Fay Wallis: Welcome to another episode of HR coffee time with me your host Fay Wallis. I'm a career and executive coach. And I make this podcast every week, especially for you to help you have a successful and fulfilling HR career. And this week, I am going to be sharing two ideas with you to help you bounce back from a tough day at work. Because there is no getting away from the fact that we all have tough days at work. Even if we absolutely love our jobs, most of the time, there are going to be moments where it all just feels a bit much. I think that we can be particularly prone to this happening in HR. Because working in the HR and people profession, it means that there can be real demands on our emotional energy as much as anything else. Because often we're having to support our colleagues who might have fallen out and be having an argument about something, or who might be going through a tough time.
Or you may have to be doing something that you find quite difficult, like making lots of people redundant. Or it might be that you've actually got nothing going on that is challenging around supporting the people you work with. Instead, it could just be that you have a really tricky colleague or a very high workload or someone's just said something horrible to you one day at work, it doesn't really matter what the reason is for having a tough day, what matters is being able to have strategies in place to bounce back.
But before I dive straight into the two ideas that I'd like to share with you to help you bounce back, I just wanted to give you a quick update about my group programme for HR professionals, which is called inspiring HR. I ran it as a pilot earlier on in this year and got really wonderful feedback, which was fantastic to have. So I decided to run it again. I had been originally hoping to start the programme again in September. But actually work has been so busy that I just wasn't able to carve out enough time for fitting it in. So I've been very proactive, I sat down with my calendar, and I've made sure that I've carved out lots of time, so that I can be completely focused on you for the programme. It's going to start at the end of October, and it will be running for six weeks.
I sent an email out about it on the 14th of September to everyone who subscribes to get my free HR coffee time emails to let them know that inspiring HR is back. There are eight spaces on the programme because I like to keep the group small so that everyone can get to know each other really well. And I was completely unprepared for the fact that those eight spaces would go in three and a half hours. So I'm really sorry if you're a listener who was interested in the programme, but who wasn't on the email list. So the first time you're hearing about it is right now, what I would say is, please do pop yourself onto that email list, so that you'll be one of the first to hear about it.
When I run it again. I try to send out weekly HR copy time emails every week, and you'll find out about details about the podcast and other free resources that I create to help you with your career. And it's in those emails that I also share information about my services like inspiring HR. So if you want to be on the email list, you can use the link in the show notes which you can find in your podcast app, or by finding this episode on my website breaks going career coaching. But that's enough about inspiring HR, I now think it is time for us to crack on with the main part of the show.
I've heard about the two ideas I'm about to share with you in several different places over the years. But it was reading Dr. Julie Smith's book, which is called Why has nobody told me this before. That made me decide to finally give them a try. It was such a brilliant book, really easy to read and just crammed packed full of ideas for helpful strategies. So if you haven't read it, I'd really recommend it. And I will pop a link to it in the show notes in case you would like to take a look at it.
The first idea from the book that I'm going to share with you is to name your emotions or label your emotions. Because research has shown that just being able to label or name your emotions can help to lessen their grip on you. Once you've identified the emotion, it's much easier to take a step back from it or accept it and let it wash over you and pass or to see what you can see next to help you feel better. An important thing to know about emotions that I learned when I had a horrible bout of anxiety, thankfully, which was many years ago now is that they always pass so even if you're in the grip of quite a horrible emotion. And when you've had a really tough day, please do bear in mind that all emotions are fleeting.
One of my friends described it as being like clouds in the sky that will eventually pass over. So even if you feel like you're not going to feel better after having a really difficult day, although of course, if you find yourself in a really low mood that you just can't seem to shift, or it's been going on for a long time, please do go and see your GP in case you've got depression or high anxiety. And you'd benefit from some professional help, I got professional help when I had really bad anxiety, and it made the world of difference. Touch words, everything's been much better since then. So coming back to naming your emotions, often will just say to ourselves, Oh, I feel stressed or overwhelmed. And when we say things like that, we're using a big umbrella term to cover a range of emotions, or we may not have really pinpointed the feeling behind the stress or the overwhelm.
So labelling can really help with this. And there are some different tools you can use to do this. The ones I like the most are two different ones. So the first one is called the feelings wheel. And it was created by Dr. Gloria Wilcox back in the 1980s. I'll link to a free version of the wheel, but it's actually provided by the comm app online. And I really like it, I think it's a really good one, the wheel is made up of three circles. There's an inner circle, a middle circle that wraps around that inner circle, and then an outer circle that wraps around the middle circle. I hope I've explained that you might want to click on the link to actually take a look at it.
