What time does the frustration kick in for you?
For me, it’s 9:45 am.
That’s the time I start screaming inside, because I actually wanted to start work at 8:30. But I had to help get the kids set up for homeschool. And answer their million questions. And clean up the kitchen because my wife and I didn’t have the energy to do it the night before.
But one day, I came to a realization:
Why am I adding all of this stress to myself?
So what if I don’t start work until 9:45? Or, some days, until 10:30?
Of course, it’s not ideal…But this isn’t an ideal world we’re living in.
And that’s why emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and manage emotional reactions, offers such a huge advantage in uncertain times:
Because emotionally intelligent people know how to adapt.
I spoke about this recently with Claudia Fulga, senior vice president of people and leadership development for Fivestars, a company that provides marketing, CRM, and loyalty programs for local small businesses.
“Mental Health has become a very prominent topic for so many of us working from home, alone, stressed, short-fused, managing large teams in all parts of the world, managing the complexity of families, colliding our work and home worlds,” says Fulga. “We’re told that work-life balance doesn’t exist anymore, so how do we manage?”
Here are some of Fulga’s tips, along with some insights that emerged from our conversation.
