Even in urban areas, to gain a new perspective, inspiration, and physical benefits. If you’re unable to go outside, practice meditation/ mindfulness or relaxation techniques.

Turn off notifications and your phone, or leaving it behind. Use automation tools for maintaining an online presence while on vacation.

Engage in face-to-face interactions. Attend events, have coffee with contacts, and prioritise building meaningful relationships.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can help manage negative thoughts and emotions. CBT challenges unhelpful thinking patterns and promotes positive affirmations. It’s proven and it works.

Be a ninja at managing your work and personal life. Lisa Lavis, our CEO is a big believer that work and life is just one, with one diary. And she is highly disciplined in knowing when to give 100% to each, throughout the day, evenings and weekends. Lisa’s belief is life and work is fluid as neither runs in a straight line so needs to be agile. But this does involve focus. You cannot be ‘at work’ all the time. So set yourself boundaries.

When you’re on chosen holidays, go on holiday! Switch off (or move / hide) email notifications, What’s App, Trello, Teams, Slack. Tell your team and key clients when you are off and not to contact you. Equally, it is perfectly ok to still be at work if you want, need or desire to be, while away. For example, on shorter breaks it may be less stressful to actually check in. But the key is being in tune with your emotional intelligence and to recognise when you need to totally switch off. When you are, tell your team, clients, associates that you are not contactable and to ask them to limit comms while you are off too (so you don’t dread the first day back!)

For day-to-day work and life management build a strategy that works for you e.g. phones left downstairs at night, no checking after 9pm, and doing plenty of non-work activities so you don’t have the opportunity to ‘just check in’.

When you train the brain, it will respond positively. Our brains are amazing and there is always more room to learn. Take up a new hobby, learn a foreign language, or simply sign up to a new podcast. The learnings don’t have to be grand or take up loads of time but while practising them it will take you away from that work stress you just can’t seem to shift.

Whether that’s with your friends, family, doctor or peers. If you struggle doing this face to face write a message or even an old fashioned letter. We are so much more resourceful when we’re vulnerable and open up. And a quick tip, don’t let it fester. Act when it starts to bother you.