COPING WITH CHANGE

Most of us have a need to feel in control. When we instigate change, we feel in control, but redundancy happens to us — outside of our control. This can produce a reaction of feeling angry and overwhelmed. We need to regain some sense of control in order to cope with the enforced change. We can do this by:

• managing our time to explore and plan our life
• learning how to relax and nurture ourselves
• positive thinking
• looking after our health.

Other ways of helping ourselves cope with change include:

• getting as much information as possible about our situation
• learning the skills of decision making and goal setting
• networking
• expressing our feelings constructively.

There is nothing so constant as change, the saying goes. Change can bring fear and uncertainty but it can also bring fresh challenge and new opportunities. Try completing — truthfully — the chart in Figure 3 and then make an effort to increase the good elements and cut down on the bad.

LOOKING AFTER YOUR HEALTH

Coping with the transition of change isn’t easy. Although redundancy can give us a positive outcome, the process of arriving at that outcome can cause us stress. Therefore we need to have at our fingertips all the coping strategies we can, including stress and time management.

Both of these techniques have much to offer other areas of our lives as well as in career management. When we have a secure base within, we are in better shape to go out into the world. Looking after our mind and body, being selective over how we use our time, cultivating a positive attitude and exploring our work values and motivations can only have a beneficial effect on us and our career development.

Managing your stress

Stress is caused not by an event, but by your response to the event. If you can control your levels of response, you can control stress. If you cannot change the environment, then you must change yourself and the perception of the event. Psychologists have suggested there are two types of responses to stress:

• Type A — Impatient, aggressive, driven, distorted sense of time, fast talker and mover. High risk of heart problems. The positive interpretation of this type of response could be — expressive, in control and sociable.
• Type B — Relaxed, unhurried, non-competitive and non-aggressive. The negative of this type of response could be — overcontrolled and inhibited.

Developing your security zones

Security zones are places, things or routines in your life which represent security and safety to you. They are areas of your life which are under your control or don’t change.

What are your security zones?

Home	Beach
A favourite chair	Comfy clothes
Walking the dog	Reading
Watching old films	Hobbies
Talking to friends	Holidays
Sunday outings	The hairdresser
Friday night down the pub	Pets
The morning cup of tea	Gardening
Your favourite restaurant	Eating
Watching cartoons	Sleeping
A favourite room	Having a bath
The weekly shopping	Cuddling

Using relaxation techniques

Relaxation exercise

You could get someone to read this exercise to you or you could record it for yourself, speaking clearly and slowly. Wear loose clothing and find yourself a quiet, safe space where there are no telephones and you won’t be interrupted. Sit in a comfy chair, lie on the bed or rest on the floor, with or without a cushion. The idea is not to go to sleep, but to change your level of consciousness to a more relaxed and peaceful state.

When you feel comfortable, close your eyes and become aware of your body, starting with your scalp. Feel your scalp relaxing, imagine someone is soothing back your hair and stroking all the tension away. Relax the forehead, raise the eyebrows and then lower them again, feeling the frown ease away. Feel the eyelids gently shut. Relax the facial muscles. Unclench the jaw. Wiggle the jaw from side to side and feel the tension ease away. Your tongue should be behind the lower teeth. Let your attention go to your throat and neck. Feel the tension easing. Imagine all the tension in your forehead and scalp going out of the base of your skull into infinity.

Move your attention down to your upper chest, feeling the muscles relax. Move your shoulders down and back, feel them relaxing into the chair, bed or floor. Move your attention to your left shoulder, relaxing the upper arm and the lower arm, feeling the tension flow into your left hand and out of your fingertips into infinity. Move your attention over to your right shoulder, relaxing the upper arm and the lower arms, feeling the tension flow into your right hand and out of your fingertips into infinity. Move your attention round to your back as it rests against the chair, floor or bed. Feel the tension easing in your upper back and your lower back. Feel the tension from your forehead, scalp and back drain down your spine and out of the small of your back into infinity. Move your awareness round to your stomach and feel the muscles relax and ease.

Relax your upper thighs and your calves, feeling the tension in your hips and legs flow into both feet and out of your soles into infinity. You are becoming more and more relaxed. More and more peaceful. There is nothing to do, nothing to change, just relax — relax — relax — relax.

Deep breathing

When you are in a stressed state, the breathing becomes shallow. Deep breathing can help to relax and focus the thoughts. The idea is to expand the stomach and rib cage, thereby using your entire lung capacity. You inhale slowly and deeply and exhale even more slowly.

Lie down in a comfortable position and place one hand either side of the stomach, fingers facing each other. As you inhale, make a concentrated effort to raise the stomach and feel your fingers expand. Slowly exhale completely. Now inhale for a count of five and exhale for a count of six. Do this five more times. Still with your hands on your stomach, inhale for a count of three, feeling the stomach rise. Now place one hand either side of your rib cage, fingers facing in. Continue to inhale for a count of seven, feeling the rib cage expand outwards. Now slowly exhale completely for a count of ten. Repeat five times.

Further stress-busting ideas

meditate	laugh	cry	slow down
do yoga	exercise	shout	make love
shrug it off	punch a cushion	write it out	detach from it

Face, head and neck massage

Self massage can help relieve muscle tension, easing the muscles into movement and stimulating the blood supply. Any one of the following may help ease tension:

• 1Close your eyes and place the palms of each hand over your eye socket. You should find the result very restful.
• 2Move your fingers along the edge of your skull from your ears towards the spine, and continue down the spine as far as you can. Then push the back neck muscles up towards your head.
• 3Put your left hand on your right shoulder and roll the back muscle up and forward. Repeat with your right hand on your left shoulder.
• 4Move your scalp over your skull with your fingertips.

