When was the last time you took a break?
Welcome to my weekly blast of usefulness – grab a coffee / tea put your feet up and enjoy. For those of you new to this, welcome, I sincerely hope it will be of use to you and above all it makes you think. To my regular followers how’s your week gone, feeling ok, looking after yourself?
My name is Nick and I am a coach. I work with individuals, small groups and organisations to improve. My goal is help you “unleash your most authentic self”.
Each week I do my best to share some useful stuff just for you.
For more information feel free to jump onto my website roudcarers.co.nz or flick me an email nick@roudcareers.co.nz you can also follow me on twitter @NickRoud
This week we are discussing “taking a break”
So, you work hard, spend long hours each day trying to run, improve, and keep ahead of the pack. You rush from one deadline to the next, from one meeting to the next – things are just a bit full on or as I hear on a daily basis “busy”.
Well a huge congratulation to you, so what!
What about you, what about your health, what about your life, how about we flip the coin over for one small moment and focus in 100% on you. Let’s make time to re-group, re-charge and re-dial in the brain cells!
Many people I coach take pride in sharing with me just how busy they are, how much “stuff” is going on at work, how many hours they put in last week, how things are tracking on the next big deal, very rarely do they come and see me thrilled that they have just booked a break.
We seem endlessly engaged in our work 24/7 364 days a year.
Question? How long can you keep this constant level of busyness up for!
I know that planning time out is not at the top of our list of priorities because other things just get in our way. With the winter months knocking at the front door, our days suddenly feel a great deal shorter, we may not get outside as much as we would like (tip get yourself a dog and you will always make time to get outside). We may head off to work in the dark and head home in the dark.
Are you feeling a tad tired, a bit antsy, a little bit off your game, making rash decisions that in a normal frame of mind you may not?
Well these are a few common things I hear from my clients. And as a trusted coach one of my main focus during our sessions is, making you fully aware.
Here are some common chats or as I like to call them poor excuses for not looking after yourself. ……..
Nick, I can’t take time out,
Nick, I am just too busy,
Nick, I have an important project that needs to be delivered on,
Nick, I am already behind,
Nick, I just don’t have the people to help,
Nick………….well the list goes on and on………….and the excuses go on and on…………
To me all the above are extremely important and I will be sharing some useful thoughts and ideas on these over the coming months. But back to the topic in hand.
As a coach I have the total privilege of working with individuals across many months and I see first-hand when an individual is on “fire” or when an individual is “not making sense”
What I ensure happens is that my clients hear from me – what I am seeing and like a good close friend make them fully aware of the positives and negatives of just stopping!
me these are just some signs that your body is telling you (hey you their please stop) stop what you are doing and make some time for me. I need a break.
So what do you do, you spend long hours each day running things, being dragged from one meeting to the next.
My wish and goal for you today is please just stop what you are doing, grab your calendar and make a commitment to yourself, book some time out. Be it a long weekend, a mid week get away, a full week or dare I challenge you to taking two full weeks out. Put pen to paper and commit.
Well done I hope you are already feeling better, something “nice” to look forward to!
Hey tip from me, you do deserve this break and yes you have earnt it.
I can hear what a lot of you are thinking right now, Nick you have lost the plot. Well maybe but I can say hand on heart clients of mine who have heeded my advise have turn to me following that break and said Nick, that was the best thing I could have possible done for myself.
So when is a good time for a break/time out. Its never ever a good time to stop, family comittments, friend commitments, work commitments, deadlines the list will go on and guess what the list is what you can control.
I once worked for an amazing Chairman who took me under his wings, he shared a wealth of personal and business knowledge and one thing he installed in me was to ensure the first thing I planned was breaks, mini, short or long they all had to be planned out and put into my year planner. By putting pen to paper I was committing to looking after myself.
Some tips for when you do go away.
Tell people, let them know you are away on holiday.
Put an out of office message up on emails
Put an out of office message up on voicemails
If………and a big IF……..you need to be contacted by key staff then let people know those times you can be interrupted (after all it is meant to be a holiday)
Turn emails / social media / noise off your mobile devices
If you feel you can’t turn these devices off then please limited to once every couple of days but my advice is to stay – off line and recharge yourself
One final important point.
Enjoy your well deserved break and send me a postcard.
Thanks, Nick
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