Importance of Detachment and De-Personalization
We’ve all been there – you’re having a terrible day, somehow sucked into one meeting after another and nothing seems to go your way. Then, a prospective client you expected to sign ghosts you without explanation. That can hit hard. When you work for yourself, every loss is a big one – that could’ve been the difference between booking that vacation you’ve been looking forward to and making your mortgage payment and it can be hard to calm down and come back from something like that. As a business owner (and especially if you also work and live in the same environment) it is so important to have a wind-down routine at the end of your work day. I know first-hand that if I try to work all night and go directly to bed, I spend the whole night tossing and turning and dreaming about work. I also know that if I don’t separate my work life from my home life, that stress follows me out of my home office and right into my family time.
That being said, you don’t always have the luxury of carving out one hour of meditation time to decompress after their work day. As hard as you might try, there may not actually be a cut off time from your workday. Sometimes you’re going right from work to family, back to work then back to family and so on and so on until you drop into bed at the end of the day. So, what do you do? For me, it’s holding tight to perspective. On those really tough days where my kids are wild and my workday is heavier than I would like, I try to pause when I feel the anxiety rising. I take a deep breath and I remind myself that as hard as this is (and it is absolutely allowed to be hard, by the way) I chose this career so that I could embrace my life as both a mom and a provider. My job might be stressful but I am doing it so I can also be home with my kids and that priority has to always take the forefront. So, I take another look at my schedule and I move what I can move and I rearrange to take time back in my day later on or even the next day so that I can breathe again.
What is even more important, for me anyway, is that I allow myself to vent. I give myself 20minutes at the end of the day (or in the middle of it) to be frustrated by a task that is late or more complex than was originally made out to be. I give myself permission to feel all the feels. And then I move on. You can’t expect to bottle every annoyance and frustration up inside and still be okay at the end of week. It’s just not realistic. But you can go through those emotions and come out the other side calmer and ready to move on. It is just a job and at the end of the day, it will be over. If you are holding on to the bitterness of a bad day, that day wins – and it wins the next day and the one after that too. Let it go. Remember that as good as you are at your job, there will always be bad days. If you can take a deep breath and decide that you are not going to let it affect you on that deep, personal level, then you can come back to work the next day feeling recharged and ready to try again.
