Imagine this: Your alarm doesn’t go off and you wake up late for your first early 6am call for the day, after your call you then check on the kids and realize they didn’t finish their homework, so you help them out in between calls, you forgot to make lunches the night before, so you quickly pack up som PB&J to send the kiddos off to school and come back to your office. The morning started off rough, but everything seems to be going ok. It happens to be 2 days before a HUGE launch and you want to make sure everything runs smoothly so you have a meeting to discuss the results. Then you get the news. The conversion data doesn’t look like its suppose to. There are errors and you only have 1 day to fix them. The data review was late due to other circumstances and this was the first day you were able to view the data.
In the work we do, this type of situation can happen no matter how much we have the best laid out plans. Some might stress out and PANIC. Which could be an answer on some days, especially if your day started out a little on the rocky side. No need to panic, we’ll get a team meeting together to review the data and quickly find the root cause of the issue. So we gathered. We got on a call to review the results and it turns out that there are VERY STRANGE ANAMOLIES. Ever find yourself in that situation? There are thousand of rows of data to review and one afternoon to do it. Part of the team is going on holiday and needed to leave, they provided a ton of support before they left, but those that are remaining needed to work together to figure out the issue.
When you are in crunch mode it can easily get stressful. So together the remaining team works to review the information line by line to find the issue. As we review the data, we find even more issues. Internally, you think to yourself, “SERIOUSLY! CAN THIS REALLY BE HAPPENING!” It’s almost like every other row in the data has issues. As the team was sharing our screen working together, we ended up finding some patterns, but not exactly. We found ourselves repeating the same words over and over and over again. One of the team members said it was like a matra.
OH MY! We were actually creating a meditation for ourselves as we were in a stress filled situation trying to fix the data. So there was this moment of repeating the same thing over and over and over again. We were in this peaceful state together. Then we started busting out laughing at the fact that we were almost in a trance like meditative state in what could have been a stressful situation.
Both the meditation and the laughter really helped in so many ways. Our stress levels, decreased, we partnered together as a team and ended up proposing a resolution to the issue. Keeping a sense of humor during worktime is the best medicine to reduce or minimize a potential stressful situation.
Laughter and meditation take away all the stress, relaxes the mind, and keeps you focused. So the next time you are in the middle of a battle, whether it be at work, or with your kids, a little bit of laughter and meditation can turn an entire situation into a positive one.