As recovering addicts say: getting sober is easy, staying sober is hard. A big part of staying sober is learning how to take care of yourself. But when you undergo a major change of life event and feel stressed because of it, taking care of yourself is even more important.
Switching Careers
Making a career transition, whether it’s a promotion at your current job, a new job in the same or a different city, or even a change in career where you’re entering a different world of work that’s brand new to you, is clearly stressful. You’re going into a different environment where you’ll meet new people, you’ll probably take on more responsibilities, and maybe your financial situation will change. And if you relocate, there’s a whole new city you need to get used to. What’s more, there will also be a new bunch of temptations.
However, what if the career transition is into your own business? What then? There’s the creation of a business plan to present to the bank or investors, finding and keeping clients, managing your business finances, making the decision whether to work from your own home or find office space to rent, branding your business, creating a logo, programming a website, designing and producing marketing materials, and so much more.
Take Care of Yourself
There is so much stuff going on during a career transition that it’s easy to lose sight of how to take care of yourself. The stress might tempt you to slip back into old habits and undo your sobriety, but not if you keep up your current self-care routines such as regular exercise, meditating to generate life-affirming thoughts, and, if you’re becoming a small business owner, using several tools found on the Internet to make creating a business so much easier.
You already know that exercise and a good diet are keys to keeping clean and sober and how they’re both essential to taking care of yourself during your career transition. However, according to Carolyn Gregorie of HuffPost, a 2013 study by Brown University claims that acute stress can increase relapse in recovering addicts. What’s important to remember is to never forego your diet and exercise routines just because your job change. Career transitions are just that — transitions. Your sobriety needs to be permanent.
Along the way, you also need to remember to be mindful of the career transition and how it is affecting you. A lot will be coming at you during your first few days or weeks of this career transition. Not only does regular meditation keep you positive and focused, but during this stressful life change, it can also help with decision-making and time management and more. This is especially true if you are preparing to operate your own business.
Tips for Maintaining Success in Business
According to Mark Hargrove of Forbes, one of the nine things he lists about being an entrepreneur is that you can’t do it alone. Just as you needed help when you chose to become sober, you need help to get your business going and growing, which means you’ll need to gather resources to minimize the stress on yourself.
To identify your brand, try using an online logo generator, some of which can create a logo for you free of charge. You can also use an online service to generate a slogan (which is essential for brand awareness), and, of course, create your website. For basic accounting spreadsheets, there are plenty of free Google docs templates you can use. The point is to take the stress of some of these basic business needs off of yourself so you can run your business and reduce the stress you already feel.
To keep maintaining steady growth, employ the AA (Alcoholic Anonymous) mentality – Take a day at a time, small steps to success. Define daily, small, achievable, and measureable goals, and keep working towards them. You can have immediate results to know where you stand and what corrections you need to make in order to meet your goals.
Career transitions can be tremendously exciting — or incredibly stressful. For you, what’s important is to keep your healthy habits to reduce the stress. That, in turn, is going to help keep you sober.
