At work, there is a silent killer. It lingers in the shadows, draining your vitality, robbing you of your focus, and shaking your self-assurance. Your co-workers speak about it in whispers (if ever), and your boss denies it even exists… What is the name of this monster? Stress.
This isn’t a joke. Excess stress has been linked to physical symptoms such as headaches, indigestion, high blood pressure, chest pain, and difficulty sleeping. Workplace stress is cited by 65 per cent of adults as a major cause of stress. Furthermore, a research group examined data from the General Social Survey and the American Community Survey and discovered that stressful jobs could shorten your life span.
The secret to understanding and managing stress at work to keep it at a safe level and prevent it from being stressful is to practice mindfulness. Isn’t it easier than it did? We’re here to assist you.
Here are nine tried-and-true strategies for learning how to alleviate job stress, and you’ll get back to living it up.
1. Make your Place of Work Wellness a Priority
Your job should help you retain your satisfaction during the day. Say it once more to make sure you don’t forget. To be sustainable, hard work necessitates a sense of balance. Although not everyone has the luxury of a dedicated home office, there are several small steps you can take to make your work from home experience more pleasant and healthy. These are some excellent pieces to help with this: Greenery in your surroundings, a water bottle, natural light, and anything that smells nice, such as scented candles.
You may be accustomed to working on a monitor all day, but gazing at a screen for hours is tiring. Request that your organization employs Remote Team Wellness to organize weekly live-taught wellness classes for your entire workforce as a fast fix. We admire what they do because they are the world’s top virtual corporate wellness business.
2. Do not forget the “Bigger picture”
You can think about something you need or want to do in several ways. For example, “exercising” may be defined in broad terms, such as “living a healthy lifestyle”; the why of regular exercise, or in more specific terms, such as “running two miles” as well as how of exercising. In the face of stress and difficulty, thinking Big Picture about your job can be energizing because you’re connecting one specific, often insignificant action to a larger context or intent. Anything that does not seem to be significant or important on its a whole new meaning.
So, if spending an hour at work at the end of a long day is viewed as “helping the career” instead of “answering emails for 60 minutes longer,” you’ll be far more motivated to stay put and work very hard.
3. For constructive self-talk, use if-then clauses
A better way to use if-then plans to combat stress is to target them at the stress experience instead of the triggers. According to recent research, if-then plans will help us monitor our emotional reactions to circumstances where we are afraid, sad, tired, self-doubt, or even disgusted. Determine what kind of response you’d like to have instead of feeling stressed, and devise a strategy that connects your ideal response to the circumstances that cause your blood pressure to rise. For example, “If I see a bunch of messages in my Inbox, I will remain calm and relaxed,” or “If a deadline is coming, I will remain relaxed and calm.”
4. Think of the work in terms of development rather than perfection
We all have one of two mindsets when it comes to achieving our goals: The Be-Goodmindset, which focuses on demonstrating that you have a lot of talent and already understand what you’re doing, or the Get-Better mindset, which focuses on improving your ability and acquiring new skills. It’s the distinction between trying to prove that you’re smart and want to improve your intelligence. When you have a Be-Good attitude, you expect to be able to do it well right away. It encourages self-assessment and a focus on success; how good are you doing today, about last month or last year?
5. Consider the progress you’ve already achieved
Making progress in productive work is the primary thing that can improve feelings, morale, and expectations during the workday. The Progress Principle, coined by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, states that this is the “these wins” that keeps us going, especially when faced with stressors. In terms of psychology, how we feel is always determined by how quickly we close the distance between where we are now and where we want to be. Before tackling the obstacles ahead, it’s a good idea to take a step back and reflect about you’ve achieved so far.
6. Consume Nutritious and Healthy Foods
As a stress reliever at work, many people resort to unhealthy “comfort foods.” It’s fair to say that coping with job tension this way isn’t a smart idea. What causes this to happen? When we’re anxious, the hormone cortisol is released, making us crave salty, sweet, and fat-laden foods for the fleeting gratification they provide. However, ironically, “stress eating” aggravates the issue.
Food high in sugar or fat, such as pizza, burgers, and ice cream, make a person feel sluggish and less likely to tackle the challenges we face, which adds to our tension. That is why it is essential to consume foods high in complex carbohydrates, which power our brains and helps us concentrate and focus. This will give us the ability to learn how to deal with work pressure and tension at work.
7. Feeling swamped is a significant cause of stress
Learning how to manage stress at work by prioritizing and organizing is a good way to significantly reduce your stress. This is how you do it:
i. Prioritize against goals: Priorities should not be set randomly. Use your goals to assess the significance of each task.
ii. Focus on 2-3 things at max: Every week, concentrate on the two or three things that will have the greatest influence on your objectives.
iii. Establish deadlines: Set reasonable deadlines for everything, and everything will be completed.
iv. Make a to-do list: Write stuff down in a diary or a note-taking app to ensure they get completed.
8. Get enough sleep
We can’t emphasize this enough: get some rest! Chronic insomnia has long been attributed to stress. It’s because a lack of sleep makes it difficult to deal with even moderate levels of stress and harms your attitude and outlook. The argument is that you can’t expect to alleviate stress if you’re irritable and tense due to a lack of sleep.
