How do you effectively have English conversations on wellbeing at work,
deal with overwhelm, or discuss setting boundaries with your boss?
Time management, self care,
and overall wellbeing are common topics of conversation inside my Confident
Women Community,
and my lessons on these topics are also some of my most popular on
the Speak Confident English, YouTube channel.
Having successful conversations on wellbeing requires knowledge
of key vocabulary. So for this lesson today,
I want you to get out your notebook and a pen because you're going to learn more
than 15 collocations, frail verbs, idioms,
and more to help you have successful confident conversations
on wellbeing in the workplace. Plus,
if you're currently struggling to maintain wellbeing or balance at
work in this lesson,
you'll also get concrete action steps you can take to help you
find that balance.
If you don't already know, I'm Annemarie with Speak Confident English,
everything I do here is designed to help you get the confidence you want for
your life and work in English.
One way I do that is with my weekly Confident English lessons,
where I highlight my top fluency and confidence, building strategies,
targeted grammar practice, and advanced level of vocabulary,
just like in this lesson today. So while you're here,
make sure you subscribe to the Speak Confident English channel.
So you never miss one of my lessons to get started with English
conversations on wellbeing in the workplace.
Let's dive right in and clarify the difference between the words,
wellbeing and wellness. Both are hot topics in the workplace.
And when you're participating in a conversation on wellness at work,
it's important to get the language right?
When we talk about wellness at work,
we're referring to a state of physical health,
a state in which people have the ability and the energy to do what
they want without illness.
And when we talk about boosting wellness solutions are often to
eat healthier, get more sleep or exercise. Wellbeing, on the other hand,
is much broader. Wellbeing is a state of being comfortable,
healthy, and happy. As a result,
it goes far beyond your physical health.
It includes your emotional health, your career,
your finances, relationships, and more wellness.
That physical wellness is a component of overall
wellbeing.
So why is wellbeing so important and often talked about at
work? A sense of wellbeing ultimately impacts your productivity,
your engagement, and your overall sense of fulfillment.
Prioritizing wellbeing in all aspects of our lives helps us
to thrive, to thrive, means to flourish or to prosper.
And here's how you might use it. In an example, sentence,
someone who has optimal physical health,
but faces stress in their finances and in their career
satisfaction may lose satisfaction over time and feel like they
just can't keep up. As a result.
This person may not thrive as much as someone else
who has satisfaction in those same areas.
As you have conversations on wellbeing at work with your coworkers,
you might recognize there are obstacles that often get in the way
resulting in stress overwhelm and frustration.
And here are the five most common obstacles that get in the way of
wellbeing in the workplace. Number one, lack of boundary setting.
Number two, mental exhaustion, number three,
saying yes to often number four,
bottling up emotions and number five,
not prioritizing renewal.
So how do you effectively overcome those five obstacles and create
opportunities for wellbeing?
Let's review five key strategies. And along the way,
we'll review English, collocations, idioms, frail verbs,
and more to help you confidently have conversations on this topic in English
strategy. Number one, set boundaries for your personal time.
Establishing strong boundaries is essential for overall wellbeing in
every aspect of our lives.
And it requires that you clarify your priorities.
In other words,
set your priorities straight to set something straight
means to get it figured out and communicate the key
information effectively to someone else.
If you are setting your priorities straight,
not only do you need to know what they are, but key people around,
you need to know what they are as well.
Let's look at a common scenario to see how you might set boundaries for personal
time.
Imagine that you've taken the day off to attend your child's graduation at
school. However, a team member,
or a manager emails you at the very last minute and requests that you take
time to review a document to set a healthy boundary.
You might respond with something like I understand you need this reviewed
for Friday's meeting. Since I'm currently on vacation,
I will prioritize this as my first task. When I get back to work.
This second strategy for wellbeing in the workplace is to step away
without guilt.
If you've ever worked around the clock and tried to juggle multiple tasks at the
same time, you've likely experienced mental exhaustion.
And in the process, you might feel that you've hit a dead end.
In other words, a situation in which it's impossible to make progress,
to prevent that mental exhaustion,
it's important to create opportunities in your Workday to step away from work
to step away means to pause involvement or to
simply stop being involved in something.
If you determine that stepping away briefly is what you need for overall
wellbeing at work.
It's important to communicate that to your team and your boss to do
that.
You'll want to highlight the reason for stepping away and provide details
of when you'll return.
Let's take a look at another common scenario to see how this strategy might be
applied.
Imagine you've been in back to back to back meetings all day.
You are mentally exhausted,
but you have one more significant task to complete.
In order to regain focus, you might share the following with your team.
I'm starting to feel overwhelmed,
and I need to step away briefly to regain focus.
