On a Sunday evening are you looking forward to getting to your workspace next morning or frantically going through your to-do lists and realising that its much longer than you thought it was OR sitting with your head in your hands wishing the weekend to miraculously extend.
The first scenario is a good place to be, where the SPARK is still intact and mostly this is the first 5-10 years of working life where the vision to change, sense of accomplishment and “can-do” attitude is at its peak. The second scenario is true for many a senior manager and at times the top leaders too where stress is part and parcel of your role and at times the prime driver which at times dulls the SPARK. When you see yourself in the third scenario on a regular basis, the SPARK is just about flickering or even extinguished, it indicates that you are overwhelmed and need to pause.
Brene Brown explains the difference between stress and overwhelmed – “If you’re stressed, you’ll be able to continue to work as needed, even if it takes more effort.
If you’re overwhelmed — meaning you can’t even begin to get the next thing done — you need to do nothing. Not “do nothing” and continue as normal, but literally do NOTHING. Pause and reset is the need of the hour.
So how do we nurture the SPARK through stress and not let it go to the state where we are overwhelmed?
- Pause – Pause or stop and reset is the most important action which most of us in the corporate world have forgotten to do. In the pursuit of being busy, pausing is sometimes seen as a negative. Slowing down is seen as a consequence of not having enough energy, rather than the pivot which gives you more energy to tackle the upcoming issues.
- Process – Always being in the “doing mode” takes away the time needed to process. Process what we are doing, what is going well, what needs to improve, where should we be focussing our energies. Like the planet, our resources are also limited, and we need to constantly evaluate what is the optimal use of our resources to get the best outcome. That needs processing the present, learning from the past and planning the future.
- Plan – Just like the annual or strategic plan of an organisation needs monitoring, so does our plan for ourselves. Planning for our own growth is as important as planning for the next project. The next promotion might not be the ultimate goal in our corporate life, could be a short term goal, but the long term aim of what we want to achieve needs to be in our focus. Keeping aside time to assess our own growth every week is part of any successful leader’s calendar.
- Put in words – whether it is a journal where we articulate our thoughts of the present and future or whether we have a trusted but impartial sounding board, could be a friend or a coach, to say our inner thoughts. Just penning it on paper or saying out loud at times is enough to bring our focus back to what we are passionate about and reignite that SPARK.
Remember the SPARK is always withing you, just make sure you nurture it so that it burns bright most of the time.