Dealing with Stress at Work

Understanding how stress works offers an opportunity to find measures to help prevent stress from manifesting. In the workplace stress can often be prevalent in most individuals, in some form or other. Identifying the pressures that can lead to a build-up of stress can help eliminate negative feelings, and physical and emotional symptoms, and enable you to deal with your workload in a more positive manner.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

There are two types of stress - good and bad. Good stress creates focus, intense concentration and an adrenaline rush, but only for a short length of time. Bad stress increases feelings of despair, negativity, depression, anxiety and impacts on a host of wellbeing issues. Bad stress also hangs around for a longer period of time and causes physical, emotional and behavioural problems.

There are also two ways of dealing with stress. The first way is to carry on with the usual workload and to pretend everything is alright. The second is to identify and address the issue and to focus on preventative measures to ensure stressful situations are kept to a minimum in the future.

Stressed Level

Having to work with other people, in the workplace, can create many stressful situations. If you are able to identify the triggers, in these situations, you will be able to work on removing pressure and changing attitudes. For instance, if your workload is too heavy delegating tasks can free up some of your time. If the rise in your stress levels is due to the attitude of colleagues now is the time to speak up and voice your concerns. Your health is an important issue which should not be neglected, and a refusal to acknowledge the presence of stress will soon manifest in negative ways.

Time Zone

Improving your time management skills will enable you to lower your stress levels. By recognizing stressful times - perhaps just before planning for a presentation - and anticipating the problems it brings with it, you will be able to create realistic methods of minimising the pressure build-up. Creating a more workable timetable, delegating tasks and asking colleagues for feedback, on your productivity, may all help reduce stress.

Altering your daily work pattern can help you improve your time management skills considerably. Reviewing your efficiency and productivity over a period of time - including stressful occasions - will enable you to identify situations that cause stress to surface. Working at removing these situations should be a priority, as your performance will improve once you have focused on what works best for you.

Learning to incorporate an element of relaxation into your working day is a good thing. Taking time out to go for a walk, or to self-massage away the tension in your neck and shoulders, are just a couple of productive ways of increasing your concentration, flexibility, positivity and wellbeing.

How to Beat Stress:

• Offload some of your workload.
• Identify the source of your stress.
• Change your work pattern frequently.
• Incorporate a little bit of relaxation into your busy day.