How to Keep it Together at Work When Your Personal Life is Falling Apart
Integrating work and personal life has its benefits and challenges. Its benefits are that more people are finding meaning in their work, and don’t have to keep their personal life totally separate.
However, what happens at work impacts your personal life whether you try to separate them or not.
In my coaching practice, my clients have included women who feel like their personal life is falling apart because of issues like divorce, break-ups, drug and alcohol problems in their family, having to move, etc. For some, their work is their sanctuary away from these issues, and they worry that they won’t be able to perform their jobs well.
Here are six of the tools I provide for their continued success
1. Get help
Seek advice from someone you trust, whether it’s a therapist, an Employee Assistance Counselor, support group, or good, non-judgmental friends who are good listeners and don’t tell you how you should feel. If you don’t acknowledge how you feel, it will be difficult to focus on work.
2. Quiet your mind
Take time to meditate or do some calming breathing exercises. This will help you detach and not take all the stressful energy to work.
3. Go to a quiet space in your mind
When you go to work, visualize the door to your house and personal life locked and that you are outside in fresh air. That visualization will help you be present at work.
4. Look at what’s going right
List the areas in your life that feel like they are falling apart and list the areas of your life that are working well. Breaking your life into smaller pieces will give you a better perspective, and it feels less overwhelming
5. Let go of some control
Review your list of trouble areas and determine which parts you can control and which parts you have no control over. Make a plan to take control or change the parts of your life you can, and the ones you have no control over, keep reminding yourself that you have no control and worrying about them at work will waste energy
6. Remember the good moments
Take a few minutes to sit by yourself every day and reflect on a time when everything was going well, and you were comfortable with your personal and work life. That will remind you that while it may feel like your personal life is falling apart, you don’t have to fall apart.