Psychologists often suggest changing your life, starting with yourself. Take a closer look at everyday situations and established patterns in your work routine. How often do you sit in a restaurant with your phone in your hands or ride in a taxi, constantly pushing the driver? Probably many of you recognized yourself. Let’s figure out how to change your attitude to familiar things and improve the quality of life using simple techniques.
Morning Before Work
Often after sleep, we immediately pick up our phone, scroll through the feed, encounter disturbing news and work tasks, unwittingly increasing our stress levels.
But it’s better if the morning schedule distracts from work – it becomes a time for self-care, sports and walking. With such a well-established routine, waking up is easier, breakfast is more pleasant, and it’s easier to tune in to work.
Specialists agree on a point. Morning habits are much more important than it might seem at first glance. Scientists from the University of Houston, from the Department of Health and Human Performance, conducted a study on The Importance of Creating Habits and Routines. It turned out that positive rituals have a positive effect on the state of a person immediately after their implementation. Therefore, after sleep, when you “rebooted” from a physiological and emotional point of view, it is most easy to set yourself up for a positive result during the day. To do this, try to set aside at least a little more than an hour for yourself in the morning, whether it’s a run or watching a documentary. If a person encounters pleasant experiences after waking up, then the likelihood that the emotional state will continue to be stable increases significantly.
To introduce positive habits into the morning schedule, you may consider trying the practice of digital minimalism. Bad news, calls and correspondence can cause anxiety or aggression early in the morning. To prevent depression from affecting relationships with family and colleagues, turn on the temporary app lock or do not disturb mode before work.
Another way to set up a morning routine is to practice “freewriting,” that is, freely describing experiences.
You sit down, set a timer for five minutes, and put whatever comes to mind on paper as honestly and openly as possible. Thus, information processing and reflection, a splash of emotions take place. At the end, you can reread what you have written and underline the thoughts that seem most interesting and meaningful. Over time, an understanding will come of exactly how much time you need for the equipment to work as efficiently as possible. And for practice, you don’t need so much concentration and effort – it can be easily built into your routine: for example, you can do it while walking or while the kettle is boiling.
Taxi Ride to the Office
During a long commute to work, we often experience anxiety and worry that we are late. In city traffic, this feeling is destructive, because we cannot control the situation on the roads and the permissible speed of movement. Being late is one of the most obvious triggers, which to a greater extent destabilizes the state of those who are late.
Visual and near-meditative self-help techniques help to cope with stress in such a situation. One of them is the white room practice.
Imagine a bright room through which materialized thoughts pass from one door to another. Do not try to analyze, challenge or test judgments. Just be aware that this is a brief moment of your brain activity, an occasional guest of the white room.
Business Meeting
An important meeting at work is another reason to lose focus and concentration. At this point, we often pay attention to minor details: flaws in the presentation, lack of water bottles on the tables, subjective shortcomings in appearance. At such moments, it is important to remember that excessive perfectionism harms and destabilizes the emotional state. Excitement can let you down during a public speech more than a slightly wrinkled jacket.
In this case, it is better to use bodily self-help practices to throw out strong negative emotions. It is better to accept the excitement and live it, showing the experience physically. Try to move the focus of the excitement from thoughts to actions. For example, pay attention to the contact of the legs with the floor. Feel the support, the firm confidence in what you stand on.
Try to take a break and read something that’s not connected to your job. You can, for instance, go on https://blog.vave.com/ to find various articles about gambling tips and tricks.
Lunch At a Restaurant
Even in the finest restaurant, we tend to get distracted by work, focusing on the phone rather than the feel of the food and atmosphere. Often, after half an hour of absence, a workaholic has the idea that the routine is getting out of control. Skipping lunch because of work is becoming a common habit. It undermines psychological health. It can lead to overwork, emotional burnout and, as a result, depression.
While in Sweden, the sixth-happiest country according to the UN, even a coffee break is a mandatory part of the work schedule. At the legislative level, there are two coffee breaks in offices and even universities. After all, a meal is a time when you can take a breath, relieve some tension and replenish the forces necessary for effective work in the afternoon. To adopt this habit, you should include lunch in your schedule in advance in the same way as important meetings, and then never miss it.
To avoid anxiety most of the specialists advise to assess the environment, look around and find an object that catches your eye. Describe it in your mind and pay attention to the details. Repeat the technique several times, moving from object to object, while trying not to be distracted by extraneous thoughts. This will help you relax and disconnect from the thought processes associated with work.
