Managing the Challenges at Work

As adults, work would have integrated and become a major part of our everyday lives. Each day, you could very possibly encounter a new and different challenge - be it dealing with demanding clients, or facing our boss’s ever changing requests or the working on the next big project.
Therefore, to make things easier for us at work, we have to equip and prepare ourselves well beforehand to know how to face these challenges when they arise. The following few points could give you some tips on what to prepare and be more equipped to face your challenge.

Stay Calm and Cool-headed

Emotions can blind us, causing us to fail to see what was most important at the moment, resulting in negative actions and consequences – which often happens in the heat of the moment.
Therefore, when a challenging or difficult incident occurs, we sometimes need to take a few minutes or even hours (if time allows) to internalise our surroundings, understand your circumstances and what lead to this situation before we can move on.

At times, a great solution to try to calm down is to seek help from a close colleague, friend or family that could help you soothe your feelings or help you resolve the problem. Or if nobody is available, you spend time to pen down your feelings.

But if nothing works to calm you down, and you cannot leave the premises, close your eyes and breathe long, slow and deep breaths using the 4-7-8 method. Breathe in deeply for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds and exhale from your mouth for 8 seconds.
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After you have calmed down, start focusing on solving the issue rather than dwelling on the anger, self-condemnation, or even starting a blaming game in your mind. Refocusing your thoughts helps you to not only solve your problem by tackling it, reducing your anxiety and anger as the issue has been solved.

Track back to your Falling Point

Falling point is the potential first step where you have made that have caused this mistake. For example, an issue has aroused due to a careless mistake made from your forgetfulness. The falling point will be the moment when you received the information and did not note it down.

When the issue occurred, take time to trail back to the moments before the issue arose. It maybe due to a certain remark, a decision made or not made or it could be a mixture of both.
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But do note that we can never please everyone or avoid things that we cannot and have no authority to change. So, consider if this issue is a professional and technical work problem that you have to tackle, or it is an issue on a more personal level. If it is on a personal level, you can have the option to decide if the issue is worth salvaging. But on a professional level, we have to take into account of the consequences and thus, may need to manage it as best as you can.

Split the Challenge into Smaller Loads

Big projects, presentations or events can be very daunting, especially if they are important or of a topic that is new and foreign to us, as we may not know how or where to start and progress.

I would suggest to never just dive straight into the project without any understanding of it. Start by identifying the purpose and goals of the project and from there, think of the small sequential steps you need to take to reach the purpose and goals.

Small steps should be completed in sequential order which is heading towards your end goal and each task should not take more than a day to complete – best is that it can be done within several hours.

In addition, they should be easy to complete because easier tasks are more likely to make you feel more motivated to complete since it doesn’t take much effort or time.  
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The faster and more tasks you complete could also help give you more sense of achievement as it makes you see that you have made good progress, giving you an even better boost in motivation and productivity. Hence, a task that originally seemed challenging can now appear more manageable and even more enjoyable.

Reframing your Perspective

Most of the time, the circumstance or experience appears bad to us, may actually not as bad as it seems. It may be because we get caught up in our negativity and failures that we could not see the joy or opportunities that they may actually have.

Furthermore, most of the times, failures or challenging circumstances are stepping stones and learning steps towards success. There may be little and simple joys you have missed as well while we dwell in the negativity.
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We can begin by searching for the advantageous and beneficial points you can get to stop yourself from dwelling in your negativity and start looking at the issue in a different perspective.
For example, if you had a work conflict and negative consequences starts flooding your mind. Reframe it by seeing what you can gain out of it (be it when you resolve the conflict, or during the conflict’s cool down phase). This conflict may be help you to manage conflict better the next time round and could also help you improve on your communication and stress management skills.

To End Off,

​Do not give up in the face challenges and persevere on when you encounter them as these challenges more often than not provide you with life skills you can learn along the way in your life.
If you or your team at work need to place to for new challenges or learning skills, the links below could give you a suggestion to help!
They are a perfume workshop that not only helps you to understand yourself better, but also give you the spark and learning challenge to learning something novel yet fun!
For more information, or to register for a workshop, do head down to the links below.
 
Perfume Workshop Team Building links for more information:
https://www.perfumeworkshop.com
 
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https://www.perfumeworkshop.com/perfume-team-building-singapore.html
 
Couple & Bridal Showers Perfume Workshop:
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