Navigating Your Daily Transitions

Changing hats!! How do you navigate this?

Our lives have become very extended.  You may be thinking that I’m talking about life expectancy.  It is true that we are living longer because of better nutrition, health awareness and medical research.

What I mean by our lives being extended though is that every day we pack so many different roles, tasks and daily chores into every second of the day.  Previously, as office workers, we would have gone to work from 9 am to 5 pm and then headed home to our home life.  Work was work, and home was home.

Now, there is a blurring of all those roles, tasks and daily chores.  I can be answering work emails at 5 am in the morning before I start my exercise program and then sort out the house chores.  I can be leaving work in the middle of the day to support my daughterwith one of her projects and then returning to the office.

The different hats of the different roles keep changing.  In my example, business consultant, me, home, business consultant, parent, business consultant, me.  This is a simple example too.

Some days I feel like I should just have a stack of hats on my head and try to be all the different roles at the same time.  Wouldn’t that be interesting!!!

Sometimes too you need to immerse yourself in something to reach a deadline which is what happened to me last weekend.  It was this immersion that brought home to me how sometimes it ischallenging to change roles.  My hats got stuck!!

Over the course of the weekend, I had agreed to attend some other events.  I really didn’t want to do this because my deadline was looming, and I was enjoying the new learning required with what I was doing.

One of my top signature character strengths is love of learning so I was like a pig in mud in my immersion.

Of course, with all these different roles, you want to bring the best of yourself to them as well.  Because of our extended lives, this can be extremely challenging at times as I discovered on the weekend.

A simple exercise that I learned with my executive coaching training with the Neuroleadership Institute is called Clearing the Space.

Our minds at times can be like a computer that has too many programs open.  What happens with the computer is that it becomes less efficient and, in some cases, stops working all together.  You need to reboot it. No I didn’t say use a hammer!!

Clearing the space is a bit like rebooting our minds operating system.

This exercise hopefully helps you to be focused and at ease in the moment which allows you to bring the best of yourself to whatever role you need to move to next.

The idea is to find the words for whatever emotion is happening in the background for you at the moment before you need to change roles.

For me, on the weekend, when I needed to attend these events, the words that expressed my emotions at having to leave what I was doing were anxious (I might not meet my deadline) and frustration(having to leave what I was enjoying).

Once you have found the words you make a point of agreeing with yourself that you will put aside these emotions so that you can focus on what is required with your next role.  It is good to have an action with this agreement for example taking a big deep breath and sighing out the emotion that you are experiencing.

I have a BS lever that I use as well.  This is Breath, Smile and Laugh.

Research shows that as you label emotional states, you dampen down the activation of the limbic system which is our mind’s protection system.  Finding the emotional words to describe what is happening for you can quieten the fear responses – flight, fight, and freeze.

Also, by smiling and laughing, you are telling your mind that you want to be happy and there will be a release of the happy hormones – serotonin and dopamine.

I hope you find this simple exercise of Clearing the Space with a BS lever helpful as you move from role to role – changing hats throughout your busy day.

I found on the weekend that it did take away some of the angst, but I don’t know that I was entirely at my best.  Oh well, next time.  I am a human not a robot or computer.

Dr Adam Fraser has written a book called The Third Space – Using Life’s Little Transitions to Find Balance and Happiness.   You might find the ideas in this book helpful too for navigating your daily life transitions and ensure your hats don’t get stuck.  Just remember to be kind to yourself in the process as well.

Dare I say it!!  This is all covered in my Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Program.  The next one is 1st and 2nd March 2018.