How To Switch Off At The End Of The Day

You love your family, but for some reason you are always called away from them and back into work. It seems as though there is always something that needs to be done. It’s only small and will be quick but needs to be addressed now. And then it takes up the whole evening. Not switching off is a big problem for business owners.

There are two main ways that we don’t switch off at the end of the day. The first is when we mentally take work home with us. We do this when we don’t stop thinking of work when we get home. When we’re at home but mentally at work we tend to relate to those around us as we would with people in the workplace. If you’ve ever had your significant other say, Don’t speak to me like I’m one of your employees then you know what I mean.

The second way we don’t turn off at the end of the day is when we switch back on. Come knock-off time you might be able to leave work at work and focus on your family, but when dishes are done and the kids have gone to bed, you start thinking about work again. You just quickly check your emails to see if anything important has come in and that is the end of you.

Physically you might be sitting on the couch, but mentally you’re at work. Or worse, you’ve got the laptop out and are deep in emails while your partner watches TV on their own. Good thing it’s a show you don’t like.

The Sensations of Work

If you take a very close look at what is happening when you can’t switch off, you will see that there is an energetic sensation in your body. It is either drawing you to keep thinking about work when you get home, or it is drawing you back when you’re focused elsewhere. Or if you’re in an environment that you don’t particularly like, there might be a sensation driving you back to work so you can avoid the place you don’t like. If you want to be able to switch off at night it’s these sensations - and not the thoughts about work - that need to be deactivated. Deactivating them is simply a matter of paying attention to them.

Feel Your Thoughts

In my book Mindset Mastery, I unpack how every thought we have generates a sensation in our body to which the body can choose how it reacts. It is easy to spot the big sensations - love, fear, anger, pride and more. But they are there for every other thought as well. We may not have conscious awareness of them, but our body will.

When the body experiences any type of sensations, it reacts to them in one of three ways. The first two ways of reacting are about increasing or avoiding exposure to the sensation. If the body likes the sensation it will react in a way to experience more of them. If it doesn’t like them, it will react to experience less of them.

The way the body reacts is to first send a signal to the brain advising how it would like to react. The brain then generates a thought about the best way to achieve that goal. This could include generating more thoughts or directing the body to take some kind of action. This is unpacked in great detail in the 2014 book Letting Go by Dr David Hawkins.

This cycle is why we find it hard to stop thinking about work - or anything else. It’s a feedback loop driven by sensations. If you want to switch off from work when you get home the only way to achieve this is by deactivating the sensations in your body. You do this by experiencing them without reacting.

The Third Way - Experience the Sensations

Deactivating the sensations is a matter of experiencing the sensations in your body without reacting. You don’t have to do anything other than pay attention. When you feel the urge to check emails, become aware of what you are experiencing in your body and give your full attention to it. When you observe the sensations, don’t label them (I want to check my emails) or get caught in a story about them (I’m waiting on something important). Just observe the sensation. When you do the sensation will dissipate. Once it dissipates, it won't trigger any new thoughts. This will prevent any new thoughts from triggering sensations that could drag you back to work. It won’t take long - perhaps a minute. If you can’t stop thinking about an event from the day, identify what sensations the thoughts are triggering in your body and just observe them.

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Paying attention to the energetic sensations in your body without reacting to them is the only way to stop the cycle of generating thoughts about work. When you can stop the cycle, you will be able to switch off. The process takes practice, but every time you do this it weakens the sensations and reduces the thoughts.