Emotional Wellness and Productivity
As an entrepreneur, when you think about accomplishing the important stuff in your business (productivity) what do you think of? Prioritizing? Time and energy management? Task batching? All of those are critical, yes. But so is emotional wellness. October is emotional wellness month, so it seems like a good time to write about it!
What is emotional wellness?
Maybe it’s easier to talk about what it’s not. Emotional wellness is not about stuffing down your feelings (with food, sex, booze, drugs, etc.) It’s not about avoiding your feelings. It’s also not about being happy all the time, or even having positive feelings all the time.
Emotional wellness encompasses the entire range of emotions, and your ability to deal with them. To feel them, but not allow yourself to necessarily make decisions based on your emotions. Knowing when a feeling is appropriate to act on, and when it isn’t – and acting or not acting as the case may be.
How do you get emotionally well?
Ha ha, good question, and I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out. But seriously, it’s different for everyone. If you were born into a family that nurtured and supported you and one that was relatively free of trauma, you’ve probably got all the basics right at your fingertips.
But for those of us who didn’t come from families like that, it takes a little more work. Probably with a therapist or professional who can be objective about what you need to work on, and teach you some skills to get there.
If your family didn’t teach you any coping skills because they didn’t have any, then you need to learn them somewhere. And as much as I enjoy reading books, I can tell you from personal experience that it’s much easier to have someone helping and holding you accountable to do this stuff.
Taking care of yourself so that you can then take care of others helps you stay well physically and emotionally. Eating right, getting some movement in most days of the week, spending time with friends and family, and doing fun activities that you enjoy all count. (And, if you’re a regular reader of my stuff, you know these are also all unproductive things that make you more productive!)
Emotional wellness and productivity
When you’re able to handle your emotions you can be pretty productive (as long as you get the other aspects right and work with your brain instead of against it.) And as I’ve said so often, you need to take regular breaks for productivity, as counter-intuitive as that may seem.
Sometimes you need to take breaks for emotions too, especially if you’re having some big ones for whatever reason. I’m grieving my mom who died recently, and grief is definitely a big one! I’m the type of person who needs to keep working and it helps.
But just trying to power through it isn’t usually the right thing to do. When you’re fighting your emotions, it actually takes up some brain space. Space that you’d otherwise use for focus and concentration.
Taking time out to feel the emotion and let it dissipate allows for more time to focus on work, if you’re like me and need to work through it.
I’m writing about this from the perspective of grief because that’s where I am right now, but this is true for any emotion. Anger? Sadness? Frustration? Jealousy? Even happiness - take a break to enjoy the feeling!
Recap
Many business owners think about their physical health, but not necessarily their emotional health. However, the same principles that work for productivity also hold true for emotional wellness… go figure!