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When our life falls apart it can often just be enough to get out of bed. However, we still find ourselves needing to go to work and pay the bills. So, how do we navigate these times and stay effective in our work roles? This week we offer three simple, yet sometimes not easy, things you can do to manage these seasons in life.

We will all have moments in our lives in which times feel tough and the emotional challenges seem to sweep us away. It may be an unforeseen ending of a relationship, an unanticipated health diagnosis or the loss of someone significant to us in our lives. The point here is that many of these challenges occur outside of our immediate work role and yet, we still need to show up and do our job. This isn’t to avoid giving attention to the reality that sometimes we may also not be able to do our work at all when life falls apart too. Sometimes, that happens and a sabbatical or hiatus is needed. Nevertheless, we can also find some refuge and solace in our work during these times. This is an often overlooked part of the role of work in our lives.

We offer three tips for managing through those times when life falls apart and the ways in which we can allow work to support us through our challenges.

1. Ask for more support – Believe it or not, many of your friends and colleagues at work want to know that you’re ok and want to help. Confiding in your closest friends at work can allow you to gain support that you may not have realized you had available to you. Even if it is nothing more than, “hey, I’m having some challenges in my personal life right now,” this can allow others to be there for you when the chips are down. Asking for support is a great way to actually get it.
2. Recognize your limitations – The truth is, you may not be as effective at your work as you were before for a period of time. While there are plenty of opportunities to throw yourself more into your work, there can also be the reality that being able to really focus on your work may be difficult. Recognizing our limitations and giving ourselves some self-compassion can be necessary.
3. Give Yourself Radical Self-Care – This tip is probably the most obvious and the most overlooked. When we encounter emotional challenges in our lives it is necessary to be even more vigilant about taking care of ourselves. Doing what feels best becomes the motto of the day and this can be such a foreign way of being to most of us that we can’t imagine how to even do it. Sometimes, you may just need to lay down or not go to that work event or baby shower. Taking care of ourselves and honoring our energies, or the lack thereof, as the moment presents itself is one of the most important parts to allowing ourselves to recover from major life changes.

Have you encountered a challenging moment in life? How did you manage through work when life fell apart?