Leave home at home and leave work at work: standard advice for business managers. There are two reasons for this advice.
First, from a business point of view, it is good to put work out of mind and then come back to it fresh the next day or after a weekend. Those who think about their work when away from work are prone to worry, anxiety and eventually to get so burned out that they begin to dread or even hate going to work. It is good for the manager, good for the business and good for any employees of the business to have the manager off the job when the manager is not at the office.
Second, from a home point of view, it is good to have a husband, father, mother, wife home instead of mentally still at work. Inevitably, if the manager does not leave work at work there will creep into the home some of the worry, stress and problem-solving that goes on at work. That, in turn, allows the manager's work and responsibilities to "move in" with the family. Even for managers who have no family and live alone it is not good to allow work to come home mentally or to routinely bring work home.
Those who office at home and who work from their home need to develop routines that keep their work in their workplace and not allow their work to pervade the entire home and home place. This is challenging but not by any means impossible.
The easiest way to leave work at work is to create a short activity between work and home. Start, of course, by closing down the day's tasks, putting things away, closing the files, locking up anything that needs to be secured and then closing and securing the office or workplace. That ends work physically but it also helps to close out the workday mentally.
The next step is to engage in a short activity that is neither work nor home based. This might be a short walk, a few minutes in the park, a drive home during which time you listen to music or some other information that is neither work nor home related. For those who plunge directly into traffic it would be advisable to take a walk once you arrive home, even before going into the house. The time between work and home might also be a good time to exercise: do some jogging, play a little basketball, do something that gets you huffing and puffing and then take a relaxing shower.
The same kind of procedure works to create a short activity between home and work: read the paper, take a walk, look at the flowers, have some coffee between home and work, do something that is netiher home nor office related as a way of leaving home behind before entering your work space.
Any stress at home is best left there. Any stress from work is best left with the work. The time and activity in between these two places greatly helps the process and can be thought of as "decompression". Another way of putting it is that no good is accomplished by dragging baggage from home to work or from work to home. Taking your baggage from one of these settings to the other is definitely not good for you and it is not good for anyone else in either of those settings.
Look around and observe: which people decompress between home and work and which one bring baggage with them? Watch those closely who decompress. Do what they do if you wish to get the results they get. Even better, go with them on occasion. Sometimes conversation between friends is itself an effective way of decompressing.
Remember, the best way to manage stress is not to have any stress in the first place. By leaving stressful matters behind it is possible to go to work and to go home with a "clean slate" instead of bringing stress with you. By emphasizing that you go back and forth between two worlds, as it were, you create the benefit of relief when it is needed and you allow yourself to participate with full attention wherever you are, without being bogged down by extra concerns from wherever you were.
Living in the now is not something reserved for people in recovery. It is something that is good for everyone!
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