Managing your well-being — How full is your stress bucket?
The world can be a stressful place and a lot of that stress can come from the work we do. And if you are a manager the stress can be even more intense.
But while we may not be able to control the situations that can cause us to be stressed. There are things in our control to ensure the situations don’t wear us out with stress.
In a previous article (read it here), I wrote about the mental health continuum and asked you a very important question which is, where are you on the continuum?
If you read that article, I really hope you will take that question seriously. I’ve got another question for you which is:
How full is your stress bucket?
Let’s talk about the bucket.
The stress bucket as I use it here is a metaphor for your capacity to handle stress. Now think of that capacity as a bucket and imagine what happens if you keep pouring water into the bucket without letting any of the water out, the bucket will soon overflow with water.
What does this have to do with stress? If we see the bucket as our stress capacity and we keep pouring potential stressors into the bucket, if we don’t do anything to relieve ourselves, we might get to the point where we can’t handle the stress anymore and it affects our health.
Let’s meet Eddie and Sylvia. Both are sales managers who have to meet specified sales targets. That in itself is enough to stress anyone. Both of them are working very hard but Eddie is putting in extra long hours, not sleeping much, still hitting the pub to drink alcohol after long hours at work, and getting really worked up about his targets. His pouring a lot into his stress bucket. After living like that for a long time, he burns out and crashes. On visiting his Doctor, he is signed off work for three weeks.
Sylvia is in a similar situation but she manages the controllable parts of her life differently. She does work long hours but not beyond 6 pm. At home, her work phone stays off and she relaxes with a good meal and TV program, and on the odd occasion a glass of wine. Sylvia swims once a week and tries to do something interesting on the weekend. During the week, Sylvia works very hard but also tries to take care of her well-being. It’s as if Sylvia’s stress bucket has a valve that she can open to let out the stress from time to time. So, she hasn’t burnt out or been signed off for three weeks.
Eddie and Sylvia are facing the same work situation. But Sylvia is managing her stress bucket well by opening the valve and finding ways to let the stress out.
Who do you identify with most? Eddie or Sylvia?
Does your stress bucket have a valve to let the stress out?
Please be mindful of your mental health and well-being.
