We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts. And we have had such a good season that we just had to add on one more episode. This is a bonus topic – just for you! We are going to talk about stress management at work.

If you have worked with us over the course of this podcast, you probably remember we looked at this topic back in Season Two. We link to it here, so feel free to enjoy both episodes. This is one of our most-listened-to episodes, so we wanted to add more info, and to be sure you are ready to handle the stress that comes with working in a library.

The Basics:

So, what does it mean to manage stress at work?

If you are stressed out, does it mean you are doing a bad job?

Are you the only one who is stressed at your job??

These are really common questions!

Libraries are customer service jobs – so we need to be out there, serving our public. That’s great! But – it’s also really tough to do it well all the time. Patrons are often one of the best parts of our jobs, and they also bring in a lot of stress. Add in tough managers, unruly co-workers, dilapidated buildings, bad work environments, and decreasing budgets – and you see why there is stress in our profession!

We will walk through a few different strategies to help you manage your stress at work. This is such a common issue – we would be stunned of everyone did not experience stress at some point.  We promise: you are not alone in being stressed at your job. You are not alone in being stressed in your family. You are not alone in being stressed as you walk down a street.

Stress is real, and it can seem pretty omnipresent. However, there are tools you can use that may not make everything magically all better – but will help you manage it, reduce it, and keep it in perspective.

Here are a few suggestions for managing stress. None of them will fix everything, any of them should make the next five minutes better – and sometimes that’s enough.

• Just stop. Being busy all the time is kind of the hallmark of society. Be very deliberate in stopping for 30 seconds, a minute, or whatever works for you. Stand still or sit down, close your eyes, and just breathe. Do nothing. Don’t solve problems. Just be for a moment, and you will be better able to handle the rest of life 60 seconds from now.
• Visualize your happy place. Design a happy place for yourself. Is it a beach? Floating on a lake? A room in your house? A flower garden? It doesn’t matter – just have a happy place that is all yours. If you have a picture, or some sort of item that will help you to think of that place – keep it nearby. Knowing that you have a small mental retreat can be another tool to just get through the next few minutes.
• Walk around. Everyone has heard the advice to walk 10,000 steps in a day. That’s not based on scientific research, but it’s probably a nice goal. At least, make a point of walking around once an hour. Try to walk somewhere to talk with someone, deliver some materials, or just go look out a window. We were not designed to sit around all day, and our body’s chemistry responds badly to being very still. Moving around helps to get your good chemicals flowing to help regulate stress and happiness.
• Learn some conflict management skills. You will have conflicts at work – with patrons, with colleagues, with managers. It is a part of worklife, no matter where you work. We looked at building these skills in Episode 206, and we link to that here. Learning how to step back emotionally from conflict, and actively working through a problem instead of letting it fester, brings you enormous stress-busting benefits.
• Take care of your health. It’s tough to battle stress when you feel terrible, when you are in pain, or when things are going wrong inside you. Some of that is outside your control, but the choices that you can make to have veggies, stop smoking, stop drinking soda, keep treats as treats and not as a main course every day – all of these can help you to stay healthy. The fewer illnesses and injuries you have to deal with, the less stress you have to overcome.
• Make lists. These can be good tools to help keep yourself from being overwhelmed. If this is a tool that speaks to you, it can be helpful to put dates on calendars, keep to-do lists so you know what happens next, or other lists that make sense for you.
• Find some green space. We are in Minnesota, so we do have a lot of nice outdoor space all around us – though sometimes it’s covered in snow. There have been all kinds of good quality research studies showing how vital it is to be outside, in nature, every day. Be very deliberate about this. Put this time on your calendar. Spend 20 minutes walking along a river, looking at a lake, working in your garden, hiking on a trail – even just watering plants in your office or your living room. It will help to keep your brain functioning well, and help you to be living your best life.
• Choose to be happy. This one sounds like a throw-away, but it is repeatedly mentioned in interviews and studies of very old people across cultures. Everyone has sorrows, hard parts to life, and things that have gone badly. Choosing to be happy, or developing more resilience, does not mean bad things will stop happening – only that you can find freedom in making the deliberate choice to move past that and to actively choose to be happy.

A lot of these sound very simple, and very basic. That is deliberate. We are not going to be able to help solve all your problems, or to fix all the stressors. You will probably have some other great tools that may help you – just keep doing them! Stress levels can come and go; but your handy toolbox of stress-busters will always be there to help you!

Next-Level Stress Problems

Today we are just talking about stress at work. If that stress is not managed, or can’t be managed or reduced, people move from there into burnout or depression or other very negative outcomes. We are not qualified to help with these more serious problems, but we strongly encourage people to talk to professionals who could help.

