Lucia Landini shares the daily practices that can improve your wellbeing at work
Since the beginning of this “new normal” era, Assistants have learned how to handle more obligations than ever before. We have improved our skills and we have found a new balance between work and personal life, which was already complicated before the pandemic. We have become used to smart working while keeping in continuous contact with our bosses.
How can we maintain our peace of mind in such a difficult environment? Can we try to make a difference even when we are exhausted? Can we find a way to be happy at work while learning and growing?
Here are some simple daily practices to improve wellbeing at work:
1. Breathing
Breathing connects us with life. It helps us in focusing our mind on the present moment. When we are stressed, we can become victims of our own negativity and believe in our most pessimistic thoughts: I don’t like my job and I will never find a new one, I am not satisfied with my salary, I will never improve my situation. Take a moment to breathe and follow three breaths to calm your emotions. It will help you accept what is going on, observe and listen. Watch your thoughts of the past and your anxiety about the future and let them pass.
2. Concentration
We need to learn how to limit ourselves to one activity at a time, to be more productive and reduce mind distraction. In fact, multitasking forces us to go back and forth between different activities: we pay less attention, lowering the quality of our work and wasting our time. We can also gain a deeper concentration when we fight procrastination and break large projects into small steps that are easier to take on.
3. Empathy
Empathy is a sign of emotional intelligence: it is the awareness of other people’s feelings. Since we are all experiencing different and complicated emotional changes at different times, we need to cooperate and work together, and try to understand each other.
4. Compassion and Kindness
Showing compassion and kindness to ourselves and others is a precious gift; try to perform a simple act of kindness every day. Listen with an open mind, write a nice email or just say “thank you.” Sharing workloads with good humor is beneficial for all the people involved. Commit to feeling compassion for yourself and your mistakes. None of us is perfect. We learn and start over, we keep trying.
5. Active Listening
It is extremely important to practice active listening, because when we listen, we learn, and we get to know people who in turn feel valued and appreciated. Their personal stories and experiences remind us that everyone wants to be happy and improve, and that we are all facing difficulties.
6. Helping
A very useful practice is helping others. We can step beyond our role at work and offer a helping hand, learn a new skill outside our daily routine, and even ask for help. This behavior increases our resilience, allowing us to use challenges as opportunities to grow, become more aware of ourselves, and start over again when we fail.
7. Patience and Acceptance
Both patience and acceptance are important tools for dealing with frustration in work situations and in our daily life. Every working life comes with conflicts or moments of exhaustion which are difficult to manage, yet the way we respond to these challenges is mainly our decision.
Conclusion
In these complicated times, we need to remember that our life and our needs matter. We must take care of our body and mind every day, and consequently we will become better at our jobs. Moreover, when we assume responsibility for our own wellbeing, showing who we are and what we care about, we allow other people to take care of themselves, and we all feel better.
To sum up, wellbeing at work depends mainly on our attitude, on our ability to practice some soft skills on a daily basis, on our willingness to improve as people, and on the value we attribute to every precious moment of our life.
