8 of our personal wellbeing tips for managing change

In early 2018 we found ourselves managing our way through a major change – the rebranding of our leadership wellbeing survey to GLWS. It was a change 12 months in the making and one that taught us a lot about managing our own wellbeing through challenging phases. As we look back a year later we can reflect on the lessons we learned. Here are our top eight tips for managing change:

Maintain perspective

We’re not saving lives here! As invested as we might have felt in our vision for positively influencing the wellbeing of people and organisations, we stayed grounded by reminding ourselves about the relative unimportance of what we do. Reframing our problems as ‘first world’ was a big part of this.

Sustainable effort

We took the pressure off at times to ensure some recovery and downtime – if we were to be here for the long haul, we had to manage our energy levels. Just in the nick of time, Karen took some time off and returned refreshed and firing on all cylinders.

Reflect & be grateful

We took moments to reflect and be grateful for having the luxury to work on something that we’re passionate about, that gives us a strong sense of meaning, purpose and fulfilment. We were also (and still are) grateful for those who believed in us.

Patience, patience, patience

One of the few luxuries of this being our own business is that we got to call the shots in deciding on our deadlines! We regularly said to each other, “if it’s not done, it’s not done.” This helped us recognise the need to pace ourselves and others (e.g. we moved our launch date a week out to give everyone more time).  After all, as the saying goes it’s better to get their alive and well than dead on time.

Show appreciation

A little acknowledgement and appreciation goes a long way – for ourselves, each other, our team and our families (for giving a rat’s).

Recognise learning

We now know more about running an international business and trademark law than we ever thought we would (or wanted to!). The same could be said for many other aspects of this business we’ve created. It’s been a huge learning journey that has kept us intellectually engaged at every turn. We’ve also learned a lot about project management and how bad we are at that. It’s a miracle we’ve got to this point, really.

Determination & drive

Balancing out the energy management and breaks, we’ve never lost our unfailing drive to achieve something of which we can be proud. Our providers can attest to this – we’re quite uncompromising when it comes to the quality of what we co-create with them!

Teamwork

We ‘passed the baton’ to each other when other commitments, ill-health or flagging patience, drive and energy loomed. We reached out for help when we needed it (maybe not quite as often as we could have). It’s important to recognise where your own capabilities start and end, then seek out people who know better! We had some great help from a lot of very talented people who helped us get everything done. And just in case this is all sounding a bit self-congratulatory… don’t worry, we had a few wellbeing ‘challenges’ over this time as well. We both ended up with at least five extra kilos to attend to (a lot of emotional eating and disruption to our exercise regimes). We needed a few visits to the physio and masseur to combat aches and pains from lack of movement and stretching and too much computer time. Our families were sick of hearing about the latest hiccups in the process. But when all’s said and done, it was important to stop for a moment and celebrate success, instead of ploughing on to the next thing without a backward glance at what we’d achieved.