In the inner circle. There are seven core words for seven core feelings. And they are happy, surprised, sad, disgusted, angry, fearful, and bad. You choose the word that best describes how you're feeling. Then you look at the next circle that wraps around that core circle. And you'll see there are a range of words that link directly to each of these core feelings. So let's say for example, that you're feeling sad, you can then look at the next circle to see if any of those words better describe your emotion if they're more accurate, and to carry on with this example. So we've looked at sad, the choice of words sitting next to sad, lonely, vulnerable, despair, guilty, depressed and hurt. Although all of these words can lead to feeling sad, they're all quite different.
And then to delve even deeper, you can look at the emotions in the outer circle, where you can see more options that spring from each of those words. So for example, if you'd initially chosen that you feel sad, and then you realise that the feeling sitting behind this was a feeling of being hurt. In the very outer ring, you can see there are some more choices which are embarrassed and disappointed. Which means you can ask yourself, Is this the emotion that's sitting behind me feeling sad, and the research shows that just being able to pinpoint this feeling, to be able to articulate it more clearly than just saying I feel sad, can help you to feel better. But as a next step, you can also choose to do something to help pick yourself up again, once you've identified what your feeling is, what your emotion is.
And I'll move on to that in a moment for my second tip. But before I do move on, I'll let you know about another resource that I like that is similar to the feelings wheel. It's one I discovered quite recently, and I actually bought a commercial licence for it to use when I'm running workshops or when I'm working with clients because I liked it so much. It's called the mood metre, and it's by a company called light and salt design. I'll put two links to it in the show notes for you. So you can take a look if you'd like to. The mood metre is a little bit different to the feelings wheel but it's a similar idea. Instead of having the names of different emotions on a wheel, they're laid out on a grid with an X and a Y axes.
The x axes is labelled feeling and feelings that fall to the right of it are more positive feelings, while feelings that fall to the left of it are more negative feelings. The y axis is labelled energy and feelings that sit at the bottom of it are labelled a low energy, while feelings towards the top are labelled as high energy. So to give you some examples, negative low energy feeling on that is hopeless. While a negative high energy feeling is enraged, and then positive but low energy feeling is serene, while a positive but high energy feeling is ecstatic. It's also colour coded, which I find quite helpful. I think the colours correlate to the feelings really well.
So, for example, enraged as in red, while serene is in a calm, green colour, and upbeat. The word upbeat is that in a sunny yellow colour, but you don't have to use either of these resources. Of course, there may be something else that helps you to identify and label your emotions, your feelings, but feel free to choose whichever resource you like the most. And if you want to give one of these a try, and let me know how you get on with it, I'd always love to hear if it's helping you. I quite like the idea of using the mood metre regularly to track your moods. And I found it can be helpful when I've used it with my coaching clients.
So for example, I had someone say to me, I've had enough of my job, I feel so fed up and overwhelmed. I just don't think this is for me anymore. But I knew that a couple of weeks before she hadn't been feeling that way. So using the mood metre, we were able to explore how she had felt a couple of weeks ago, and then look at how she was feeling now. And then that helped her to identify what had happened to cause this big shift in how she was feeling about work. And once she had done that, she was then able to see that, actually, there were things she could do at work to change the situation. And it was great to see that a week later, she was feeling a lot better and a lot more positive about everything.
So if you've been having a few tough days at work in a row, you might want to think about using the mood metre or the feelings will to help you track how you're feeling every day over a few weeks and see what you can learn from it. It could be that there's one week in the month, every month where you feel fed up. And you might realise oh actually that's because there that there's this really tight deadline or on this particular day, there's just way too much crammed in or, or it might be that you're unhappy all the time. And then you realise it's time to make a change. Whatever you discover is going to be personal to you because we're all different. And all of us situations at work are different.
But coming back for a moment to the idea of just labelling your emotion. I said earlier that once you've labelled that emotion, you then might want to think of strategies to help you to feel better and bounce back. So at this point, I'm going to introduce you to my second idea for today's podcast episode, which is all about bouncing back from a tough day at work. And if you don't like the idea of using the feelings wheel or labelling emotions, you can just skip that first idea if you want to. And you can move on to this second one.
