" How're you doin' ?" - Joey Tribbiani,as played by Matt LeBlanc on Friends (TV)

Daily, consistent check-ins are a valuable tool in helping you deal with the pressures of running an business. Taking a few moments to step back from and assess a situation -- and more importantly, examine our relationship to that situation -- gives us many benefits in our lives, not just in our jobs or our business.

You can check in by taking a minute to assess a situation and asking yourself Joey's question. It doesn't have to be a stressful situation at all (although it's certainly useful in those) -- you can be working at your desk, or being quite on the commute. Checking in is getting in touch with yourself : your current view of the world, your emotional state, your goals for the day...looking at the small stuff that makes up our lives.

Here are just a few ways that checking in can help you:

Checking in helps center you.
In a tense situation -- maybe you're driven by a sudden deadline, or one of the higher-ups had a Very Bad Day and that displeasure has filtered down to your level -- checking in asks you to do 2 things:

• You mentally, if not physically, step back from the immediate situation. That space alone can lessen the pressure.
• Remove yourself from the negative emotions generated by the event. This, in effect, is akin to emotional aikido. Instead of using your energy by raising barriers to defend yourself, you use that energy to cool down and see things more clearly, not letting the heat of the moment undo the progress of the day.
  

In effect, checking in demands you mentally and emotionally divorce yourself from what's pressuring you. That stepping back gives you enough space to breathe and assess the situation without the nasty tension head-ache or heightened emotions that could make for bad decisions.

Checking in gives you perspective.
You've probably given advice like this to other people, "Don't take it personally." Or maybe, "It's not about you." Checking in uses both viewpoints.

You see, you can't get any perspective if you're too close to a situation. Have you ever tried to calm an enraged friend down? In a situation like that, the first thing we'd do is to remove them from the source of the problem -- physical distance. The second is to try and talk them out of it.

Checking in de-personalizes the issue, and makes it a situation to be assessed, and therefore solvable. It levels the tension, forcing out the drama  that just fuzzes up the view of the whole thing, and removes the unnecessary panic-response that causes stress in the first place.

Checking in focuses on what you can do.
Sometimes the weight of the small stuff can get to us faster than the big issues, and internally we collapse into a seething mass of self-pity and bottled-up anger. When you check in, you focus on what you can do to resolve the situation, you don't get wrapped up in what you feel about it. Face it, focusing on a solution is better than marinating in self-pity. At least with one you get moving towards a resolution.

If you have ways of checking in with yourself, share them in the comments!