Sometimes You Need to Chill Out So You Can Feel Great

I want to thank the wonderful people at Verizon FIIOS for sponsoring this post. All the thoughts and opinions found here are my own.

If you are stressed, overworked or burnt out, turn to Verizon FIOS to help you chill out. Screen time, purely fun screen time can help you do better at work and home. So when you are stressed and aggravated – turn your screens on!

Going screen free is hard and boring, so don’t do it.

Recently I attended a conference designed to help influences grow their area of influence and be better at the work they do. One of the sessions talked about the dangers of burn out. Burn out is what happens when you get so overwhelmed with work, personal responsibilities and life that you are debilitated and unable to carry on in a healthy and productive manner. Burn out is bad, really bad. When you burn out you are angry, cannot sleep, don’t take proper care of yourself and are not as productive as you need to be. If at all possible, one should work to avoid burn out.

One of the presenters, Joyce Shulman gave us ten tips and one caveat to help you get over burn out. Here they are:

1. Take a break – sometimes you don’t have to get on the plane, you can step back and take a break, own your time
2. Get help – identify the times in life business and professional when you need help to grow, to develop yourself, to keep from burning out
3. Take a hike. Literally. – get outside, research shows this helps
4. Work Harder – you are less efficient when you are burned out, block some time, three hours or less and work and get the project done, it requires discipline, suck it up and work really hard for a short period of time. This will help you get through burn out, you must identify the times during the day that are best for you and work toward your strength
5. Do something for someone else – you should always have a service project you can do to connect and give back to someone else, it is critical for you
6. Get back to basics – go back to what you love, what started you on the journey
7. Find the fuel – find the thing that fuels your creative spirit – museums, in nature, whatever you must constantly fuels your creative spirit
8. Go to Bed – you must sleep, you must prioritize sleep
9. Edit Relentlessly – edit your to do list “mork” aka more work, is a thing on your to do list critical or mork.
10. Laugh – take time to laugh and enjoy something, make sure you make time for just having fun

Caveat – when you are burned out you won’t feel like doing these things. Do them anyway.

I work hard each day. I put in long hours and work smart in order to maximize my level of productivity. This means that at the end of each day I am tired and need to relax. Once upon a time when I didn’t know better, i would stay up late until all hours of the night and then got up early to put in more hours before my family got up in the morning. I spent my time working. I was either working at my business or working to take care of my family. I was always working at something. Back then I was stressed, aggravated and not very happy. Then I learned the power of the chill. When I realized that I needed, actually needed to take time each day to relax and get my mind off work and to simply take care of myself, life changed. I got over being burnt out. Then I learned to prevent burn out in the future.

You don’t have to re-invent the wheel. In other words, you don’t have to get burnt out to learn how to prevent burn out. It is important to realize that one of the best things to do to get over burn out is to never get there in the first place. There are things you can do to avoid getting burnt out. Here are a few:

1. Take time to breathe – literally set aside time each day to do nothing except take a deep breaths
2. Only accept tasks you have time that you are ready, willing and able to handle
3. Make relaxation aka chill time a priority each day

Smartphones, tablets, laptops. e-readers and televisions are a great way to chill out and relax. Our phones are full of games, fun stories, great movies and television shows we can binge watch. Those are some of the best features of our devices.

Continued on page 2. Click 2 below to continue.