Managing Stress Tips | Dealing With Stress | Stress Reducer Tips

Posts Tagged ‘source of stress’

Work related stress probably contributes the most to stress these days since such a lot of our time is taken up by the world of work. Various sets of circumstances that are work related have been identified as being stressful. These include, for example, taking on a new role at work or changing jobs, losing your job, partner starts a new job.

All of these are easily identifiable, however, it is the insidious continuous stress-inducing events that is not mentioned on the scale that seems to be a major source of stress today. Examples are:
- Overwork : Too many of us take on too much responsibilities, either through choice (Personality Type A) or through major changes in the place of work such as ‘downsizing’, and slowing down of the economy. Lots of organizations, when the economy gets tough, save money through making people redundant. What this often means in practice is that the same amount of work needs to be done with less people. Often the staff who remain get saddled with the responsibility of doing their own, as well as their deposed colleague’s work. In fear of losing their own jobs, they often just knuckle under and start doing the extra work without complaining.
- Technological advances in the workplace: Technology is advancing at a rapid pace and new technological equipment and tools are deployed in the workplace on an almost daily basis. The employee is expected to keep up but lots of people are just not technically inclined and this leads to technostress - the inability to cope with technological changes in the workplace.
- Too much information. We are living in an information age, and the focus of the workplace is changing to working with information. A large portion of this is linked to the way that we can now access information in volumes unheard of previously. This volume of information is not necessarily a good thing since it places a strain on our abilities to process the information. Each piece of information such as a news bulletin, an advertisement, an email, a voicemail, a telephone call, an SMS, an Instant Message - all of these pieces of information must be assessed, processed and acted upon. This is placing a tremendous amount of strain on us with regards to the amount of time that we have available to get things done in day. Every piece of information that we need to process makes a demand on our time and interrupts out train of thought. Trying to do too many things at the same time is a typical symptom of extreme Type A type personality behavior, but frankly, with the way that our world is structured, it is difficult to avoid that. You get bombarded with pieces of information wherever you go - in the train and in the bus and driving to work you might listen to the news on the radio, be bombarded with giant advertisements adorning the sides of the roads, the sides of buildings and inside shop windows advertising new products and services, see a couple of TV commercials and news bulletins while waiting in a queue for coffee or in the bank, deal with two or three urgent phone calls that came through while you were traveling, as well as a couple of SMS messages informing you of a meeting that has been scheduled urgently that you need to attend. That is why one of the stress management techniques that can be applied is to limit yourself to the amount of information that you need to handle!
- Travel and commuting - not all of us can afford to live close to our places of work and some of us have to travel long hours to get to work. It can be tremendously frustrating to spend a couple of hours per day just traveling in adverse conditions - whether that be crammed together like sardines in stuffy and hot underground trains, or sitting in your car in a traffic jam with no end in site, knowing all the while that your kids are waiting to be fetched, the supper still needs to be prepared and you will have even less time for yourself.

Related posts

• Stress caused by rates of change (0)
• Managing Stress Tip - Just say ‘No’ (0)
• Stress Puppy or Relaxed Cat? (0)
• Stress caused by finances (0)

One of the biggest causes of stress is not having enough time to do everything that you are responsible for - or that you feel you are responsible for.

The problem is that some people, especially if your personality type is such that you are a ‘people pleaser’, or if you have a slightly low self-image and therefore crave the approval of other people, just cannot say ‘no’.

This could range from anything from favors asked by relatives - to babysit your awful nieces and nephews, or to act as taxi for your old aunt Edna and take her shopping for hours; to extra work dumped on you by your boss or by your co-workers.

This can lead to a major source of stress. You might feel taken advantage of, and the extra tasks might just be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, so to speak.

It is essential that you take a good look at the factors that are causing you stress, and if lack of time, or the feeling of being drained due to constantly having to pander to the demands of family and friends, are contributing to you feeling stressed, you just have to learn how to say no.

The funny thing is that you really do NOT need to explain your reasons, however, if you feel a bit daunted and feel that it would be incredibly rude to just say no outright, you could possibly try by saying that you cannot do XYZ right now, but you will think about it. That is a nice polite way of dodging the issue. The problem of course is that it has not really gone away and the persistent family member might just take you up on the ‘later’ bit, however, just be consistent and persistent in saying ‘no’ and they will soon get the message.

This might sound harsh, and believe me, I sometimes have difficulty in following my own advice, but lack of time and being over-committed on tasks are the major contributors to MY stress levels and mentally I realize that saying ‘no’ is one of the best ways of reducing stress levels.

Come on, be a bit selfish. It might just be the best thing for you to do sometimes.

Related posts

• Work related stress (0)
• Stress Management And Health (0)
• Managing Stress Tips (0)
• Good stress and bad stress (0)
• Eliminate Stress (0)