Whether you own your own business, manage a team or work with one, at some stage you will be faced with demanding, rude or insensitive clients, customers or colleagues.
Resilient workforces are made up of people who know how to take the knocks of business, work and life and bounce back fast from them.
Your body is designed, by nature, to repair, restore, and even replace aspects of you that get damaged, strained or broken. In the same sense, you are built to bounce back from the
drain of demanding and difficult people.
"DOUGLAS Wood said he was happy to be home when he was reunited with his family in Melbourne after spending 47 days in captivity as a hostage in Iraq. The engineer said he had some physical ailments after the ordeal but was not feeling 'especially' fragile. He said there were times he believed he would be killed. His way of getting through it, he said, was to keep laughing."
Do you become drained and frustrated by demanding people or are you able to 'laugh off' the tension?
Cortisol is a chemical produced in your body when you allow yourself to feel stressed, upset or frustrated by other people. Elevated levels of cortisol in your bloodstream has the effect of suppressing your immune system function.
Research carried out by Dr. Lee Burk's (Associate Professor at Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California) found that laughter lowers the cortisol levels in the body, thereby
protecting your immune system from the negative effects of stress.
Laughter increases immunity to infections by instantly flooding the system with immune cells and cancer fighting proteins. Frequent laughter helps control pain, lower blood pressure
and relieve stress.[1] A good belly laugh, opens up your lungs, stretches your diaphragm, eases chest tension, and has an overall healing effect on your wellbeing and immunity.
In the absence of laughter, being in a bad or negative mood for a long period of time can impair your immune and cardiovascular functions.[2] Whereas experiencing positive emotions increases your resistance to developing a common cold.[3]
Allen Klein who wrote 'The healing power of humour', claims that '20 seconds of laughing gives the heart the same workout as 3 minutes of hard rowing'.
ACTION STEPS - to bounce back from draining people and 'laugh off' tension:
1. Don't be so thin-skinned.
Take yourself less seriously. It is OK to let other people 'press your hot buttons'. If you can laugh at yourself, and your imperfections, then other people's attitudes, actions and demands will bother you less. If you do get offended by other people easily, then practice 'Let go, have fun, and get back into the game!'
2. See the positive humour in the challenges that life throws at you
Make light of yourself. During one of his presentations, professional speaker and comedian Tim Gard (CSP) once unintentionally slipped off the stage and fell onto his audience. After the initial laughter stopped and the room quietened down, Tim simply said '...and now I will take questions from the floor'. Find the humour in your mishaps, challenges and setbacks.
3. Live and let live
Life is too short to get caught up in other people's misery, frustrations and problems. Sometimes it is not possible to solve all your customer's, client's or colleague's problems. They are going through their challenges for a specific reason - to learn from them. Don't deny them this opportunity.
"Business should be fun. Without fun, people are left wearing emotional
raincoats most of their working lives. Building fun into business
is vital; it brings life into our daily living"
- Michael Phillips
