Staying Emotionally Healthy

Vol. 3, No. 1
April 1998

Staying Emotionally Healthy

Get a life apart from your job and attend to it. Give yourself some things to look forward to.
Develop, recognize, and be able to rely upon a strong value base from which you can draw strength. Find meaning and importance in what you do.
Take care of the things that are important to you personally. Confront what is bothering you.
Develop the skills to address the situations you routinely face.
Make mistakes.
Don't own others' mistakes.
Develop some "perspective taking" abilities. Don't overvalue your disappointments or undervalue your gains and victories.
Do what you need to do to experience success. Get your work done. You may be more intolerant and frustrated with other people when you don't feel good about your own efforts.
Have fun. Enjoy the challenge and the people. Capitalize on the energy the tasks and relationships bring. Every now and again take the focus off the things that need to be done. Take advantage of opportunities to laugh, be a little silly, or just play.
Look at your goals to determine if they are working for you. Set realistic goals and ask yourself whether they have been given to you by someone else or whether you have made them your own.
Recognize that you can be an active agent in your life.
Look to colleagues and friends for support. Don't try to internalize all your concerns and deal with them alone.
Create a support group. With your colleagues you can collectively come up with alternative ways to approach problems and identify new ways to find hope. You can also use this time to get to know your colleagues on a personal level, have fun with then, talk about light subjects unrelated to work, and simply share whatever is on your mind and in your heart.
Purposefully develop the skill to discover humor in the situations you face.

Source

Homan, M. (1994). Promoting Community Change: Making It Happen In the Real World. Pacific Grove, California: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.