Tag: coping

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to remind yourself that you are loved and worthy of love.

Words are powerful. Mantras, visions, repeating phrases to yourself has been shown to be powerful. For many of us, there is love, a caring and affection from others. This is usually true from partners and family, but I think it’s also a part of the #sqlfamily.

Many others in the this SQL Server, data platform community pull together and help each other. They express caring, listening, and more to each other. If you’ve ever been to a SQL Saturday, the PASS Summit, SQL Bits, Data Relay, and more, this is often visible. There is a camaraderie that I often don’t feel at more formal, and many for-profit, events.

We are all worthy of love. I don’t know how else to say this, and if you don’t feel this, repeat this to yourself over and over: “I am worthy of love.”

Or send me a note on Twitter or Linked In. I’ll listen and let you know you are worthy.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to get outside today and give your mind and body a natural boost.

Easy one for me today. I’m off, so I’ll be outside working on my extension cord. Last weekend my daughter and I rented a trencher and dug a hole from the barn to a middle pasture. We’ve struggled with water out here in the winter, with some weird PVC and extension cords cobbled together. It worked, but not well, and it was only intended for short term work.

As we’ve realized we will have horses here for most of the winter, I decided we needed power out here, and the best way to do this in a low impactful and cost effective way is to set up two outlets, connected by wire underground. This is protected from horses, isn’t permanently wired to the barn, and if something trips or breaks, we can isolate this from the rest of our system.

A very hard afternoon got the wire buried. Today, I wire up outlets.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to don’t compare how you feel inside to how others appear outside.

I used to compare myself to others early in my career. The jobs they held, their salary, the projects they’d built or managed. Really, anything that others had accomplished. I think that can be useful early in your career to give you things to strive to accomplish.

Where this falls down is when you overvalue more than a specific goal from someone. While I might have wanted to manage a team of DBAs, or build software that provide real time analytics, I shouldn’t think that someone else’s path is the one I want to walk.

This can be the same phenomenon on Instagram, Facebook, etc. where it appears others have amazing lives and you don’t. Others might be loving their experiences when you’re struggling with the world.

I post the fun things and interesting experiences, but I don’t talk too often about the struggles between these amazing moments.

You don’t see the tough times or thoughts.

At least not many. I do expose more than a few friends think I should, but overall I keep a lot private, between family and friends. I have down times, I have difficult times, I question what I’m doing, how and why, on a regular basis.

My internal world is different from my external world. I try hard to remember that when I see things from others that might make me jealous of them.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to notice what you are feeling today without judgement.

I write this ahead of time, so I’ll tell you about my day today. It’s mid morning. I have been awake for awhile, working along, handling a variety of communications with different groups and people. It’s a hectic am, and my body is sore. A lot of workouts and ranch chores lately, and I’m fatigued.

However, I’m actually doing well. I followed this advice without knowing it this morning. I woke up, knowing I was tired, but needing to get to work. I accepted the soreness and feelings, choosing to work with them.

A few naproxen, which is a rarity for me, but I do use them when I’m especially uncomfortable. I had some time, so I treated myself to a coffee run in town. Not very efficient or cost effective, but it sparked joy, so I did it.

Then I went to work, accepting and handling things as they arose, even with a number that I hadn’t planned on needing to complete today.

Go with the flow is something I do often, even when it’s stressful on busy days, with lots of things that interrupt other items I need to handle.