Hi, Dr. Anika Sorensen here from the blog Ask Dr. Annika where we help stressed out business leaders to become the calm, healthy, good working leaders they always dreamed to be.
Today I want to talk about a client that I had two years ago because I had a reconnection with him the other week. My client is a man called Lars who is 47 years old and working in a middle manager position with 25 people in his work group. He thinks that is a little bit too much.
I met him two years ago when he asked me to help him and it was more or less a coincidence that we did meet in the beginning but I soon realized that he was on the verge of burnout. He was really going to suffer a health collapse soon if he didn’t do anything about his situation. So, I asked him if he wanted to do something about it and he sure did.
He had never told anyone else about this so, on the outside you couldn’t really see that he wasn’t feeling that well especially if you don’t know what to look for. He hadn’t even told his wife how bad it was. Even though, I guess she, from what I understood from him she did see but they didn’t really put that out in the open in the family.
So I asked him what was the deal, what was the thing that helped you? Why are you such a happy business leader today and your group is working so fine?
What happened? Why? What was the biggest reason? And he said:
“Well the first thing was that you asked me how I was, and for the first time ever I told somebody and it was good that it was somebody outside my own personal circle. I told somebody how it really was and after I had done that it was like a stone fell off my heart. I didn’t realize that I had been carrying this great burden for such a long time and it was such a big release when I had it out in the open, when I could hear my own words and when I could hear myself talk about it.”
“The next thing you did was you asked me where are you heading? I had never thought about that. Really, well, probably I have thought about it before but that was not the issue at that time. My only concern was how do I get away from all the things that I didn’t want to deal with. So I was heading away from things not towards anything. You made me realize that you have to work towards something and then the things that you don’t want, they will eventually cease because you don’t put your focus on it. You get what you focus on. So that was a really big change in my work with the work group. It was a real eye opener.”
“And then when we were on track I was a bit hesitant, I must admit, about saying what I was heading towards because you asked me to make a one year leap or a one year goal and I couldn’t really see that far.” He said.
We discussed and I said “You have to see where you’re going towards and what direction you’re going but you don’t have to see the end goal at first. You can take one step at a time and it will come clear.”
The next thing he said was; “you forced me to take care of my sleep, of my food and of my physical activity so that I would get some energy, and you were so right that the way to get the energy is that you have to take care of yourself. After a while I felt so much better!”
“Next I started to make some changes within my work group.” and he said “I especially remember one thing because you asked me what I think about all the people in my network and there was this guy in my work group who was really good at what he was doing but he was not my kind of person and I sometimes had a hard time with that, especially when I didn’t feel well myself. You helped me to see that and learn how to tackle that too. How to keep him doing all the good stuff that he does and at the same time I could be around him without really just worrying all the time, which helped me a lot. We did a lot more changes to many different things.”.
“I also made some changes in my personal life, and I still have my family.”.
So now two years later he was happy. Things were going fine with work and he was still in the same position. They have increased their profitability in his group to double and it is a happy group and he loves his work.
Like I said he still had his family and the family life was also so much better now two years later.
It was it was for me very nice to catch up with him. It’s nice to see that the things, the little things that you do with your life that they can make such a big difference.
If you want help with your situation or you know somebody else who needs help with this situation then feel free to reach out. Just click the link below and we can connect and see if there is anything I could do for you too.
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