#AskACoach - When You Work From Home, How Can You Work Through Your Low Moods (or when you don’...

It. All right. Okay. Good morning everyone. Welcome to Ask a Coach A Question, the show where we take questions from you folks in the community and showcase how using the high performance process, certified High performance coaching process can help you get results quicker in your life and overcome struggles. And you know, I've been doing this every Friday at 10pm Pacific Standard Time. So if you have any questions, please feel free to just comment below wherever you're watching this video and next week we'll get your question answered. Now today we're talking about a really cool question that I received this week, which is when you work from home, how can you work through those low moods or those times when you don't want to work? And it's so important and I love this question because with how the world's changed post pandemic or at least after the past year, there's so many more people who can work from home and are working from home or interested in working from home. And it provides a lot of opportunity to increase our productivity and, and there's also a lot opportunity for some struggles. Right. So if you are in a more traditional business model, you know, say, you know, basically not tech, right? So where you have, or you had the go into the office type thing, you, your boss was kind of checking everything over, making sure that you're working, you know, a lot of oversight type things, then you know, work from home can be really freeing, but it also can be very anxiety provoking for your boss. So if they, if you're a boss and you have employees that are working remotely and you're asking yourself questions like how do I know that they're doing the work that they're supposed to be doing? You know, how do I know that they're not just slacking off? I know, I've heard this kind of question. I want to challenge that perception. Having worked in tech and being able to work from home part of that time in tech, the question you should be asking yourself is, are you, do you have a happy employee that's producing? Right. What are, what is the value add? And if you're not clear on how your employees are getting that value add, that's going to be the first kind of big hurdle there. And if you're a worker and you don't know how you add value or how you, you are showing your work, that's something we're going to talk about here. So it's such a timely topic. It's something that is super important to Debbie thinking through especially if you're a business owner and you work from your home like I do, right. Or you're a professional that is not working from home, or you're someone that has team members that are working from home. These are all types of scenarios that are really important to understand the whole, you know, how to work from home, but in particular like how to manage those low moods. And like this isn't also a topic that's solely for home. It's just unique challenges when you're working from home. But you know, it's, and here's why, right? So if you work in an office, if you work at home, if you work on vacation, if you work from wherever, right, Wherever you're doing work. I want you to write this down and it's the phrase that you get the energy you create. Okay, you get the energy that you create. And what do I mean by that? It's so much of when we have high energy or low energy or there's, there's times where we're like I need to be energetic but I can't seem to get there. It's usually something has happened consistently over the last week or so a habit that's been sapping your energy or you're not really engaged in how energetic you are. And so when you're not strategic about the energy that you create, you get what you get. Right? So let's think through this a little bit more. So if you have that, that feeling of I don't really want to work and you're working from home or anywhere, or my energy is really low, I'm too tired of work. Let's start with, with getting clear on what habits do you have right now that are either helping your energy or hurting your energy each day and each week you might be thinking like, well I don't have any habits whatsoever. I don't really think about it. And that's another thing that to note that we need to be thinking about our energy. And so if you have healthy habits, like maybe meditation, maybe you go for walks, maybe you have workout, maybe you've dialed in your nutrition, maybe you're getting enough sleep, maybe you're getting enough hydration. You know, these are all things that I help my one on one clients with a lot. But these are all things that impact their energy. And you know, people are such, are so short sighted with energy where it's like I need a three gallon tub of coffee or I need energy drinks or I need sugar or you know, there's all these like kind of one off short term solutions that get a boost of energy. But you know, if you eat crappy food over the long time, you're just gonna feel crappy, right? If you eat healthy, nutritious food that's fueling your body, it's like whole Foods, you're going to feel better. And you can run that experiment if you go three weeks without eating anything out of a package and see how you feel. I know that sounds like a really weird part. Point of advice, and always consult your health professionals when you're changing stuff up