Have you experienced this amount of work stress?
You set foot into work on a Monday and madness ensues from the beginning. One of your coworkers that you rely heavily on for their work is leaving for maternity and their replacement decided to accept a different job. At the same time, the front desk Clerk needs you to cover for them and you are behind on your own work. All the while at home, your child’s afterschool program is closed later in the week and your replacement sitter is out on vacation. Life is as overwhelming as it gets and you are trying to find a moment to breathe in the panic.
You are not alone!
While this is a stressful week at it’s finest, you may relate to the feeling this person is experiencing. Try these helpful tools to reduce your stress at work and in life:
Be Mindful—take a breath: When life throws challenges at us, our brain starts to reel in the outcomes. It is planning for one terrible event after another and takes a difficult situation and makes it worse. Take a second to stop thinking and take a breath. This allows you to refocus yourself and realize that your brain is making the outcome a lot worse than it actually is. Refocusing yourself means you are saving precious energy by NOT thinking of all the catastrophes that could make a bad situation worse. Instead you can choose to focus on problem solving these issues and save energy. Instead of seeing these issues as negative, you are also finding the time to identify them as just thoughts and way to move through them instead of reacting.
Get organized: Take a moment to stop, make a list, and prioritize the challenges at hand. List each one on a note pad or grease board. Then number which one needs to be done first, second, third, etc. in order of importance. This will help you focus on one thing at a time and prioritize, which will help you feel less overwhelmed.
Have Faith in Yourself: If you trust yourself to make positive decisions and always do what is right by yourself and other people, then stop caring what other people think of you. It is always positive to have clear and open communication, however you do not need to be constantly worried about how other people view you. Sometimes a person’s response may have nothing to do with you at all.
Exercise: This is always a suggestion that gets overlooked because people think exercising is a full workout with sweat and pain for at least 30-minutes, but this isn’t exercise at all. Stand up. Dance. Even taking a walk around the office during the day can really increase your focus and give your brain a second to rest.
Eating Healthy: When we are stressed, we focus on getting food that is quick and easy with little effort. This means many of us are putting ease over health in these situations which doesn’t help our bodies remain high performing in stressful situations—leading to even an increase in more stress. Find a way to reduce the cooking, but still eating a healthy meal.
Diligence: When you are trying to promote or establish a new routine, allow yourself to continue practicing, even if you fall off for one or two days. Come back and allow yourself the ability to start fresh and don’t criticize yourself for falling into old routines. Instead, be happy enough that you realized where you were enough to continue to make changes.
Ask for Help: Sometimes there are multiple #1 priorities and you are just one person. Ego sometimes can get in the way but pull in your resources and know that asking for help is a strength, not a weakness! Seeing you ask for help also encourages other to do the same! Be an inspiration!