Career Motivation

How to Deal with Workplace Stress

Dozens of people are suffering from workplace stress. It is a bodily response. It could be in form of any physical or emotional change or even both. And it must cause distress in your life. In short, we can say it is a conflict between work, environment, routine, capabilities, or anything that contradicts your best output at work. One must go for the ways to deal with workplace stress and, here I’ll share some stress-management tips.

Why do people experience workplace stress?

There could be multiple causes of workplace stress but, a few are mentioned below:

  • Alarming deadline to submit work
  • Low wage compared to demands of the task
  • Vague performance expectation
  • The work environment is not supportive
  • Less control over decisions related to job
  • Few opportunities to grow

Let’s get to the solution to reduce stress due to such factors.

Ways to deal with workplace stress

Use your problem-focused strategy instead of emotion-focused coping to get rid of long-term stress.

Identify the stressor

Identifying the stressor is crucial to figuring out a solution to it. Track your stressor that either you are stressed due to overburden, short deadlines, or anything else at the workplace. Identifying your precipitant of stress will help you to figure out its practical solution as well.

Switch to a healthy response

Instead of getting upset and panicking, try to switch towards a healthy response to the stressor. A healthy response could be exercise as it releases “Endorphin” that gives the sensation of happiness to the brain. Other healthy activities could be any game you enjoy, spending time with loved ones, reading any good book, or anything that distracts you from thinking about the stressor.

Make sure to establish boundaries!

The root cause of most stressors is that people sometimes ignore work-life balance. Resulting in; compromising our health. Try to establish your boundaries of work and leisure or family time immediately. Don’t interfere in your family time with carrying a lot of office work burden and, this is going to help you out.

Take time to recharge!

Give yourself some time to yourself to relax. Set your brain free of all tension and worries around. The best way is to meditate or do yoga. It will help to re-energize again so that your performance will also improve.

Follow muscle relaxation techniques!

Go for any muscle relaxation technique to relieve tension in the body muscles due to stress. Try doing any breathing exercise for at least 10 minutes. You can also go for progressive muscle relaxation technique; stretch your body muscles from toes to head respectively by creating tension in muscles and releasing it slowly after holding for a few seconds.

Stick to your time management skill

Try to manage the time either by making a timetable or creating realistic deadlines for you by setting any reward at the end of each completed task.

Talk to supervisor

In case you perceive the situation as uncontrollable for you, do talk to your supervisor. As your health is associated with your work performance so definitely aim of the supervisor is to maintain a healthy environment. Talking may help you out as your supervisor can suggest better options.

Try using the mindfulness approach!

The mindfulness approach emphasizes “enjoying the current moment” Just think this moment is not going to come back again so, enjoy as much as you can and take the stressor as a challenge.

And last but, not least, avoid office gossips and seek counseling if you already feel very much affected by persistent workplace stress.

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