in your health. But you know what you'll find is that so much of the extra chemicals or the extra processedness of our food in our food system, especially in the US can make you feel cruddy. So, you know, so again, what happy or what healthy habits are helping you or hurting your energy? So when you have that kind of like, oh, I'm just low energy or I'm not in the mood to work, it's usually a stacking of a bunch of these little things that, that prevent you. And it's stuff that we all do like. So if you're like, man, I never thought about any of this. Like, I'm not here to rag on you. I'm here to encourage you. I'm here to say that the people that decide to take this seriously and get clear on how you know their energy habits and what's helping them and hurting them are the ones that master their energy and, and can control their destiny because you get the energy you create. I'll say it again. So, okay, yeah, so we want to think long term. We want to think habits. When again, so when we're talking about your level of energy and your ability to create the energy that you want, you know, what, you know, do you have an inventory of strategies that you can do to bring your energy up or to create like a mellow, creative mood, Right? And this was a big changing or a big pivotal point in my career when I realized that when I'm feeling low energy, I can do some breathing exercises. I can, you know, move my body and kind of like jump to get pumped up and have that, that burst energy that I need. Or I could do a meditation or take a quick eyebreaker, take some deep, slow breaths to kind of get that mellow, even energy for when I need to sit in front and code or when I have to do videos. It kind of ground myself before that. So again, these are things and strategies that we go in depth in the certified high performance coaching process. But, you know, so we're talking about clarity, what habits you're talking about the things that you do have to increase or decrease your energy. And you know, something that people also lose is, you know, what am I afraid of losing if I start to be healthier, if I start to try to manage my energy with a little bit more intention? Or what are you avoiding when it comes to creating the energy you want? And I think these are two, like really heavy hitting questions that you can ask yourself because you know on one end, like if you're afraid to lose something, you're going to be, it's going to be less motivating for you to change. And if you're avoiding something, it's usually some type of fear in there that you need to address. So keep that in mind as you're thinking about how to create the energy, because you get the energy you create. You know, we also need to manage what's really effective for us, right? Are certain breaks more impactful than others? Are certain strategies more aligned to our lives? This is a lot about knowing yourself instead about measuring your level, checking in regularly on like, like right now, on a scale of 1 to 10, you managed your energy or you, you could rate your energy, what would you give it? One being the lowest, ten being the highest. So that's that. And then the final thing I'll help or suggest as we think about how to create more energy when we work from home or anywhere is, you know, how are you role modeling your energy management for your family or your team? And these are two groups of people that are generally looking at you for, you know, how you're behaving. And sometimes if we're not going to manage our energy for ourselves, we'll do it for other people. So how can you have a buoyant, happy energy at home so that your family likes to see you working at home or your co workers like to interact with you on the phone, on zoom on all these different things. So that's a quick think through on this question on, you know, when you work from home, how can you work through those low moods, you know, again, and I'll say it again, say it with me, write it down. You get the energy you create, folks, so we need to get you more strategic on thinking on your habits, on being clear on what's effective, on actually following through with it and not avoiding it and to be that role model for the folks around you so you're seen as that leader that we know that you are. So that said folks, I do want to share if you liked this video, if you liked this Ask a coach a question. I do have a Work from Home challenge coming up at the end of the month and if you're interested in doing a deeper dive in your work from Home game or work from anywhere game, you can go to the link below this video or check out the link in my bio to sign up for the Work from home challenge to 2021. I did this challenge a couple of times last year. I'm updating it. It's exciting. I'm really, really pumped to be able to share this with you guys. So check it out again. If you have any questions, post them below this video. And next Friday at 10 o', clock, I'll do the Ask a Coach a Question show again with your question and that maybe I can help you break through, help you get results quicker, help you level up your life. So we have this ripple effect of goodness out in the world. So thanks for joining me. I see you, Dave. I see. I think that's Min, the solo success. Yeah. Hey, man. Hey, Dave. Anyone else? Yeah. So, guys, take care. I'm really excited. Thanks for watching. You too. And I'll see you next week.