The cost of addictions in the workplace is high. Substance abuse and dependence can be the cause of absenteeism, accidents, injury, death, poor work quality and costly mistakes, reduced morale, productivity loss, staff turnover, co-worker disputes, property damage and theft. “An employee with substance abuse problems can cost between 25 – 50% of their salary through low productivity, sickness and accidents.” It is estimated approximately 6% of workers suffer from additions to drug and alcohol.

Most statistics on addiction are based on alcohol or drug abuse.  These statistics do not take into account the significant health problems that come from eating disorders and food addictions.  It is estimated that stress and depression costs the Canadian economy more than $50 billion a year and are responsible for a significant amount of absenteeism at work.

A study in 2010 by the Center for Addictions and Health states the following:

“The average short-term physical disability leave is about 33 days, and on average employers pay $9,000 for each case. The study found the most common reasons employees take physical disability leave include respiratory illness, muscular skeletal problems, injury and digestive disorders.

Meanwhile, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder are the mental illnesses that appear most in the Canadian workforce, with each case leading to an average 65-day leave and $18,000 bill.” As reported in the study by the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health.

It is often stress at work and at home that leads people to succumb to an addiction in the first place.  Our substance of choice is used to numb out the emotions provoked by the stressful situations of life.  Two major factors; unresolved emotional conditioning carried from childhood and reactions to the stressful situations play off each other in a dynamic process to provoke emotional reactions.

With a backlog of unresolved emotional baggage from childhood, employees are not able to withstand pressures in the work place, such as:

• shift work and long work hours
• poor job design, including boring or extremely demanding work
• unrealistic deadlines and performance targets, or inadequate resources
• lack of opportunity to participate in decision making
• inadequate training and supervisory support
• bullying, harassment or victimisation at work
• fear of job loss and uncertainty about the future
• Family and social problems.   Link to article on problems with addictions at home.

Part of the solution is to support employees in letting go of their “emotional baggage”.  When we do this we are addressing the cause of the problem, rather than the symptom which is addiction.

“Kasser also writes that people become more materialistic when they feel insecure about losing their safety and security and their perceived likelihood of satisfying their psychological needs. “For example,” writes Kasser, “children’s materialism is higher when they grow up in a family with a cold, controlling mother, when their parent’s divorce, and when they experience poverty.””

This lack of a sense of security is our emotional baggage and it come from our emotional conditioning, which are the things that happen to us in childhood.   We try to make up for this lack of security by wanting more things and more success.  What is missing is our own sense of security, which actually comes from inside of us.  We don’t have full access to our own sense of security because it is lost among our  emotional baggage. Empty out the emotional baggage and we feel more secure.

The alternative is more depression and stress related illnesses which are becoming a major concern in America.  A major cause of lost work time is due to stress related illnesses.  Stress related illnesses are costing companies millions of dollars and ultimately we are ruining our health. Our emotional conditioning has a huge impact on our health as discussed in Has Emotional Conditioning Impacted your Health? We can see from the statics reported below that our lack of mental and emotional health is a growing problem which adversely impacts productivity in business, the happiness in our lives and ultimately the environment.

“Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry 2009 reported Reuters that “About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 — 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found.More than 164 million prescriptions were written in 2008 for antidepressants, totaling $9.6 billion in U.S. sales, according to IMS Health.  These drugs are deposited in America’s drinking systems, often without a way to filter them out even with current sewage treatment methods.”

Link to the Full Article

Each of us needs to decide for ourselves do we take drugs to manage our accumulated emotional baggage or do we empty the baggage out and live a happier, healthier life. The choice is yours.

Are you looking for some help to move forward in your business. Mastermind groups are a great way to do this.

Here is a great video piece on Mastermind Groups.

Since I started my own business 10 years ago I have been part of at least one mastermind group.  They have been great for moral support, brainstorming and getting clarity on where to go next.  Being with people who were all having similar challenges and trying to figure it out together was also a comfort.

However when it came to overcoming fear, it was an illusion that the mastermind groups helped me.  They were  supportive in  keeping me  moving forward in spite of my fear.   It wasn’t until I resolved the emotional energy around fear and dropped off my emotional baggage,  that I was actually able to transcend it.  Now that I have removed the Emotional Hot Buttons of fear I am soaring forward.  Before, my emotional baggage kept me flying close to the ground.

