Coping With Stress Through Teamwork
A big part of managing stress and pressure is practice. It is nearly impossible to overcome this specific struggle without perseverance and practice coping with it. Over the past few days I was able to encounter a pressuring situation and practice a coping mechanism to deal with it. Although I have not perfected this skill it is something I try to work on and you should too. This situation I encountered was an assignment given to me in a particular subject I consider myself weak in.
The project is to create a podcast about new technologies and its effect on us and the world. This assignment was pressuring to me because I have anxiety when it comes to speaking for an audience, especially recording myself for the public to hear. At first, I was extremely discouraged but it is a perfect opportunity to practice dealing with pressure. One key point in stress when it comes to public speaking, is confidence. Even if you get flustered as you’re speaking, as long as you remain confident the outcome will be less damaging. This is something I tried to think about a lot during my assignment. The coping mechanism I used was teamwork. While working on this, I felt very alone and defeated but by asking two of my colleagues to work as a group on the assignment, much of my stress was relieved. I was still pressured to speak loudly, clearly and confidently but it gave me peace of mind that I could use my teamwork skills to ease the pressure. My mentality was altered into more of a friendly environment instead of a pressuring environment. With the comfort of familiar faces, we were able to complete the assignment quickly and efficiently.
In the end, the outcome was very rewarding and I especially was proud that I could strengthen my speaking, confidence, teamwork and coping skills just from one assignment. This is just one way you could cope with stress. In this event, I catered to the situation I was dealing with. Teamwork may not always be the best solution. There may be situations in which other people cannot help because it is not their area of expertise. This is when other solutions can be practiced. Other mechanisms should also be considered and they will be discussed in my other stories.
