Working an at home business opportunity is usually fraught with situations that cause your negative emotions to surface, especially in that start up period.

What do I mean by this. Consider this (hopefully) fictitious scenario.

Well you started the day well enough – the kids have gone to school, the partner is on his or her way to work, beds made, washing up done, washing machine on – great you settle down to work. Now you are half way through writing that article which you want to get published today. It’s late in your planning as it should have been completed last week. No problem you are catching up now.

THEN the neighbour walks in un-announced. She probably doesn’t know that she is interrupting you but she is. You are too polite to tell her to come back so you stop writing that all important article and spend the next two hours talking and having coffee or a cuppa (Brits do this as well!!).

When – eventually – she is gone (nothing against neighbours – honest), you then return to your writing. BUT the thread has gone, you have to start all over again and the frustration starts to come.

You know that it is nearly time for the partner to come home for lunch which you haven’t prepared and then you will not get started again until after 2.30, and you had hoped to have this article all done before lunch. Within a short time this frustration or negative emotion flips over into a change of attitude such that it can be impossible to continue with the article. This cascades into wasting time trying to get started again, breaking for lunch, having an argument with your partner at lunch and getting nothing done in the afternoon, because you are too upset over what has happened before lunch.

Okay let’s rewind to the issue (or is it). The event which triggered this off was the neighbour walking in. No hang on that’s not true. Let’s try again.

The event that triggered this off was your reaction to the neighbour walking in – better.

Within a few milliseconds of the neighbour walking in you had gone through an attitude change which went something like this:

1. This can’t be happening.

2. I will not get my article completed.

3. I haven’t got lunch ready yet.

4. This is so annoying

5. I can’t do anything about this without upsetting my neighbour (and we don’t want to do this do we?).

6. All is lost.

So you went from an extremely bright and breezy attitude to one that is really frustrated and down, but you managed not to show this to your neighbour.

This is just one type of situation but we all know there are many many like this when you work at home because there are so many possible situations which can arise that would never arise in the Office environment.

Okay how do we deal with these types of situations and turn them into positives, because believe me there are positives in every situation.

Three easy steps to take are:

1. Set expectations - yours and your neighbours

We all need to expect the unexpected. It will happen at the most inconvenient time believe me. My car broke down two hours before a two hour drive to the airport!

If you explain to your neighbour how excited you are about your new home business then she may want to ensure she does not get in your way in future.

2. Do three things at the time when the interruption or event takes place:

1. Smile – it is impossible to smile and be angry at the same time (try it), so if you smile it will encourage positive attitude setting.

2. Acknowledge that this is one of those unexpected events which you had expected – in other words look at it positively and don’t focus on the negative aspects.

3. Breathe deeply – you don’t even have to show your neighbour this because if you are sat at your desk she won’t see your diaphragm moving. What does this do – it relaxes you in the instant when otherwise the frustration would surface.

3. When the event is over (the neighbour is gone) you will already have a better attitude now but it can go backwards, so try the following:

1. Don’t try to re-start the article or whatever. Stop for a second and re-assess the day, resetting expectations. This is positive thinking.

2. If this tells you that you can’t go back to the article do something else positive for your business

3. If you can, talk to someone or email a forum just to get rid of any lingering frustrations.

4. Then move forward with a positive attitude.

I know this can be difficult. It took me ages to get to the stage where I could simply re-organise the day after an event such as this and go forward with my home based business work.

I can now and there is no time lost, as I have learned to cope with negative emotions, and so more importantly productivity is not lost.

In a phrase - stay well balanced as frustration and negative emotions can impact your business work extensively.