lack of desire, as well as guilt.

The cost of burnout and stress to employers and employees alike is enormous. Think loss of earnings, low work output and medical expenses…and that’s just for starters.

There are many factors that may cause burnout, but they fall into four main categories:

• Work
• Family
• Personal
• Social

These will be common to most of us, and potentially, we could all be susceptible to their pressures.

So how do you overcome these stresses?

Well, the most important thing is to be self-aware. Tune into your mind and body and notice if they’re telling you you’re tired, angry or anxious. Realising these things can be half the battle.

If you notice that you’ve suddenly turned into an insomniac, your appetite has gone or you’re skin looks awful, the chances are your mind or body is telling you to slow down. To help prevent burnout and stress re-structure your job/life to make it less stressful:

• Look at what you really want from the particular area of your life that is causing you stress;
• Re-assess your alternatives so that you get what you really want;
• Look after yourself physically as well as mentally (construct a wellness programme for yourself);
• Contact a counsellor/coach (use a stress specialist) to help you achieve your new goal of contentment and peace with yourself;
• Devise and use your own counselling techniques to help yourself whenever you need to.

Whatever you choose to do about stress, just make sure that you do something. And do it now! Don’t ignore it until burnout takes place. Trust me, that’s a much harder place to come back from.