Performance Miner^™ Getting the Most Out Of Your Business & Life A free monthly newsletter about running your business and enjoying life along the way. Click here to view past copies.

Copyright 2005 Sharon Youngblood. All rights reserved.

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Performance Miner^™ is in two sections this month:

In this issue:

1. Lighten Up
2. Life Biz

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1. Lighten Up

The high stress holiday period when stress soars is a great time to lighten up.

Over the years, I’ve worked with thousands of overworked, driven, stressed executives and middle managers. Often, type A personalities reach for a cocktail, overeat or push themselves harder to try and combat the extreme exhaustion they feel. Yet, laughter is more effective than alcohol, sleep, or prescription medications because it gives you that instant relief with no destructive side effects.

Unexpected and spontaneous, good laughter releases endorphins – even if nothing funny is happening, if you remember a time when you had a good laugh, see it, hear it, taste, the brain doesn’t know the difference between the current or a past experience and you get the full benefit.

Most of us make our living by through the serious endeavor of business, and it is easy to approach our business day with grim determination. However, study after study has demonstrated that people are more effective when they are relaxed and enjoying their life and their work. Any business can improve their operations by instituting the best practice of “lighten up.” Here are four best practices you can use in your business at holiday time and all year:

1. Realize that laughter reduces stress. The popular TV show, MASH has the exaggerated but valid premise that in order to accomplish the stressful work of a mobile wartime hospital, the medical personnel need to laugh through it all.

2. Relive good laughs with co-workers. The benefit of reliving a good time in your mind is the same as a current laugh.

3.  Look for humor in situations. Not every setback is a tragedy – there often is humor found in many situations that are temporary setbacks – not disasters.

4. Instead of the same tired holiday party, bring in a humorist to entertain your people. Also, hire trainers and consultants who add humor to your workplace – the learning will be painless and the laugher helpful to productivity.
    

2. Life Biz

• I have a new neighbor who moved in and cut my twenty-year old oleanders to a nub. He didn’t ask, he didn’t inform he just whacked them down. He did not like them. Moving into a new neighborhood has a lot in common with moving into a new job or heading up a new team. Before you start slashing jobs, budgets, programs or oleanders get to know the players. Talk to them about your plans and thoughts and find out theirs. It will avoid a lot of bad feelings and relationships and opposition. Good manners and the old Golden Rule will take a lot of stress out of your life and make everybody’s journey more pleasant.
   

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