STRESSED OUT AT WORK? CHANGE HOW YOU THINK ABOUT AND HANDLE STRESS

By Ches Moulton, The Stress Master, an international stress management expert, life-coach and author

Do you feel totally stressed out every day you come to work? If so, you’re not alone. According to surveys, three out of four employees in the UK have felt so stressed in the past year, they’ve been unable to cope. This is reflected in the 12.8 million working days lost because of time off with stress-related illnesses. Such absenteeism can create a huge dent in a company’s perfor-mance and profits. The question is, what can be done to alleviate stress’s debilitating effects on the workforce? All too often much of what passes as remedies for stress relief is a surface cure. Drinking cups of herbal tea, going for long walks, buying pot plants to calm the surroundings – none of which address the underlying cause of stress.

Wired for stress Stress is a natural part of our body’s wired-in defence mechanism, helping us deal specifically with life-threatening dangers. It provides all the essential resources we need for support, re-leasing chemicals that give us energy and provide our brain with increased focus. In an instant, we have extra stamina, our reaction time is speeded up, and our concentration becomes sharpened, ready to face the threat. Once the danger has passed our body returns to its normal, relaxed state.

The problem is, when our thinking gets out of hand, everything – whether it’s heavy workloads, traffic jams making us late, or dealing with others who are difficult – appears to be a life-threatening situation. When that happens, our stress system repeatedly kicks into action, so the body never gets the chance to return to its calm, balanced condition. The result makes you continually stressed, with resultant physical and mental health problems.

It’s all about control The only successful action to get control of your stress is to change the way you think. We can process our thoughts in a stimulating, motivating and inspiring way, or we can introduce errors into how we depict the world around us, causing us pain, suffering – and guaranteed stress. Who says that not meeting a deadline or being late to work is on par with coming face-to-face with a man-eating tiger? It’s down to our own thoughts. So learn to look at situations from a rational viewpoint and plan accordingly.

For example, managing your workload means being realistic in terms of how much time is needed. Rather than getting stressed, break down everything that needs to be done into man-ageable actions and activities. If you’re anxious about specific upcoming events, analyse all of the possible outcomes and make positive contingency plans for each one. What about interact-ing with certain individuals who you may not like? Work on your communication and social skills, and improve your ability to engage and work with others by developing greater emotion-al intelligence. Determine your own skills and resources to deal with your day-to-day work, and if there are gaps in your knowledge and understanding, fill them.

As Greek philosopher Epictetus declared: ‘We are disturbed not by events, but by the views that we take of them.’ Get your thinking right, and you’ll put your stress exactly where it should be – under your total control.