By Madeleine Geach, Hospitality Leadership Coach, The Good Life Coaching

How much low-level irritation, annoyance and frustration do you carry around on a day-to-day basis and what impact is it having on you?

Working in restaurants can be rewarding, creative and a lot of fun. It is also hard work, sometimes stressful and pretty much always intense. Extremely intense. You don’t exactly come to work and chill. Plus, it’s a people business as much as a food and drink one and with that comes thousands of small interactions every hour. This alone is a lot to deal with. Added to that all the things that can be thrown at you over a shift – whether it’s taking over a poorly prepped section, being short-staffed and spread thinly on a busy night or handling a customer complaint (you can fill in the gaps here) – and it’s a perfect storm for letting your emotions get the better of you.

Any situation that is demanding and lacks predictability is going to make managing your emotions extra tough. So, given the nature of how we work, it is no wonder that you may get wound up sometimes. Feeling a bit touchy now and then is normal. Never letting it get to you is unusual and superhuman. But moodiness can spiral and become a habit. Being ‘reactive’ as a default leaves us feeling trapped in our own emotions and unhappy.

Here a few warning signs that things have gone too far, and you may be stuck in the reactive trap:

• You often feel like a victim in a situation
• Small things that are out of your control set you off
• You can feel you are being prickly and hard to be around for others
• You feel resentful and powerless
• Your reaction is often out of proportion to the situation
• You feel very defensive if you think someone has criticised you

So, what is ‘self-management’ and how does it help?

It’s all about learning to control your emotions so they do not control you. Control is not about denying emotions – this makes things worse. It’s about working with them. And recognising that you can’t choose your emotions, but you can choose how you respond to them.

A lot of the advice on this involves talk about slowing down and taking breathers which is not always possible on a busy Friday night where you work so here are some hospo-friendly strategies that may help:

Be honest: you are pissed off

If you’re someone who buries your emotions, take a moment to admit how you feel to yourself. Try not to rationalize it away or pretend it doesn’t exist. Simply say to yourself ‘I feel X’ and realise that the world is still standing. It’s okay to be pissed off or sad or whatever it is you feel. It’s how you respond and react to the feeling that is important.

Get to know your triggers

Think about what winds you up at work. It’s probably a list of 5 or so things that come up most often. We can’t avoid all of the situations that set us off but we can create a plan for how we will deal with them. For each trigger choose how you will respond using a ‘WHEN/THEN’ rule. When X happens I will Y. This allows you to manage your reactions and not let daily, outside-your-control occurrences grind you down.

Change your surroundings for a minute

In an emergency, give yourself a short bit of personal time-out. Moving away from the place you are in can help ‘break the state’ and just one minute is long enough to help. At work, a quick walk around the block in a break can begin to shift how you feel and help give you some distance from it.

Be careful about venting

There’s nothing wrong with talking to someone about your feelings but research is pretty mixed about whether venting actually helps. Some studies like this one have found that the more people complained, the worse they felt. And of course, we all work in close teams and venting can bring down the people around you. That doesn’t mean you should keep all your feelings bottled up. You should just think carefully about how, when and to whom you choose to chat and be mindful about whether it’s making you feel better or worse and the impact it’s having on them.

Check your perspective

Moments of high stress can warp your perception of reality, making you feel like the world is out to get you. Our brains are hard-wired to sense threat and tend to overreact in stressful situations. The next time you feel frustration bubbling up, try to check your perspective. One way to do this: ask yourself some powerful questions: in a month from now how much will this matter?  How about in a year? Imagine you are a fly on a wall looking down at your situation: what do you see? Is anything different from up there?

Take a break to manage your energy

Feeling depleted will make you much more likely to overreact. How you handle your downtime and making sure you get enough will give you the energy you need to handle what gets thrown at you. This is really important as restaurants are full-on and you may not be able to get lots of calming time and space at work. So, build activities into your week and your time outside work that replenish you. Take proper breaks, have time off when you can and fill that time wisely. Are you getting enough time away from work? What are you doing to make sure you feel rested and ready to handle things?

Find the ways to wind down at the end of a shift

Making letting go a daily habit so things don’t build up and so your work doesn’t leach into your whole day. Coming out of the highs and lows of an adrenaline fuelled service at midnight and trying to switch to relax mode is not easy. So finding a way to process it and mark that it’s done now will signal to your body that you can relax now can help you leave work at the door. Some ideas below…

Emotions are normal. Pushing them down doesn’t work. Letting go is about feeling them and finding a way to move on. It’s not always easy as restaurant-life is intense – with lots to react to and not much space to keep yourself in check. But there are things you can do to help yourself. Find what works for you and look after yourselves out there everyone.

The Good Life provides leadership coaching and courses for people who work in bar and restaurants. Check out their new website launching mid-Feb www.goodlifecoaching.net  and follow Madeleine on Instagram @thegoodlifecoaching.