There are several ways to stay fresh and recharge your batteries. Join a club that is involved in something you like, but preferably not related to your job. To get away from my writing, I enjoy going out into nature where I can hike and take pictures. I must confess that I also find relaxation in writing. Instead of doing business writing or articles, I often relax by writing science fiction or fantasy stories and poetry. I also like to help new writers by giving them advice. They often contact me through my website, The Creative Cauldron (www.CreativeCauldron.com).

Whatever it is that you do for recreation, fit this into your schedule. Remember to be flexible here, too. Maybe you like to take a week and go mountain climbing. That's fine, but if you can't do this as often as you'd like, then find someplace where you can do this locally for a few hours, or join one of those indoor climbing clubs with artificial climbing walls. Do you like to fly kites on beach all afternoon? Try flying a kite in your backyard for an hour, just watch out for power lines and trees. Find things that you can do in a day, or an hour. Even a little distraction can do you a world of good.

Finding these kinds of activities will give you something pleasurable to do, and give you some down time. It may also be helpful to get involved in classes, community projects or activities where you can interact with people. One of problems with self-employment is lack of interaction with other people. So go out and meet other people. This could also have advantage of helping you make important business contacts. I've made several good contacts this way. I've even had some of people I've met in these social situations refer business my way by mentioning me to their business contacts. Remember to stay in touch with friends, too.

One of reasons you started your own business was to have more control over your life, so take advantage of this. The worst thing that can happen is your 9 to 5 friends will be very envious.

http://www.CreativeCauldron.com Jeff Colburn is a website designer and writer. His goal is to make process of creating or updating your website easy and simple for you, while creating a website that meets all your needs and expectations. Jeff can also create all of copy for your website.

To see a sample of Jeff's work go to The Creative Cauldron. It's an award winning site filled with information for writers, photographers, artists and other creative people.

Copyright 2004 Jeff Colburn

Seeing and dealing with employees as human beings with real lives is often overlooked in busy workplace. People with high emotional intelligence can do this in a professional manner, and maintain appropriate boundaries. Another aspect of EQ is knowing and being sensitive to how employees are experiencing you as a manager. Part of EQ is teaching managers to be sensitive to how they’re coming across to others.

The fourth aspect of reducing workplace conflict is setting up behavioral consequences to be used with truly uncooperative employees who are unwilling to change. Despite using all these recommendations, there will be a few employees that just won’t change because they’re unwilling or unable. That means a manager must explain a consequence, which is an action or sanction that states to employee likely outcome of continuing problematic behavior. It will take skills from three previous points to do this in a non-threatening way.

Is there ever a place for anger in workplace? Yes. When people can say, ‘Wait a minute. I’m not happy with this; I don’t like what’s going on,’ and they turn that anger into a positive action, then anger can be seen as a kind of motivator. Sometimes when we’re in a position where we recognize that we are upset about something, and we use that to our advantage, we can make that work for us, and in long run, actually work for company.

As employees, more we can learn to speak up, to be able to say what our needs and our wants are in a healthy way, and not let it fester to point of rage or explosion, we can use our anger as a motivator to help us take action.

Employees can also change their attitude toward their job while putting up with unpleasant aspects of it. One way to reduce conflict and to be happier is to find a way to shift our perspective and our vision of why we’re there.

I’d like to close with a story that’s going around about janitor at Carnegie Hall who had been there for 20 years. He’s 45 years old. He was cleaning up restroom, and a guy in a business suit went up to him and said, ‘You seem to be an intelligent fellow. For 20 years you’ve been cleaning toilets. Why don’t you do something with your life and get another job?’

And janitor said, ‘What? And leave show business?’

It’s all in how we view situation and perceive what we’re doing that determines our satisfaction and fulfillment on job.