Here's how you can effectively manage stress and maintain work-life balance as an executive.

Executive zen master here! Plan to crush stress and win work-life balance: Boundaries boss: Clear work hours. Respect my time, respect my life. Family and personal recharge are non-negotiable. Prioritize ruthlessly: Focus on high-impact tasks. Delegate or ditch the rest. My energy goes to what truly matters. Mindfulness minutes: Meditation, deep breathing - short bursts daily to refocus and manage pressure effectively. Celebrate the small wins: Acknowledge progress, big or small. It fuels motivation and keeps me moving forward, energized. Healthy habits haven: Sleep, exercise, and healthy eating. A strong foundation for stress resilience and peak performance.

I've found that prioritizing "The Basics" is needed to manage stress best and achieve a good balance with work/home life. The Basics include sleep/rest, exercise/movement, social interaction, diet/nutrition, and play/recreation. Sounds so simple, but many lose sight of these "basics" when duty calls. However, when you prioritize self-care, everything else falls into place and you will be less stressed overall when it comes to your workload at the office.

Create 5 important tasks on paper, and cross them off as you work throughout your day. Simple in principle, powerful in practice.

Setting boundaries is never selfish, in fact it is selfless. And boundaries don’t just protect your time, they protect other people’s time as well. Establishing boundaries is key to achieving work-life balance: Set Work Hours: Define and adhere to specific working times. Learn to Say No: Decline tasks that don’t fit your priorities. Respect Personal Time: Ensure colleagues and you honor your off-work hours. Recharge: Allocate time for rest to enhance productivity and reduce stress. These steps help maintain a clear distinction between professional and personal life, promoting overall well-being. Time is our most valuable currency and setting boundaries helps everyone involve protect it.

Work life balance isn’t always easy to achieve. We have to make a strategy, plan and effort to find the time to rest and recharge. This can be done with deep breathing, exercise, the right network of people and setting boundaries. We can always expect to play our greatest hits if we don’t find was to channel our stress. By setting boundaries you can learn how to determine what is urgent and a priority. Making your health is certainly a priority we shouldn’t overlook. Be clear with your team and yourself about what the boundaries and expectations are.

Turn off notifications on your phone, and leave your computer charger at work. This simple practice can create beautiful boundaries.

In order to learn to set boundaries with others we need to learn to set boundaries with ourselves. Our impulses and lack of impulse control come from a lack of boundaries. The boundaries are set when we are the most calm and under control. Boundaries are set when we are most capable of recognizing our highest priorities. Our lack of impulse control arises when we are not in this calm state and our brains are alerting us of "attack." The resulting impulses are an attempt at creating psychological safety but often just continue to move us further away from the vision we have for ourselves.

Setting boundaries is the only factor that needs to be controlled. We should never give the power away of controlling what is happening around us. Listen, empathise, and move. Do not let it come into your safe zone.

Delegation is a sign of trust. When we delegate we are allowing opportunities to build more trust with the people that we require a high level of output. Starting with small tasks to delegate to build that trust is key. The trust goes both ways. We build trust when our expectations are met with the tasks we set. The people around us build trust when the expectations are clear for them to be successful. It is a mutually beneficial motion.

Consider exploring nature walks or gardening as additional ways to unwind and reconnect with yourself. These activities can provide a refreshing change of scenery and help reduce stress levels effectively.

How often should you meditate? As often as necessary. Meditative practices can be looked at in three ways - skill building, volume (duration), and frequency (number of times in a day/week). Some meditations are used purely for sitting with difficult thoughts and remaining calm, practicing the breathing that deregulates strong amygdala response. Some meditations require longer durations to get deeper into a state of boredom and allowing the brain to fill the space with creativity and output which can unlock better creative problem solving. Some meditations are as short as possible to get the physical response in the body that is prepared for action and output.

Our brains will choose to reflect on the day/week whether we choose to or not. But if we don't decisively give the brain time to output those reflections it will decide for us, right before bed. We will ruminate and rehearse everything we said that day. It will invite every worrying thought about the following day. Regular reflections allow an outlet for these thoughts and a controlled pattern for giving space for thoughts then deciding what actions to take that are most aligned with our goals/values.

When I feel stressed, I like to journal (opening cognitive/spiritual solution channels) and do a somatic check-in. I imagine grounding myself through the soles of my feet deep into the earth, where the minerals and gems and all manner of other materials live; gravity literally showing me how much the planet wants me on it. From there, I can ask, is this stress I’m carrying really mine, or am I reacting to someone else’s expectations? Is a solution to the issue within my power? If so, what’s my next step? If it isn’t, I imagine the stress-energy leaving my body into the earth as well. Using Type awareness, your information-processing function (Sensing or Intuiting) also provides clues as to how you interpret what’s going on around you.