7 Ways to Advance Self-Care
Self-care was for weaklings where I grew up in Central Maine. Real men and women didn’t need self-care.
Reactive self-care is short-sighted. We didn’t think about wellness unless we got sick. You did what you had to do until you couldn’t.
Proactive wellness is smart. Don’t wait to get sick to take care of yourself. Robert Glazer’s book, “Elevate Your Team,” includes strategies for wellness at work.
This post focuses on Glazer’s suggestions for increasing physical capacity.
Self-care – 7 ways to advance physical wellbeing:
- Don’t brag about hero hours. Leaders model the way. Your bragging creates pressure. If you brag about 80-hour work weeks, you set a standard for high performers.
- Take time to unplug. Life will go on without you! It’s arrogant to think otherwise. Go on vacation with the expectation you won’t check-in.
- Limit off-hour communication. Your 2 a.m. email creates pressure, even if you don’t expect an instant reply. Use the delay send feature to protect employees.
- Set clear deadlines. High performers may assume high levels of urgency for something you don’t need until the end of the week. Help people set priorities.
- Incentivize unplugging. Reward people for not checking in while on vacation.
- Emphasize physical separation. Don’t put your home office in the bedroom. Change your clothes at the end of the day, even if you work at home.
- Show, don’t tell. Prioritize your own health and let people know.
Capacity:
Glazer’s book, Elevate Your Team, focuses on four areas.
- Spiritual capacity.
- Intellectual capacity.
- Physical capacity.
- Emotional capacity.
“The best way for leaders to get rested, energized employees in their workplace is to help their teams create and sustain boundaries between work and home life.” Robert Glazer
How might leaders promote wellness at work?
This is so important as most of the country remained a remote workforce after being forced into this setting during the pandemic. Learning to separate work from home life keeps both areas free from burnout. I loved the tips about creating a defined workspace in the home environment. I have supported other employees that didn’t do this and they have lost the comfort of the spaces in their home where they used to go to decompress from the work day.
Thanks Jenni. It’s pretty hard to escape work when you put a desk in the corner of your bedroom! 🙂
I wonder if we’ve made jobs too big. People really don’t know how to deal with the scope of their job and they don’t know how to get relief. I’m self employed and have control over how big my job is. For many years, I worked in a large corporation where I did not have that control and watched jobs get larger in size with every reorganization, until they disappeared altogether in a merger.
Wonderful observation, Jack. When new assignments come down the pike, sincere hardworking people just keep saying yes. Perhaps we should ask, “What do you want me to take off my plate, before I do this new job?”
Beginning pandemic I got my team together in a large auditorium (safe physical spacing), had them read an article on completing the stress cycle, and share with one another. Healthcare and direct patient care was so hard!!! I value mental health!!!