I'm a freelancer in Tech and have been for most of my career. There are many ups and downs, good days, and bad days. It's quite an intense work-life, but it's rewarding, and I prefer it because I get exposed to various projects across many industries, meeting many people from different backgrounds and continually learning. But ...
High intensity comes with a cost
The cost is anxiety and stress ... I certainly know when I feel anxious or stressed, but it's hard to tell when people around me feel the same, and I bet they can't tell that about me. We are very good at masking anxiety, stress, and other negative feelings.
Anxiety and stress are somehow inevitable
I'm not a neuroscientist, but my intuition is telling me that our brain works something like this:
- It creates scenarios based on information coming from the world
- Matches that information with your personal past experiences
- Analyses the difference
- It gives you a result in the shape of an emotion
- The emotion is followed by a reaction(stressor/change)
This process probably runs unconsciously millions of times a day.
Minimising anxiety and stress
An easy and effective way to minimise stress and anxiety is to check with other people, do they feel what you feel, do they see what you see? More often than not, a conversation is everything you need to change how you see difficult situations. You stop living in your head and see the reality for what it is. But ...
You are walking on eggshells until you get to the point where you can speak freely about how you feel. The process is, of course, sensitive; you don't want to be judged for something that might not even be real... This is exactly the problem we are solving using ShareFeels.io.
ShareFeels is a conversation starter
ShareFeels.io is a temperature check tool for you and your colleagues, your friends, family, etc. The way it works is pretty straight forward: You create a group for your team and you vote daily how you feel on a scale from 1(low) to 5(happy), your vote is anonymous. After you vote, you instantly see the group's average vote, and ...
🧙♂️This is where the magic happens:
Use the groups' average vote as common ground to start a conversation! It's super easy, ask your group: "Why do you feel like a 4.2, or a 3.5"... whatever the average.
Regardless if you feel better or worst than the group, having a conversation is going to help you adjust your mood, cheer you up and live to fight another day. This whole voting process takes seconds.
Does it work?
I'm using ShareFeels with my team and it works really well. Even though we vote daily, it's hard to find time for a conversation every day. What is surprising is that even if we don't talk daily, it feels good to see they voted and what the average is. It connects us. I instantly empathise with them when I see the votes.
Try it out, see if it works for you. It's free!
I hope ShareFeels.io will benefit you as much as it benefits me, my colleagues and my friends.
