Would you like to extend your weekend, make it feel longer than just two days, well you can. By reducing the pressure on your weekends and de-stressing the other days of your working week.

Extend your weekend.

Most people look forward to their weekends, some wish their week away and because of this feel they get very little from their working week. Working smarter not harder is one way to get more from your work days, simple strategies like dropping your to do lists and scheduling each task so it has time set against it will reduce the feeling that you’re always playing catch up, this will help you to reduce work place anxiety.

Breathing exercises and Guided Imagery are really effective strategies for people who always feel time and task pressured. Taking a few minutes a day to breathe you’re way back to a more relaxed state of mind, will help increase your productivity and reduce your stress and anxiety levels.

Extend you weekend by reducing stress.Getting through your working week in a more relaxed state will help you extend your weekend, if you arrive at Friday evening in better shape emotionally, you’ll be in a much better place to start enjoying your free time and thus enjoy it more.

There may be a bigger issue, if you’re not enjoying your current role, exploring what your options are could help you to see other options, having a balanced work/life balance is key to happiness and doing something  relatively stress free and enjoyable is possible.

Learning how to manage stress is something few people learn, let alone master, but it is achievable with a few easy and quick introductions into your daily self care regimes. Self care is important because we generally neglect our ‘self’ and expect our minds and bodies to act like a machine with very little maintenance, that behaviour can’t be sustained over a long period without burnout.

Here are my top Five tips to help you extend your weekend:

1. Address the Stress
Work smarter instead of harder, you can work with a life coach so that you have the tools you need in your toolbox.
Reduce the Stress, simple yet effective breathing exercises can take high stress levels down to a much easier to manage level, combined with Guided Imagery and the stress and anxiety will dramatically reduce.

2. Sit and Reflect
Taking 10 minutes around mid evening to reflect on your prominent daily thought, how that made you feel and how you behaves as a result, will help you understand the link between Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviours, keeping a daily therapeutic journal will help you get even more understanding and facilitate change.

3. Transition from work to home mode
Using the time it takes to get home, use Thought Filing strategies to get some closure of your working day and better prepare your self for your home/leisure time, this is a great way to extend your weekend feeling. Too many people never switch off from work properly.

4. Prepare for a better sleep
If we go to bed with thoughts filling our minds, chances are we won’t get the best possible sleep, which has a knock on effect when we start our day. Preparing for a good night sleep means some simple regimes which will help you manage your thoughts and prepare your mind by calming it, so that you can really relax.

5. Identify the drain on your energy
Using your reflective journaling skills and your strategies to reduce stress and anxiety, explore how you can work smarter and reduce the emotional energy needed for stressful situations and work place challenges.

If you would like to know more on how you can extend your weekend, reduce stress and anxiety, work smarter and generally create a better work life balance, talk to a coach for life and do all of this from the comfort of your home, or even during a break at work from your smartphone.

Paul Parkin – online counsellor
www.counsellors-online.co.uk 
October 2018