How to Properly Manage Stress During Your Most Chaotic Work Days
Stress is a part of your life, whether you like it or not. If you aren’t careful about how you manage it, stress can cause serious health issues down the road. That’s why it’s important to identify and counter any known sources of stress in your daily life, especially in your career.
Join us as we look at some common sources of tension in the workplace, followed by five ways you can start taking back control of your day instead of surrendering to the chaos.
Identity Your Sources of Stress
The first step is to identify what is causing you mental anguish each day. Consider some of these common sources of workplace stress:
● Demanding clients
● Conflicts with coworkers or clients
● Workload size
● Fear of losing your business
● Lack of communication
You may be shaking your head right now because you experience one or perhaps all of these things on a daily basis. While you can’t change everything overnight, identifying stress sources can help you to better understand that you’re not crazy, and there’s a reason behind your constant stress.
Once you identified the cause, it’s time to start taking steps to control it. How you react is a huge part of the battle.
1. Monitor your stressors
Our first step is to keep an eye on your stressors. When you know what causes the issue, you should keep a closer eye on that stressor so you can be prepared when it rears its ugly head. You won’t be able to control certain stressors, but knowing what they are can help you to prepare and better handle them when they do arise.
2. Take time to relax and recharge
If you’re anything like me, you hate leaving work unfinished. You have to stop and remind yourself that you’re only human sometimes. You need to save time for yourself, to rest and recharge. If you push yourself to the point of burning out, you’re no use to anyone.
3. Set solid boundaries
In order to facilitate step two, you need to set strong boundaries between work and life. That means a schedule that you stick to, but also physical boundaries. For example, if you work from home, make sure you have an office where you can come and go when the work day is done.
4. Schedule breaks throughout your day
While it may seem tempting to work through the day to accomplish as much as possible, that’s an easy way to burn yourself out. I like to use the Pomodoro method, which you can easily track with a free online tool called the Tomato Timer.
Scheduling short breaks throughout your day with this method will keep you refreshed throughout the day so you can make greater progress overall.
5. Breathing exercises and pressure points
Finally, you can use some basic exercises to keep your stress down when it starts to get out of hand. For example, one acupressure exercise involves pressing down with your thumb between the two tendons just below your wrist and massaging the point on each arm.
Furthermore, a breathing exercise can help you relax. You’ll need to exhale forcefully through your mouth until your lungs are empty. Lean forward and tighten your abdominal muscles as you do this.
When your lungs are completely empty, inhale through your nose until your lungs about about half full. Then exhale again through your mouth. Do several rounds of this and build up the amount you can do to control your stress levels.
Final Thoughts
Controlling your stress is a massively important skill to learn. With these tips, you can identify where your stress is coming from, and how to manage it. How do you keep your stress levels under control? Let us know in the comments!