I'll return to this in just 15 minutes. In that example, sentence,
I used the word overwhelmed to feel overwhelmed
means to be completely overcome or overpowered
by the circumstances, the thoughts or feelings you're experiencing.
When you start to notice those signs of exhaustion stepping away
can help you avoid that overwhelm strategy. Number three,
when it comes to practicing wellbeing in the workplace is to harness
the power of no at work.
It's easy to get excited about new opportunities and collaborations.
It's also easy to be a people, pleaser, a people.
Pleaser is someone who has the emotional need to please others
or make them happy.
And this is often at the expense of his or her own needs.
You'll often see this in someone who says yes to everything
or yes,
to often and saying yes to every request to help will likely
lead to exhaustion and stress to overcome this obstacle.
It's important to harness the power of saying no declining
politely when you can,
when you need to decline politely or push back a little bit.
Here are a few things you can say.
I'm a little tied up with my project deadline right now,
but I can help you out on Monday to be tied up means to be
already occupied or engaged with something else.
Or if someone's requesting your help,
you could say my plate is quite full with some upcoming deadlines.
Could we revisit this?
Once I get those finished to have a full plate is an
idiom.
That means to have a schedule or a workload that is filled to
capacity with obligations. In other words,
you have no more room in your schedule or in your energy levels
to do something else. A third way.
You can respond when you need to say no politely and push back a bit is
this falls outside of my expertise,
but Jennifer could certainly help you with this to fall outside.
For example,
to fall outside of one's expertise means to be
beyond or not included in.
So if something falls outside your area of expertise,
it's beyond or not included in your area of expertise.
Now I know that saying no politely can be a real challenge.
If this is an area of struggle for you,
I recommend reviewing my full lesson on how to say no politely
in English without feeling guilty.
I'll leave a link to that lesson in the notes below this video.
And now let's move on to strategy. Number four for wellbeing in the workplace,
confide in your confidant from time to time at work,
you might feel that you just need to get something off your chest.
What this means is to finally tell someone about some negative
feelings you've been having for a long time or a negative thought that you've
been having for a long time,
think about it like opening a bottle of emotions that you've been hiding away.
If you need to get something off your chest,
identify a person in your life who can empathize with your situation and
serve as a pillar of support.
A pillar of support is something or someone that is
strong and incredibly supportive. Sometimes if you're lucky,
you may have more than one person who can serve as a pillar of support.
For example,
the person you talk to about the stresses of balancing work
and parenting may not be the same person that you talk to about the
stresses of growing your career.
And regardless of whether you need advice or not,
this person will be comfortable being a sounding board.
A sounding board is someone you can trust to listen to you,
help you process and think through solutions.
Let's illustrate how we might use some of this language and apply this strategy
in a fourth scenario.
Imagine you've had a series of difficult months at work where you've
been juggling multiple tasks,
and you're feeling overwhelmed when you're ready to confide in a
confidant, you might call your friend and say,
this past week at work has been so stressful.
And I need to get a few things off my chest. I'd really appreciate it.
If you could just be a sounding board and let me clear my mind and now
strategy number five,
to help you overcome those common obstacles and establish wellbeing in the
workplace,
energize your mind and body prioritizing renewable
sources of energy for your mind.
And your body is essential for resetting when you
need it to renew means to make new or
restore while reset,
which I also used in that sentence means to set, adjust,
or fix something in a new or different way.
High quality renewable sources might include adding
more movement to your day. For example,
going on a quick walk over your lunch break,
doing a quick meditation or mindful breathing exercise or
eating food that makes you feel good.
You may even find that from time to time,
a change of scenery helps to break up the monotony and
reset your focus.
A change of scenery refers to a temporary shift from one's current or
immediate surroundings to someplace more desirable.
Again,
a quick 15 minute walk over your lunch break can get you out of the office
into a place where you're enjoying fresh air,
a new environment or nature as well to finish up.
Let's look at one last common scenario to help illustrate how we
might apply this strategy.
Perhaps you're working on a project that requires some deep brain work or
creativity and the constant monotony of your workplace.
Isn't inspiring any creativity whatsoever to
energize your mind and body and spark inspiration.
You might consider moving your business meetings outside,
or if you work from home,
you might consider working in other areas of your home. For example,
out in the garden or in another room that brings in some natural light
and some new surroundings to help energize you. And with that,
you have more than 15 new key vocabulary words,
including collocations, idioms, frail verbs,
and more to help you successfully have English conversations about
wellbeing in the workplace. If you enjoyed today's lesson,
I would love to know, and you can tell me in two very simple ways,
number one, give this lesson a thumbs up here on YouTube.
And while you're at it,
make sure that you subscribe to the Speak Confident English channel.
So you never miss one of my lessons. Thank you so much for joining me.
And I look forward to seeing you next time.