Eating the healthy way

We are not talking diet but an all round healthy eating regime, which, without you even trying, will be low in fat, high in fibre and should result in your being the right weight.

Ultimately a little of what you fancy does you good. There is no point in eating and drinking all the right things if you die of boredom along the way. A general guide could be:

• limit your intake of salt
• bananas, kiwi fruit, celery, grapes, lettuce, cinnamon, barley, brewer’s yeast, oats, and basil are good soothers for stress levels
• increase your intake of low fat foods such as pasta, oily fish, bread, white meat, vegetables, fruit and salad
• minimise intake of sugar and refined carbohydrates
• if you have low blood sugar, you will need a high protein/low carbohydrate diet with small, frequent meals
• alcohol, antibiotics, coffee, tea and sleeping pills destroy vitamin B which is vital to the nervous system
• garlic, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds are good pep-ups
• avocado, lentils, raspberries and spinach are good for fatigue
• ginseng is a well known nutrient for stress (Siberian for the mind and Korean for the physical)
• calcium, magnesium, zinc, vitamin B and C complex are beneficial for the nervous system.

Rest and recreation

We all need to play, sleep, dream and slob out from time to time. This provides us with the space to recharge our batteries and build up our reserves. It may even be, in these quiet times, that creative solutions to our problems occur.

USING POSITIVE THINKING

There is now plenty of scientific documentation demonstrating how the mind affects the body. When under severe or prolonged stress, the immune system doesn’t function at optimum and it is the immune system which keeps infection and illness at bay. If we are in a negative emotional or mental state, this can affect our physical well-being, thereby leading to disease.

A healthy mind is equal to a healthy body — the more positive we feel, the more healthy we are. The power of positive thinking not only affects our bodies, but also our experiences in life. What we think and how we feel produce the choices we make available to ourselves. From these choices, we make decisions and from these come our life experiences. Two techniques used to access positive thinking are visualisations and affirmations.

Visualisation

To visualise is to use our mind’s eye. We can see in our mind a person close to us even though we are not with them, we can visualise our favourite food or replay our favourite film.

Exercise

Sit or lie down in a quiet, comfortable place and go through your relaxation and deep breathing exercise. Try to visualise what your stress looks like, e.g. a tightly squeezed cloth, sharp teeth or turbulent waves. Now imagine the opposite, e.g. gently rippling silk, smooth curves or still water.

Affirmations

Affirmation means ‘to make firm’. An affirmation is a short statement, written or spoken, which affirms the positive. It is always worded in the present and reinforces the good that you want.

Exercise

Take a sheet of paper and write down some positive affirmations, e.g. relax, calm down, take it easy or I can relax and let go. Write each one out 15 times in succession. Try using your name to prefix it, e.g. I, Mick, can relax and let go.

MANAGING YOUR TIME

The art of time management is the effective organisation of the hours available to you. Whether it be at work, home or play, it is satisfying to know you have made the best use of your time. For effective time management to occur, the following needs to happen:

Establishing clear and realistic objectives

You need to establish what you want and why. You need to establish your work motivations and personal value system in order to redefine your career direction. There needs to be realistic objectives set out for your career development.

Planning and prioritising

As your thoughts and ideas become clearer, you need to begin making plans for a jobsearch strategy. You need to prioritise activities for two reasons: first to achieve your objectives and secondly to give yourself motivation.

Problem solving

Effective time management during your jobsearch includes problem solving. This means being able to think laterally, to find another way in when a door closes in your face. Problem solving skills include knowing where to find information, who and what to ask.

Assertiveness

Managing your time often means saying no or maybe saying yes. Your time is valuable. It represents space for yourself. Time to think. Time for action. Other people may intrude on this and you need to be able to say assertively what you need to happen. Being assertive means respecting your rights to define yourself while respecting the rights of others to do the same for themselves. Being passive means letting others use you. Being aggressive means you use others. Being assertive means self respect, valuing your time and effort and asking others to respect your wishes.

Letting go

There are only so many hours in a day to do things, to see other people and to be with yourself. Sometimes, you need to say goodbye — to let go of something or someone in order to make room for new growth. Your redundancy was an enforced goodbye. Maybe, as you review your life, there are other goodbyes to make.

Decision making

It is better to make a decision which may be bad than not to do anything at all and live to regret it. Successful time management involves making decisions, accepting responsibility for them and seeing them through. Dithering wastes time and takes up mental effort needlessly. We tend to put off making decisions because we are afraid of failure or appearing stupid. But if we make a mistake, we learn, and if we have self respect, how can we look stupid? What we think of ourselves is more important than how we believe (often wrongly) others are seeing us.

Major time wasters

interruptions	poor reading skills
bad crisis management	addiction to adrenaline
junk mail	lack of planning
procrastination	feeling guilty
travel	over-tight schedules
not finishing things	not listening
reluctance to confront	talking too much
can’t say no	poor sense of time
laziness	poor rapport skills

What do you do to waste time?

Guidelines for successful time management

• Prioritise
• Don’t waste time
• Set your goals
• Plan
• Delegate and work with others
• Manage your stress and health
• Review.

Figure 5 illustrates your time management diary. Fill this in for one day and see what kind of activities are useful and which waste time.

Project

List all the jobs you do at present. You can make this work-related list or more general. It should contain at least ten items. Work through the following steps:

• 1Place an A against those jobs on your list you consider really important.

• 2Place a B against those jobs you consider not quite so important.
• 3Place a C against those jobs you consider unimportant.

Now go back through the list again and eliminate all the Bs by considering them as either really important (A) or unimportant (C). Now prioritise your As in terms of their importance. Start by identifying the most important and numbering it Al, then work your way through the list until you have numbered each one. You will make best use of your time by concentrating your energy on achieving the A list.