Depression is not a problem you can overcome by just trying to smile more, or through some force of will. That’s just silly. It is a medical problem that can be treated. We would never suggest that a diabetic person just get over this silly sugar issue, or that they could have a healthy life if they just wanted to. Of course not. We would encourage them to work with their doctors to managed their diets and lifestyle, potentially taking insulin, or whatever else their doctors suggest. We suggest the same thing for people working with depression: talk to a doctor, take medicine if it helps, make some lifestyle changes if that helps. We want you to get help, and to know that there is a way to feel better.

The Mayo Clinic says “More than just a bout of the blues, depression isn’t a weakness and you can’t simply “snap out” of it. Depression may require long-term treatment. But don’t get discouraged. Most people with depression feel better with medication, psychotherapy or both.”

When to get emergency help (From the Mayo Clinic)

If you think you may hurt yourself or attempt suicide, call 911 or your local emergency number immediately.

Also consider these options if you’re having suicidal thoughts:

• Call your doctor or mental health professional.
• Call a suicide hotline number — in the U.S., call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255). Use that same number and press “1” to reach the Veterans Crisis Line.
• Reach out to a close friend or loved one.
• Contact a minister, spiritual leader or someone else in your faith community.

If you have a loved one who is in danger of suicide or has made a suicide attempt, make sure someone stays with that person. Call 911 or your local emergency number immediately. Or, if you think you can do so safely, take the person to the nearest hospital emergency room.

Books Read

As always, all the book information we are sharing here is from Amazon.com. If you click on a link, and happen to buy a book – or anything else – Amazon will give us a small share of their profits on your sale. Yay! Thanks in advance for your support!

Colby and Bev have a long-standing pact: graduate, hit the road with Bev’s band, and then spend the year wandering around Europe. But moments after the tour kicks off, Bev makes a shocking announcement: she’s abandoning their plans – and Colby – to start college in the fall.

But the show must go on and The Disenchantments weave through the Pacific Northwest, playing in small towns and dingy venues, while roadie- Colby struggles to deal with Bev’s already-growing distance and the most important question of all: what’s next?

Morris Award–finalist Nina LaCour draws together the beauty and influences of music and art to brilliantly capture a group of friends on the brink of the rest of their lives.

America’s northern border is the world’s longest international boundary, yet it remains obscure even to Americans. The northern border was America’s primary border for centuries―much of the early history of the United States took place there―and to the tens of millions who live and work near the line, the region even has its own name: the northland.

Travel writer Porter Fox spent three years exploring 4,000 miles of the border between Maine and Washington, traveling by canoe, freighter, car, and foot. In Northland, he blends a deeply reported and beautifully written story of the region’s history with a riveting account of his travels. Setting out from the easternmost point in the mainland United States, Fox follows explorer Samuel de Champlain’s adventures across the Northeast; recounts the rise and fall of the timber, iron, and rail industries; crosses the Great Lakes on a freighter; tracks America’s fur traders through the Boundary Waters; and traces the forty-ninth parallel from Minnesota to the Pacific Ocean.

Fox, who grew up the son of a boat-builder in Maine’s Northland, packs his narrative with colorful characters (Captain Meriwether Lewis, railroad tycoon James J. Hill, Chief Red Cloud of the Lakota Sioux) and extraordinary landscapes (Glacier National Park, the Northwest Angle, Washington’s North Cascades). He weaves in his encounters with residents, border guards, Indian activists, and militia leaders to give a dynamic portrait of the Northland today, wracked by climate change, water wars, oil booms, and border security.

Meet Charlie Chan Hock Chye.

Now in his early 70s, Chan has been making comics in his native Singapore since 1954, when he was a boy of 16. As he looks back on his career over five decades, we see his stories unfold before us in a dazzling array of art styles and forms, their development mirroring the evolution in the political and social landscape of his homeland and of the comic book medium itself.

With The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye Sonny Liew has drawn together a myriad of genres to create a thoroughly ingenious and engaging work, where the line between truth and construct may sometimes be blurred, but where the story told is always enthralling, bringing us on a uniquely moving, funny, and thought-provoking journey through the life of an artist and the history of a nation.

Conclusion

Thanks for being with us this season! It has been great to work with you, to talk with you in person, and hear your feedback and ideas about library skills, and your own skill development! We are here to support library people in their continuing education across all kinds of formats – and we really enjoy the podcast format.

To help us with our own work-life balances, and to keep our stress levels down by scheduling work and not trying to do everything at once, we are taking a little break from podcasting this summer. But don’t worry – we aren’t leaving you alone! Stay subscribed to our Linking Our Libraries on your favorite podcast app, and we will drop a Book Bite every Tuesday. If you haven’t already heard these, we bring in Guest Hosts to just give a quickie description of a book they are reading or one they have enjoyed. Five minutes or less of time investment, and you have a new book idea! If you want to suggest a book, email it to us!

If you want to enjoy our book group podcast, subscribe to Reading With Libraries. We will have new episodes on that podcast starting in September. Are you able to visit St Cloud? We would love to have you come over and record on a genre you like! We are always interested in new books, and new book ideas, that we can share with the whole group.

We are looking forward to working with you in Season Six!