Useful tips
Change your attitude
• What are your priorities in life? Are they about your colleagues and work? Are they about your own health and wellbeing, your family and your friends?
• Focus on the real (good or nicer) parts of your life! Make sure you plan things to look forward to in the evenings and at weekends.
• Monitor yourself. Tell yourself to snap out of any moods or anger.
• Make sure you give yourself permission to be less than perfect! You are allowed to have off days and to get things wrong. Remember to extend this to family/friends/colleagues as they have bad days too.
• Learn to let go and switch off when you find yourself dwelling on stressful or embarrassing situations.
Home life
• Set time aside, start and finish, when at home to moan about work. Make sure you and your partner stick to it!
• Make a habit of listening to your favourite music on the way home. Set a time or a landmark after which you will not think about work. If you are alone in the car, have a good sing or shout.
• Make sure you have relaxation time and find a way to spend it that is effective and enjoyable.
• Remember to treat yourself! Make time to do something you enjoy, or something you would not normally do.
Working practices
• Look for enjoyable or funny features in stressful situations and concentrate on them.
• Make sure you note all the positive aspects of any difficult situations and congratulate yourself for dealing with them!
• Make sure you do not put things off! Deal with any little niggles or confrontation before they become a bigger problem.
• Draw up a list of priorities and feel good as you tick them off!
• Make sure you learn to say NO!
• It’s helpful to plan your day/week and anticipate busy times and priorities. Make sure you postpone unimportant tasks until you have time to deal with them.
• Remember to take time off. Your body needs mini breaks. Take advantage of any times during the day where you can stop or slow down for a minute (e.g. by slowly walking down corridors).