Working Women (and men): Clean Yourself Up After a Tough Day

When we were young, most of us were vigorously schooled on the guidelines of good hygiene as it relates to our bodies physically. But how often did our mom or dad talk to us about emotional hygiene? How frequently did our school review mental hygiene? If you had education of this nature, you were in a minority.

Taking care of our mental and emotional hygiene is crucial to health and well-being yet we often neglect this area because it hasn’t really been emphasized as a way to take care of ourselves. Think about it: we are all well educated on the value of taking Omega 3’s supplements. But the discussion on mental and emotional self-care has been missing.

More important than discussing this topic is how do we do it…

How do we take care of ourselves mentally and emotionally when we’ve had a tough meeting or heated argument? Do you turn to the notorious pint of ice cream to soothe yourself after a difficult day?

I interviewed Dr. Paula Majeski, a coach, educator and facilitator who works with people on self-mastery and healing to experience more fulfilling lives. Paula talked to us about how to “clean ourselves up” after a tough day and helped us to understand what it means to have good mental and emotional hygiene.

Jacqui Burge: Can you define good mental and emotional hygiene for us?

Majeski: Mental and emotional hygiene (ME) is about keeping yourself in a place of balance, centeredness and peace. It means you are in the current moment, being present with what’s happening right now.

When you are in that centered place, then you have the space or “the bandwidth” to proceed through your day. Your ME hygiene is balanced so you can respond clearly.

The other side of this is, of course, is when your ME hygiene out of balance. When you are in this out-of-balance place, you can do things that often cause you difficulty later on, like saying something you don’t really mean.

When your breath smells bad, you brush your teeth — that’s practicing good physical hygiene. But what do you do when you just participated in a heated meeting? You are responsible to keep yourself in a balanced centered place because you are the only one who can do it. No one can do it for you. If you don’t clean up your mental and emotional parts after you’ve had a tough meeting, then the next thing you say or do may be something you regret.

So good hygiene on the mental and emotional levels is about keeping yourself balanced, clear and present. And it means when those levels are in a disturbed place, you go clean things up to bring things back into balance.

Jacqui Burge: So how can a person “clean up” their ME hygiene after a disturbing situation?

Majeski: Let’s say you just sat through a meeting that was disturbing for you. You know you’re out of balance, so as soon as you can you take time to slow down. Specifically, you are slowing down your thoughts, feelings and your inner dialogue.

Slowing down is foundational because it supports you coming into greater conscious awareness of the mental and emotional content — those things that are triggering you.

Next, you take time to sort through those trigger points. Get present to your thoughts and feelings about what happened. Once you know how you’re feeling you can decide what is yours to clean up and what isn’t yours. If it’s yours — those things that are disturbing to you — then it’s yours to forgive. If it’s not yours — which is to say other things were presented in the meeting that had mental or emotional content, but did not disturb you — then it’s not yours and you can simply let them go.

For example, let’s say in that meeting a colleague blamed you for a product launch that was unsuccessful because you ran behind your assigned deadlines. This colleague was so upset that they went on a tirade about you missing important dates. Before you get to talk, the meeting focus has shifted to another area of difficulty, and you never get to respond your coworker’s claims.

You are shaken but wisely decide to clean up your ME hygiene. You slow down to sort through what happened at the meeting. You come up with:

· Colleague blamed you for a failed product launch

· Your colleague didn’t give you a chance to talk during their outburst

· You met all the assigned deadlines for this product launch

· You are aware you have a habit of running late with your deadlines

When you really look at what you need clean up, you know you met all of the deadlines for this project, so you know that the unsuccessful product launch has nothing to do with you.

You also know that your colleague is going through some difficult times at home with a teenager as well as an aging parent that just moved in to the home. You sense that this outburst and blaming has more to do with the tension that’s at home then with you. Those are not yours to handle, so you let them go.

However, you know you have a history of pushing out timelines on your deliverables or missing a timeline altogether. You see your self-judgments about this. Your judgments might sound something like “I should have mastered this already… I’m supposed to be a professional!”. This is a great time to forgive yourself.

You can say silently “I forgive myself for judging myself for that” and then extend kindness and compassion to yourself. When you really let this judgment go you notice you have more space inside to do something different, like seeking support from someone who’s really good with managing timelines. You start to feel clearer and more peaceful because you are back in that centered, balanced place. You just practiced good hygiene on the mental and emotional levels.

Jacqui Burge: Is there anything a person can do with his/her ME hygiene to better handle these difficult situations as they happen?

Majeski: That’s a great question.

Even better is to prepare yourself before the difficult conversation or challenging meeting.

Preparing yourself means you take time to be aware of anything that may cause you to go out of balance. It’s essentially the same process we talked about earlier: slow down, sort through any potential trigger points for you, etc.

When you’ve prepared yourself in this way then you are more likely able to hold in that balanced place inside yourself instead of getting off balanced and unconsciously reacting.

Jacqui Burge: And when a person doesn’t have time to prepare this way, what can they do during the meeting?

Majeski: When you sit down to that challenging situation, you just let go of anything you “think” may happen (mental) or are concerned about (emotional) and you come present. You truly don’t know what’s going to happen and acknowledging that can help you stay present.

In the moment, when things seem to be getting cranked up, you stay present. You observe yourself — specifically your thoughts, feelings and what’s being said, but you don’t react.

If you’re in a meeting and you start to have thoughts like “I can’t believe they are rehashing that story again — what bull!” watch out because your thoughts are heading south and will take you out of the present moment.

You can’t necessarily stop those kinds of thoughts. But the trick is to stay present when they are happening so you stay in control. If you see yourself getting out of balance because you have an urge to react to something that was said or done, just tell yourself inwardly to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n.

Slowing down can help you stay present when your mental and emotional triggers show up. This can be difficult in the moment, but you’re actually doing yourself a favor. Triggers — those things that throw us out of balance mentally or emotionally — exist in a place inside of you where you lack awareness of them. When they show up, the difficult situation is actually presenting you with a gift because you have an opportunity to clean this up inside.

Jacqui Burge: When is the best time to clean up ME hygiene?

Majeski: Really all of the time.

When you find yourself with good ME hygiene — where you’re centered and balanced the majority of the time — it’s because you’ve practiced good hygiene on these levels consistently. Then you will find you don’t have a lot of work to do to keep yourself clear. You’ll see the outburst at home or at work, but it won’t throw you out of balance like it did in the past.

Basically, keeping good ME hygiene is something you do all the time until you don’t need to do it. There are times where it will be a breeze and other times where it can be more difficult.

Jacqui Burge: Does a person have to clean their ME hygiene at the end of the day if they feel okay?

Majeski: I would say it would be good for them to at least check.

Take a few minutes to scan your day by asking yourself how the day went for you.

If you don’t find anything, the next natural step is to express gratitude. Review what you’re grateful for in your day. Gratitude helps strengthen your ME hygiene.

Jacqui Burge: Are there any ME hygiene habits a person can do before bed to get a good night of sleep?

Majeski: This is also a great question because if you don’t go to bed clear and balanced, your consciousness will work through the mental and emotional content while you try to sleep in an effort to resolve it. That generally translates to restless sleep. You may remember the last time you experienced this.

You can go through the same process we talked about earlier with slowing down and sorting through what’s up for you mentally and emotionally to clean up. Join Desk Yogi for videos to increase clarity and spaciousness!