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Chaos can fuel stress awareness at work
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"Take a deep breath and count to three," I told a colleague who stormed into my office with a justifiable complaint about her manager. She answered, "It's about respect, she's not even giving me her ear." Listening to her rundown of what had occurred, I suggested she speak with her manager after she blew off some steam to diffuse her anger.
It was one of those final-straw episodes where someones ego was about to be eviscerated. No telling at this point who'd be going down this time in an ongoing conflict between two strong personalities, which had erupted a number of times. After work however, these two well-mannered conscious beings talked things out. But it took that moment of chaos to address what had been months in the making; an ego battle which refused to die between two stressed-out talented colleagues who were also friends.
Sometimes the pinnacle of a chaotic episode triggers change for the better. In this case a stressful situation had been brewing for some time and these two colleagues chose to handle it in a polite manner. Most inspirational or leadership philosophies teach us to look at the chaotic challenges around us at work and in business, as for opportunities for growth. But let's take it a step further and look at them as opportunities to identify what triggers stress in our lives - and raise our "stress awareness" at work to better tackle it.
As you likely know, April is Stress Awareness Month. It's time for spring cleaning, so it's a good time to detox our working and business lives. I wrote about this in my post, Work/Life Detox helps to Cultivate Resilience. Here are a few ways to first identify the stressful elements so you can detox and face them head-on. It's an opportunity to form some new healthy habits around managing stress.
- WorkLife Flexibility Patterns: Keep a daily log of the places where your working situation intersects with your family needs. Examine the conflicts that arise and your solutions to them. Is there a plan B in place when things don't go as planned? It may be as simple as adapting new protocol to getting the kids off to school, helping them with homework or making arrangements to come to work earlier - to leave later. If your work/life flexibility practices are causing you stress, is there a solution that you and management can agree upon?
- Working Relationships: Do an inventory of your relationships at work or in business. Have any of them reached a boiling point? Grab a piece of paper and draw two columns. In the first column write down the names of the colleagues who you find to be most supportive at work. These are the people who you view as generally positive and energizing. In the second column, write down the names of the people who are not positively contributing to your working experience. Everyone has a bad day, but you'll start to see patterns. Consider the people in column two. Are any of those relationships triggering stress for you? Only you can decide if that particular relationship needs work on your part, or whether you should simply detach as best as you can.
- Work/Life Burnout: Many of us are burning the midnight oil to keep our jobs, or stand out in a challenging job market. There is an enormous amount of pressure to perform and produce efficiently. If the chaos of burnout is ignored it can lead to health issues. Keep a running log of your working hours and then examine them at the end of the week. Are you working more hours on certain days than others? If so, try to identify the days which appear to be most stressful and for what reasons. Try to schedule some downtime on particular days or at particular times throughout the day that are less chaotic, to help alleviate stress.
- Information Vigilance: We're bombarded by many mediums of information. Too much information can trigger stress. Sometimes we get caught in the loop of surfing the Internet or having to answer every email the moment it comes in. The e-mails count can be overwhelming and cause stress because we're now living in a real time climate of instant gratification. Our clients and colleagues expect immediate responses. If you commit to checking and responding to e-mail that are not time sensitive - just a few times a day - be sure to let your clients and colleagues know of your patterns if you make a radical departure from the way you used to do things.
Huffington Post: Men and Women deal with Stress Differently
Reuters UK: Worker's Tune out Stress with Music
USA today: Donna Karan makes Room for Yoga at NYC Hospital
The U-S Government: A mental health guide to get through Recession Stress
The Evening Star, U-K: Workplace Stress in Spotlight
Tampa Bay: Walking to Reduce Stress
CBC News, Canada: Good Health is Good Business
The Guardian, U-K: Workplace Stress Management
