Coping with Stress at Work

I wrote about stress sometime back. But thought of it again, since a friend of mine was under stress for many weeks. Many a times a promotion comes with more work and responsibility, and more stress to offer. That was what happened here.

There are many ‘usually unnoticed’ factors or stressors in our working environment which can give us stress:

Noise
Congested working area
Very bright lights
Interacting with rude, impolite, uncouth and bossy people
Insecurity of job
Traffic jams and other commuting problems
Taking too much coffee
Company rules and regulations (eg. waiting for their work getting audited etc)
Hectic schedule (mainly with people who don’t know how to manage time)
Overloaded with work
Deadlines
Gossips and negative thoughts
Taking things personally
Being workaholic
Appraisals
Peer competition (competition among people of same level)
Internal politics
Where one has to report to less competitive/capable people (who reach that position by playing politics)
Meetings which leading to nowhere ….

How to handle this?

In many cases we can not change the system or environment. So what we can do is coping it with some life style changes and adjustments. There are many small things that can give good results. Like:

Yoga
Breathing exercises
Taking breaks and going for vacation (not too frequently)
Getting fresh air
Regular physical exercise
Getting enough sleep at night
Including more fresh food in diet (than canned ones, ready made ones, fast foods etc)
Pampering yourself once in a while with massage or similar stuff
Keeping a pet (if you are a pet lover)
Be with nature (at least in my city, it still has lots of trees)
Go to parks and look at the trees and listen to the birds chirping or attend to any natural sound
Have some hobby
Spent some time with friends
When you eat, try to taste the food and enjoy it
Learn relaxation techniques
Practice deep breathing at work, at least a couple of times (if you don’t get any chance, at least fake a ‘I need to use the restroom’)


....coz stress is a silent killer