1. Learn to meditate with your eyes open.
Think of all the stress you accumulate during a boring presentation. Here’s a way to calm down your mind right at the conference table: and nobody will even notice! Find a spot about six feet from you and relax your gaze. Then breathe in and out slowly three times, keeping your mind as clear as possible. Repeat as often as required until you start to feel a sense of calm arise in you.
2. Find a secret get-away at work.
Many of us work through lunch, or use the time to socialize at a restaurant with other businesspeople. If you keep putting energy out without a break, you will be depleted by the end of the day. Smart businesspeople find secret spots at work where they can get away: on the roof of their building, in their car or in an unused office.
3. Find spiritual meaning in a dollar bill.
If you need outside support to encourage you to take time to replenish your spirit in the midst of the workday, pull out a dollar bill and contemplate the images. Our founding fathers chose to put a truncated pyramid with a mystical eye above it as the central symbol of our monetaty system. Many people interpret this to mean that “without divine spirit, humanity’s work is incomplete.” Think about what this symbol may mean to you and how you are running your business life.
4. Take your anxiety for a walk.
Have you been summoned to meet with your boss or confronted with the demand to make an important presentation? On the way there, slow your pace down just a tad. With each footstep, feel gravity pulling you down
and the energy of the earth coming up through the floor to ground you. Stop for a moment just before you enter the room and allow your anxiety to drain out into the floor from the top of your head through the bottom of your feet, then enter calm and collected.
5. Get rid of the one thing that’s making you most
miserable that you don’t really need any more.
If you run a business, you may choose to let go of an inept supplier, or give notice to a disrespectful client who takes more from you than the fees merit. If you are on one too many boards or involved in one too many outside activities, give one up and watch your spirit blossom with new vitality.
6. Find a new role model: someone who is happy
with less than you have.
We all know people who seem to “have it all”, but are still unhappy. If you think that making more money, getting a better position or acquiring more of anything is the key to contentment, you may want to find somebody in your life who has less than you, but who has more of what really counts in the long run: peace of mind, love, time to give to the community and a sense of personal satisfaction.
7. Read the unauthorized biography of a
celebrity businessperson.
In case finding a positive role model isn’t enough to help you re-evaluate your definition of success, try lifting up a famous businessperson’s rock and learn for yourself the price they have paid in relation to their personal lives, their health, and sometimes their integrity in exchange for their business triumphs.
8. Do something unexpected and nice for somebody else.
You can have the experience of success you’ve been striving for right here and nownot in the distant future, when you’ve gotten your promotion or made your fortune. How? Do something for somebody else and experience for yourself what it feels like to be content with yourself and overflowing with enough energy and abundance to do something nice for somebody else.
9. Turn your fears into affirmations.
If you find that your drive to succeed is being driven by fear rather than by inspiration, you can begin to break up the pattern by turning your fear upside down. First, identify the negative belief that has taken hold of you. (For example: “I am on my own in a hostile environment.”) Second, voice an alternate possibility. (“I am taken care of in a supportive environment.”) Three, put the two thoughts together. (“Even though I fear I am on my own in a hostile environment, I am willing to consider the possibility that I deserve to be taken care of in a supportive environment.”) Keep repeating your affirmation until you believe it.
10. Start a www.com-down support group at work.
Inner Excellence at Work: The Path to Meaning, Spirit, and Success has a group study guide which provides discussion questions and exercises for twelve weeks of meetings. If you are feeling alone and stressed at work, there are certainly others who feel the same. Gathering together can begin to build a healthy sense of community at workand might even begin to subtly impact your workplace’s culture and values.
