Even when you love your job, at some point everyone has felt the pressure of work-related stress. Fact is any job can have stressful elements. From short-term stressors like tight deadlines to more chronic stress that can cause serious harm to both physical and emotional health.
Unfortunately, these long-term stressors are all too common in the workplace and it’s important to ensure you’re dealing with them in a healthy manner.
Common Causes Of Stress At Work
– Lack of engaging or challenging work
– Low compensation for work
– Unclear structure and performance expectations
– Little opportunities for growth or advancement
– Lack of control over work decisions
– Lack of a support system
How To Manage Stress At Work
Take Deep Breaths
Feeling overwhelmed by pressure or just need to clear your head? A few minutes of controlled deep breathing can help restore your balance. Take a long inhale (5 seconds), hold for a second and exhale through your nose (5 seconds). Do this for 2 – 3 minutes to clear the build-up of stress and rejuvenate yourself.
Focus On What You Can Control
Constantly feeling like situations are out of your control can be a major stressor that eats at your confidence and your productivity. Now, while there will always be factors out of your control in a work environment, you remain in control of your own actions and responses.
Eat well, sleep well, structure your day when you can and think objectively before acting. Most times, your interpretation of stressful events is subjective and simply taking a step back to access the situation objectively can make you more efficient and less sensitive.
Establish Boundaries Between Work And Life
The popularity of digital tools and devices in today’s world is slowly blurring the lines between your life and work. While it may be tempting to make yourself available 24/7, it’s important that you put boundaries in place for your personal well being. This could be something as simple as not checking your work email from home or your personal devices or not answering phone calls after 7 pm.
Ultimately, while the method you choose to balance your work and life depends on your preferences and the field you work in, creating clear boundaries helps reduce conflict and undue stress.
Take A Break
Use your vacation days. While it may be tempting to gain rock star status as the employee who hasn’t gone on leave in 4 years, everyone needs time to recharge and return to their pre-stress state. This process demands that you have periods of time when you’re not thinking about or doing anything work-related. Taking leave isn’t a nice suggestion, when possible, take time off to relax and unwind.
When you’re not able to take time off, you can follow some of these tips to be healthier at work.
Build a support system.
Get help from your family and friends if you’re constantly feeling overwhelmed. Talk to your supervisor – a healthy productive employee is more valuable, so there is an incentive to help you improve your ability to manage stress.
If needed, you may want to talk to a psychologist who can offer you professional help and guide you in choosing healthier work habits.