5 Easy Ways to Reduce Stress
It’s as literal as it is true: Stress is all in your head. It’s fierce, manipulative and will inevitably rear its ugly head when you’re faced with challenges, obstacles or major deadlines. Sounds like your current job, doesn’t it?
Stress is as pervasive as it is potent, building with each passing minute before it towers over you like an avalanche, ready to crash down upon you. High levels of stress have been associated with heart attacks, hypertension, depression and various other disorders.
Many people feel that stress is an opponent in a game they cannot win. But that feeling is nothing more than—you guessed it—stress in action. That being said, stress can be managed. Managing your stress in the office not only helps you professionally, but it also pays dividends in your personal life.
If you suffer from stress in the workplace, you’re not alone. A 2014 study by Everest College and Nielson found that80% of Americans are stressed by at least one thing at work. Stress can be the source of pains ranging from physical illness to depression, so for eight out of every 10 Americans, work is the trigger for these afflictions.
Now that we understand how serious the issue can be, let’s talk about five ways to beat stress back.
1. Only Worry About What You Can Control
Sharon Melnick, Ph.D., a business psychologist and author of Success Under Stress, says, “We experience stress when we feel that situations are out of our control.” Therefore, when you encounter difficult situations at work, recognize what you can and cannot control. Instead, focus only on the tasks you’re able to handle.
There will always be external forces that influence a project beyond your control, so don’t expect things to always work out perfectly.
2. Eliminate Coffee
For some, this section is probably too unreasonable to even consider reading. We love our coffee. We brag about how many cups a day we have. However, it’s important to at least understand what we’re consuming.
David Posen, M.D., a stress expert and author of Always Change a Losing Game, believes that “eliminating caffeine is more effective than any other stress-reduction strategy.” In fact, according to Dr. Posen, 75% of his coffee-free patients are actually more energetic.
Here’s the deal with coffee: As coffee boosts your adrenaline, it also bottles up a natural relaxant in your brain known as adenosine. The problem is adrenaline is a stress-triggered hormone that increases your energy for a short period of time. If too much is released over a long period of time, the body becomes overly stressed. The adenosine, on the other hand, gets released when the adrenaline levels go down, leading to the dreaded “caffeine crash.”
Understandably, you may not want to cut caffeine out entirely, but it’s a good idea to at least consider limiting your intake. If you’re ready for a bigger change, switch to black tea. And keep in mind that eliminating coffee later in the day will help you sleep better and, in turn, help you wake up with more energy and less of a need for coffee.
3. Exercise the Stress Away
Stress is a demon of sorts that you can rid yourself of. Instead of exorcising it, one of the most overlooked methods to managing your stress is exercising.
We often ignore exercise because we don’t associate our physical health with problems that cause our stress. But while doing jumping jacks won’t print your TPS reports any faster, it will make you feel a lot better.
Not only does exercise boost your health and confidence, but it also produces several proven stress eliminators:
- Endorphins: Scientifically speaking, working out in any way, shape or form increases and releases your brain’sendorphins, which are “feel-good” neurotransmitters. When these are blocked, so is your ability to properly work through stress.
- A Natural Escape: When you’re focused on a game of tennis or a five-mile run, you naturally escape and forget about the tensions in your life. Therefore, with exercising, you’re allowing your brain time to breathe. Then, when you come back to your stress-causing scenarios, you can approach them with a fresh mentality.
- Mood Enhancer:Exercising regularly can decrease symptoms linked to mild anxiety and depression. From there, you will naturally be in a better mood.
Additionally, high stress harms your ability to sleep. With proper exercise, you’ll be fighting stress on two ends: with physical activity and with better sleep. Remember that working out doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming; a few YouTube videos and some dumbbells can be all you need to get started. In fact, studies show that even one minute of rigorous exercise a day can make a big difference.
4. Manage Interruptions
Between phone calls, emails, texts, walk-in meetings, last-minute deadlines or even bathroom breaks, interruptions are inevitable and oftentimes overwhelming. Luckily, some interruptions are also unavoidable, so we can pre-plan for ways to deal with them.
Dr. Melnick offers three possible methods for handling these out-of-the-blue situations:
- Allow the interruption.
- Cease the interruption.
- Determine its significance and act based on your judgment.
You can also try to identify which interruptions are routine. Once you do, you can make preparations for how to deal with them. For example, if a client calls you at random times during the day, it might be a good idea to set and enforce a meeting schedule. By doing this, you will be eliminating—or at least minimizing—opportunities for random interruptions.
5. Organize Yourself
According to David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, proper organization can be the greatest office stress reliever. In his words, “It’s what’s most needed and most lacking.” Furthermore, a horrible catch-22 is that the more stressed we are, the more disorganized we become.
As such, you can mitigate stress by being organized. Organization helps you streamline your workflow by changing your environment. This frees up more time to commit to more important tasks. One of Allen’s favorite organizational habits is to do an end-of-week review on Friday. He uses this time to assess his inbox and work to-do lists.
The following are few additional ways to becoming more organized:
- Separate large projects into smaller steps and tasks. Then list them in order of importance. You’ll feel much better knowing you tackled the biggest pain point in your day rather than three inconsequential ones.
- Delegate tasks to others, if you can. While this may seem hard for self-employed workers, there are ways to outsource work using such sites as Fiverr or TaskRabbit.
- Get help from technology. For such things as finances, tools like QuickBooks can consolidate multiple accounts and keep track of expenses, saving you a ton of time.
In conclusion, whether you are worried about work, finances or personal issues, remember that, when it comes to stress, it’s all in the mind. Managing stress is as much about managing your mental habits as it is about your physical actions. If you allow your mind the opportunity to believe in these methods, you’ll be on your way to a stress-free work life!
0 Comments