 Like filling a hot air balloon, we do lots of things to lift us off the ground; mastermind groups, professional training, personal development work and stress management techniques.  These are all valuable and our balloon starts to rise.  Many times it does not fly very high, because we still have ballast attached to the side of the basket.  It is when we drop off our Emotional Baggage that our hot air balloon begins to soar.

May your balloon soar in your mastermind group as mine is now soaring within my group.

Is Your Balloon Flying?

In the past (and maybe still today) I interrupted people because an idea would pop into my head and I wanted to share it.  That was my ego wanting to be seen and prove how smart I was so  I could gain your recognition and approval.  Basically I wanted your love.

Yesterday I had the opportunity of having someone interrupt me from sharing a thought because they were concerned about what I was going to say.  It sounded like “this is not the appropriate time.”  How would they know if it was the appropriate time or not, unless they knew exactly what I was going to say?  We never know what someone is going to say, because we are not them and we can’t know their thoughts.  We need to be vulnerable in the face of our fear and have the courage and patience to listen.

Being told not to speak created an emotional reaction in me such that I no longer wanted to be part of the conversation or share my ideas.  On the way home I realized an Emotional Hot Button had been pushed.  My father would interrupt my mother on a regular basis and tell her that she didn’t know what she was talking about. I have emotional baggage around this.  It doesn’t feel safe to express myself.  Synchronistically,  I was working with a client yesterday who was holding old emotional energy in her mouth and throat.  She said “I feel like I want to scream.”  She felt like there were people both at home and at work who did’t want  to hear what she had to say.  Her ability to self-express had been shut down.

We can have a profound impact when our fears or ego shut down another person’s communication. We are telling them it is not OK to speak. Now I know why I’ve observed so many people sitting in class rooms or around the boardroom table who never wanted to speak.  They had been conditioned to believe it wasn’t safe, and no one wanted to hear them anyway.

Feeling a little frustrated?

How much EASIER would your life be if you did not have to constantly manage your emotional reactions?  Imagine having a positive impact on your relationships with others, without expending as much energy to do so. It is finally possible to resolve the emotional energy that causes emotional reactions. What are Management Strategies? Management strategies use your ability to think.   Almost all personal development, coaching and counselling are based on exploring and changing your thinking.  In the coaching and personal development work I’m most familiar with, our conversations explore the following areas:

• Taking 100% responsibility for everything that happens in your life and not being a victim or blaming others.
• Habits – choosing things to positively serve your body and your life rather than doing things which suppress emotions and have negative impacts; such as too much sugar, alcohol, smoking, lack of sleep, too many hours in front of a TV or computer, to mention a few.
• Attitudes – recognizing whether you experience things from a positive perspective or negative perspective.  Is the glass half full or half empty?
• Beliefs – challenging what you believe to be true about the way the world works.
• Control – attempting to redirect your emotional reactions; stopping yourself from being upset and having a negative impact.

Managing all of these areas takes focus and energy, and over time you will change some of your habits, attitudes and beliefs. This allows you to live a happier life, because you are more resourceful in the moment,  able to control your emotional reactions and you can take more responsibility for what is happening in your life.  Life will be better.  With practice and continuous work it certainly was for me. And there is something even easier: resolving energy. What is RESOLVING? Resolving virtually eliminates the need to constantly be managing and controlling your emotions.  What you were previously managing becomes easy, and upsetting emotional reactions virtually disappear over time.  You get to experience more bliss in life. Resolving the energy that causes emotional reactions is like draining old sludge out of your battery to make room for more vibrant energy to fuel your life.   It is the old sludge energy from past emotional conditioning that causes you to have emotional reactions such as frustration, anger, anxiety, worry and fear.  By resolving you are eliminating energy from your body rather than adding new thinking or learning.  It is like deleting a virus from your personal human hard drive. I was recently doing this work with a friend of mine and his relatively new big flat panel TV stopped working one day.  His normal reaction would have been to get angry and upset.  Instead he very calmly dealt with the situation, finding someone to help him take the TV in to be serviced on warranty.  He didn’t have to expend any energy on being angry or on trying to control an emotional reaction.  He just took care of business. When is it good to Manage? Being able to manage your emotions is very useful in the moment when situations occur that push your emotional hot buttons (associated with unresolved underlying energy).  When you are resourceful in the moment your actions will have a positive impact on the people around you.  Having a positive impact is always a good thing in my books! Then at a later point in time you can sit down and resolve the energy. How do you Resolve the old energy? We will show you how in the Emotional Hot Button Removal workshop.  Click Here for more information