The second idea is all about learning what strategies help you to feel better when you've had a tough day, and then being prepared to remember them and put them into action when you need them. In her book, Dr. Julie Smith recommends having a box and actual physical books that you put prompts into to remind you of the strategies to activate when you're feeling low, then when you've had a tough day, you can pick the books up, take it out, open it up, take the prompts out and start putting them into action. And I like this idea so much that I'm planning on incorporating it in some way into the 2023 version of the HR planner. Obviously, it would be too much to attach a physical box to the planter. But I thought I could create a page with a box drawn on it or something like that, for you to add in some prompts that will help you to pick yourself up when you need them.
So I'd love you to take a moment to have a think about the things that help you to feel better when you're feeling low, fed up or stressed. And if this feels hard, and you can't you can't really identify anything, just try to think back to the last time things felt tough. What helps you to get through them, it may not have been a tough time at work, it could have been a tough time in other ways in your personal life. Well, what helps you get through that tough time.
But if it's still difficult to identify anything, I'd like to set you a small challenge. And that is to take notice of the next time you're feeling good. What's happening that's helping you to feel that way. Is it because you're laughing with friends or you've been out for a run or you've had a relaxing bath or you have really lovely feedback at work or you've just listened to music that fills your soul with joy. Whatever it is, it'll be unique to you. And once you've pinned down some of the things that you've realised help you to lift up again to feel better again, then that means you have got your strategies that you can create prompts for to put in your book.
So I've started putting my books together after reading about this. And in my books, I've got photos of some of my friends and family, to prompt me to pick up the phone and speak to one of them, because I know that talking to them will help. I also have a photo of my little dog cookie. Because after interviewing Adele Stickland, for episode 10 of the podcast, which was called tackling stress and building resilience, I started taking cookie out for a walk more regularly. And I found it was a great way of winding down after a busy day and switching my mind off from work. And actually now I realise it just helps me feel good, whatever the situation. So if you're really interested in this topic, then I'd recommend hopping back and having a listen to that episode.
You can listen to it again, if you've listened to it before or discover it for the first time, Adele was a wonderful guest, I really hope that you enjoy the episode if you give it a try. Now, I've never got into meditation. I think that's one of the things Adele talks about in the episode again, I need to listen back to it to remind myself, I've never got into meditation, even though I know how good it's supposed to be for you. But if you're someone who does meditate, you might want to put a prompt in your books to remind you to do that. In the very first episode of the podcast, I talked about keeping a praise file to help boost your confidence. It's somewhere to record all the positive feedback you've received at work, which you'll it's easy to forget about when you've had a bad day, you can forget that there's ever been anything positive or anyone's ever said anything nice to you, or you've ever done anything, right.
So again, I'm going to encourage you to do this. And I've decided I'm actually going to create a page in the new HR planner for 2023 dedicated to this, you might want to keep your previous file in your box ready to pick up and flick through to remind you of all the things that have gone well. Another idea is if you like taking hot baths, you might want to put an empty bottle of bath oil in your box as a prompt to go and have a lovely long bath. Or perhaps if you love winding down with a good book, you could put your favourite book in there, I think I'm going to put one of my favourite books in my box ready to start reading it again.
Another idea is if you love scents and scented candles, you could have a little scented candle in their two lightens enjoy. Hopefully you can see by now but the possibilities really are endless. The activity is all about taking some time to find strategies that help you and to fill your books up with them. Then it means that when you've had a tough day, you can just open up that books and you have got a full toolkit of things to help you bounce back that are personal to you. Oh, I've thought of another thing to put in my books. While I'm talking it through. I've got a self heating eyemask that is absolutely amazing is the most relaxing thing in the world that is going to go in my books too.
So I'd love to hear what you're going to put in your books. Why don't you drop me an email or send me a message through LinkedIn for let me know that link to connect with me on LinkedIn is in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. That brings us to the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed it, please can I ask you to rate and review it for me on Apple podcasts. This makes such a difference in encouraging Apple to recommend the show to people who are listening to other podcasts and might find HR coffee time helpful.
I know that Apple don't make it hugely obvious how to do this. So I've made a little video that shows you how and I've included a link to it in the show notes. If you do go ahead and review the show, please do let me know so I can say thank you. I read every single review and I appreciate all of them. In fact, I think I'm going to print them all off to put in the positive feedback page of my planner for next year. Thank you so much and bye for now. I'll be back again next week.