Dealing with Personal Stress—YIKES!!!

Stress? What stress? Me? Doesn't everyone want to pull out their hair? Sound familiar? Some people deal with stress better than others. WE ALL HAVE STRESS. The key is how we cope with it. Personally, I like to re-frame it and seek to find a positive in the situation; I admit, some situations are easier than others, but you improve with time.

Emotional Balance Aim to take a step back and reflect on everything you hear, say and do in a positive way. Focus your thinking on the positive and stop focusing on the negative. Take time and effort to practice and recognize that a much more balanced emotional regime is possible with patience and concentration. Avoid bottling up your emotions or staying angry or annoyed for a long period of time. Concentrate on cooling down quickly or deflecting your thinking onto something pleasant.

Work Life Reflect on how important your work is in your life. Look to re-balance your life to help you relax and enjoy yourself more inside and outside work. If you think it is helpful, look at changing the way you work, your job, or even your organization to take on work that you would enjoy more. Volunteer for new tasks or projects that help to increase your job enrichment.

Predisposition Schedule more personal time to relax, reflect, think, and pursue gentle recreation. Try not to fill up your day with as many activities, targets, and priorities. Look to avoid pushing yourself toward goals and deadlines so often. Plan this different and slower approach into your day until it becomes more natural for you.

Physical Fitness Talk to your doctor and with his/her help, design a fitness regime that slowly builds exercise into every day and builds up a little over time. If you find exercise boring, take up a sport or recreational activity that you would enjoy. Avoid actions or habits that are detrimental to your health like smoking or excesses of alcohol. Take time to stretch, flex, walk, breath in fresh air, and other short duration activities that can help keep you healthy.

Nutrition and Diet Talk to your doctor or a nutritionist (or at least get a book on healthy eating or diet). Slowly and gently start to change the balance of what you eat away from fats, oils, sugars, salt, etc. Move toward more fiber, protein, vitamins, balanced minerals, and water in your diet. Minimize your intake of the more problematic foods like red meat, fats, or sugar.

Emotional Habits and Control Take some time out to engage in some deep personal thinking about who you are and what you want out of life. Make some firm decisions about your needs and how you are going to approach situations in an even-tempered way and stay completely in control. Learn how to say "no" in a friendly but firm way to keep your workload sensible but balanced. Reward yourself when you achieve a milestone or target that you set yourself to attain. Become more comfortable in opening up your emotions to others.

Feel Better? I know I do after reading this article over and over. The 'fitness and food' are my challenges. How about you?

If your organization is looking for skills training for employees, Look at our selection of workshops. They are cafeteria style; pick the sessions you feel are most relevant for your organization. Then, give us a call.