When you’re stretched, you need a toolkit.
By focusing on what we can control and putting our own oxygen mask on first, we can use a series of simple ‘check in’ tools with ourselves and those in our care.
YOU wiLl LEARN
In this online course, you’ll learn tools to manage emotional highs and lows so you can lead consistently around life’s challenges and surprises.
Managing your own emotional regulation
Creating ‘circuit breakers’ to shift from each need
Managing multiple priorities
What is within our control?
The Locus of Control is a theory established in 1954 by psychologist Julian Rotter.
It’s the idea that our relationship with things we believe we can control have a direct correlation to how well we problem solve or feel in control during times of extreme stress.
Someone with an internal Locus of Control focuses on what they can control.
By doing so, they’re able to manage their emotions more effectively during the day.
If someone has an external Locus of Control they’re more likely to feel things outside of their control and feel powerless to focus on important stuff. They are more likely to accept that everything is out of their control and therefore exude less effort focussing on fixing it.
At Happiness Concierge, we often encourage people to ‘focus their Locus’ when they experience feelings of overwhelm and uncertainty by reminding themselves of two things:
There are things I can control and can’t control.
What are three things within my control I can influence today?
Now we’ve focused our Locus, we can look at what zone we show up in, at work and in life.
What ‘zone’ are you in?
When we are in our ‘green’ zone, we feel great! We are operating and communicating at our best.
When we are in our ‘yellow’ zone, we feel out of sorts. We are experiencing a loss of control, or uncertainty.
When we are in our ‘red’ zone, we need a time out. We may feel out of control, or at a loss of where to start.
How often do you find yourself in the ‘green’, ‘yellow’ or ‘red’?
Creating a circuit breaker to switch zones.
A circuit breaker is an action that gives us mental space.
Circuit breakers can help us take a moment in between our zones.
When we are in the red zone, we need to pause and remove ourselves from the scenario.
When we are in our yellow zone, we need to take positive action.
Let’s look at a few examples. A circuit breaker could be:
Stopping to breathe and plant our feet on the ground in between emails.
Taking a break and having a snack between meetings.
Putting our ‘offline’ status up while we take an extended lunch break.
Here are a few examples we’ve heard from our clients:
“When I feel myself getting red, I become a keyboard warrior. I’ve now put a Post-It note on my computer saying ‘step away from the keyboard’ and I now take 5 mins to breathe, take off my shoes and pause.”
“When I’m yellow, I feel nervous and anxious, and I think it could be because I don’t always know what’s expected of me. What I think I’ll do is write a list of what I think my priorities are, and schedule a 15 minute chat with my manager each morning and ask them to confirm these are the correct priorities.”
“When I’m yellow, I’m just really tired. I realised I need to take some leave to ‘reboot’ myself. I’m going to do that next week!”
Circuit breakers can be as unique as you are.
What might your circuit breakers look like?
Managing Multiple Priorities
When thinking about ways to manage multiple priorities, it’s useful to keep in mind:
It’s our job to clarify our priorities. It’s not our boss’s job, our client's job or our partner's job. If we want to feel in control, it’s our job to clarify what others expect from us first.
There is no ‘perfect’ way to communicate our needs. Some people won’t like it. Because we can’t control other people, how other people respond is theirs to own, not ours.
Saying ‘yes’ to others inherently feels good. However, when we say yes to too many things that aren’t our immediate priorities it can mean we’re not always doing things that are actually in our best interests, long-term.
We can’t control how others respond to our priorities or boundaries. When we focus on what we can control, we lower overwhelm, and can focus on just ‘one thing at a time’. We are clear on ‘my needs’ vs ‘other’s needs’.
We are not weak if we find it hard. We are simply learning a skill, just like any other.
CREATING A ‘YES’ LIST (quick exercise)
If we are uncertain how to say no, try this: what would I need to say yes?
This simple mindset reframe helps us remind ourselves of our key needs, and/or main priorities: helping us educate others on what we need to say yes in the future.
FOR ME VS FOR OTHERS (quick exercise)
Feeling thinly stretched? When you expand and grow you accumulate more responsibility.
This ‘culling’ exercise helps us seperate what is for us, what is for others, and what may no longer be relevant to where you’re going next.
“Of course, you can have more than one important thing in your life — we all do. But we have to ask ourselves, every day, ‘What is the most important thing I need to do today?’”