Category: Uncategorized

One of the things I’ve noticed over the last few years is how much we, as adults, feel scared. I’m not talking about horror films here either (a genre I’ve never really understood). 

What I mean is that life and work can be a series of unpredictable challenges, for which we have often had no prior experience or training. As children we would have had similar experiences, perhaps our first day of high school, the day before an exam we haven’t properly revised for (most of them in my case), or the dread of the end of term school report.

Psychologists often suggest that we have four basic emotions that underpin all of the states of mind and body that we label as feelings. They are: Happiness, Sadness, Anger and Scare. This means that scare, fear and anxiety are part of who we are and that everyone has access to these emotions. 

However we are often told as children ‘don’t be scared’ …chin up, stomach in, it’s only one exam Richard and you will be fine. This is clearly kindly parenting, but it doesn’t give us anything to chew on. We don’t learn anything, or have any new words, or ideas to counteract the instruction.

When we are now all fully grown up and calling ourselves ‘adults’ we feel scared of things and are missing grown up ways to deal with it. Business is scary for many people and mounting a sales campaign, chasing a bad debt and worrying about future cashflow can feel very uncomfortable. 

Luckily, because we are adults, we don’t have to repeat childhood responses and we can find new and constructive ways to take care of ourselves. Here are 3 of my favourites…

1. Know that it’s Ok to feel scared. I’m inviting us all to recognise when we have a feeling and instead of suppressing it we can embrace it …because it is giving us useful information about the situation we are in. Knowledge can lead to action!

2. Write it down. Being able to read back our feeling means we can test it and ask what is this really all about? The first scare may be hiding a deeper fear or it may be papering over a lurking sadness. Often we know deep down what the problem really is and it can take a while to admit it to ourselves. Writing can lead to greater awareness!

3. Phone a friend. Make it a good friend, someone you have real faith in, who will listen to you and who won’t gently humiliate you with platitudes. Invite them to help you generate new options in order to deal with the situation facing you. There are always options when we look hard enough!

Feelings are part of being human. Being responsive to them is part of learning to grow up, be the age we are (intead of feeling a frightened 12 year old again) and taking action to resolve things.

It is Ok to feel scared. It is Ok to acknowledge the information this feeling brings. It is Ok to feel scared and to take action at the same time. We can all walk and chew gum, as they say in the movies!

This week, we can all do some thinking about our feelings in order keep on top of our business issues. 

Next week: Is Social Media Still Useful?

Mental health and well-being is increasingly seen as a key constituent of workplace productivity and rightly so.

Buying a flash high-rise desk, installing a pool table and seting up the drinks machine to vend quality green tea (does such a thing even exist?) are all good for morale.

However, these tangible elements to our day can overlook one of the most fundamental parts of our lives – are we getting enough sleep to be truly fit for work?

Research has suggested that drowsiness when driving has the same effect on our mind as if we had alcohol in our system. None of us would drink and drive, but how many of us yawn and drive?

When was the last time an appraisal question asked if we get enough sleep?

When was the last time our manager looked into our tired red eyes and, instead of giving us more work to do, simply invited us to go home and get an early night?

Interestingly broken sleep can be beneficial, in the way that 18th Century sleep patterns were helpful. The good and the great would have an evening nap, then go out for dinner around 10pm and finally have more sleep after 2am. 

This seems odd to us, who might eat at 6pm and go for one long sleep at 10pm, but the first half hour of sleep is when we have REM sleep. The brain does a lot of filing away at this time and sorts and processes memories from the day. Two sleeps can give us two lots of REM sleep and the rest is often just resting our muscles.

We all know what sleep patterns work for us and yet how often do we push the pace and rob ourselves of vital rest, only to stagger into work the next day with bleary eyes?

Over many years as a business coach I’ve found that lack of sleep is a real issue for many clients and adds to their daily stress load. I often offer them three options to support better nights:

1. Make a list of things to do tomorrow. Trying to hold everything in our conscious mind tends to promote wakefulness. We can write it down and let our brains switch off.

2. Make a plan. If we are fretting about a project we can flip open our diary and break the work into digestible chunks. This reduces any scare we may have that we can’t cope and so we tend to relax more.

3. Talk to someone. Many people feel that they have to shoulder their worries on their own. As the old adage has it …a problem shared is a problem halved. There is no need to be lonely and isolated and there is no shame in getting support. We all have tough times in our life and reaching out to a friend, coach or therapist is what grown ups do!

So, this week – go to bed! And if your week is crammed then I suggest that you make Wednesday a catch-up night to replace any lost hours and provide a platform for a successful end of week.

I would write more, but all this talk of sleep has made my eyelids droop. Sweet dreams!

Next week: It’s Ok To Feel Scared