Don’t let stress at the workplace bog you down. Acknowledge it and make it work for you
Even in a booming economy, people suffer from stress. It can result from excessive workload, tension between co-workers, disrespectful bosses, botched interviews and missed opportunities. Rapid changes create new jobs and more stress. So, how would you overcome stress?

HERE ARE SOME SUGGESTIONS:

Take it easy
Don’t try to fight stress. Acknowledge it and make it work for you. We can’t change stress in the workplace, only our reaction to it. If you do so, you can cope with stress or recover your losses. It involves taking risks, learning to live with uncertainty, and solving problems creatively.

Root cause
Figure out what is stressing you out at work and try to solve it. If you are successful in identifying the source, you will not suffer from it or flounder in your work. Launching or changing a career is particularly stressful for young adults.

Change gear
Relocation is another stressful situation. You’re not just changing jobs; you’re changing neighbourhoods, leaving friends and relatives, all the while looking for new people to support you, like doctors, dentists, car mechanics, hair stylists and babysitters.

Hard times
Even good things like promotions and raises, buying a home, and having a baby can be stressful. Often getting what we want, ironically, creates new hassles. But we need to learn to handle it.

Live and learn
Work for a company that matches your values and your ideals. Find companies committed to training and development as it will help you to meet challenges head-on. Continue your education. Learning is one of the best strategies to make stress work for you and help you become resilient.

Blueprint
When you feel stressed out, stop what you are doing and breathe deeply, relax your mind and body, then visualise your goal and see yourself achieving it. A positive frame of mind will help you focus on your work and assess the problem at hand. Fretting over your problems won’t help. You need to pull up your socks and get going.

Think positive

Banish all negative thoughts and concentrate on your inner strengths. You can set some mini behavioural goals like “today, I will identify three new companies; find three networking leads; volunteer somewhere”. Follow up on your identified mini-goals.

Move on

Making stress work for you and becoming resilient takes practice. Like babies learning to walk, you’ll face setbacks. You need to take lessons from your setbacks and move on. The resilient aren’t perfectionists who think and talk about how things should be done. They try to figure out their shortcomings and then make an effort to rectify it.

Full circle

The resilient ones are those who take action, solve problems and reserve time for renewal. In turn, they are often among the people we admire. So start making stress work for you. Identify your stress, find employers who value resilience and follow an action plan. Sooner than later you will see that you have charted out a career path in the right direction. Way to go!

Sources: The Telegraph ( Kolkata, India)