Calm Your Job Environment Stress
By Sharron Stockhausen,
MMA
If you’ve experienced sleepless nights, a queasy feeling when you think about work, or a vague frustration that nags you, you’ve experienced symptoms of work stress.
Each of us has our own point of feeling stressed. Look around your workplace and you’ll see some people thrive on chaos and pressure. Others prefer order as they work. When it comes to stress, work style isn’t important. Understanding that everyone experiences some form of stress whenever a demand is placed upon them is.
When the telephone rings and a customer wants status on an order, you respond. When the boss assigns you a task or project, you begin working on it. When your employee quits, you find a way to fill the void. When your coworker calls in sick, you have to pick up the slack. In each of these cases you’ve had a demand placed on you that creates stress.
Sometimes it’s such a small demand, that we ignore the added pressure. Eventually the small demands build on one another and we begin to get physical, emotional, or even intellectual stress symptoms.
Many of us can relate to physical symptoms such as stiff neck, headache, fatigue, teeth grinding, indigestion, or appetite changes. We can even identify emotional symptoms including nervousness, angry outbursts, anxiety, and increased sensitivity or having our feelings easily hurt.
While physical and emotional symptoms are commonly known, the intellectual symptoms may allude us even though they may be the most telling of all. If you have difficulty making decisions, are confused, forget what you’re doing or why you went into a room, are preoccupied with a single thought or idea, have lost your sense of humor, or are making an increased number of mistakes in your work, you have intellectual stress symptoms.
Rather than recognizing the symptoms for what they are, we laugh them off by saying we’re getting older or we’re too busy. Of course each of us is getting older. And perhaps we are too busy with all the opportunities life offers. But, it’s worth taking the time to look at ourselves honestly to see if we are handling work stress well.
Calming your job stress environment begins with looking at self using an honest eye. First, think about any stress symptoms you have. Next, look around your work environment to see if you can pinpoint what causes you stress. Your stressors may differ from the next person’s because not everyone reacts to every demand the same way. So don’t get hung up on how everyone else is doing.
After you’ve identified your symptoms and what creates them, consider ways to manage your job stress. Notice I used the word manage, not cope. There are many ways to cope with stress. As a nation, we self-medicate with aspirin, antacids, and various other over-the-counter drugs. Those medications help us cope with stress by giving us immediate relief from the symptoms, but they may not be the best choice in helping us manage job stress and alleviate the symptoms all together.
Another way we cope with stress is avoidance. We avoid acknowledging whatever or whomever is creating stress for us. Somehow we think that if we ignore it, it will go away.
If we can’t avoid contact or interaction with what’s bothering us, we may take our frustrations out on someone or something else. I call that the “kick the dog” reaction. Sometimes people pound pillows. Other times they yell at a loved one. When we can’t confront the one who’s causing our stress, we go the easier route of taking it out on those who care about us. Occasionally we take it out on the next customer or coworker who happens by, but that’s less common.
Getting rid of stress isn’t a simple thing, but then most things we want in life aren’t easy to attain. Since we all know we can’t change others, it makes sense to begin eliminating stress by changing self. There are a lot of people who appear to be resistant to change, but I don’t believe they are.
I think people are willing to change and accept change. We do it all the time. We change cars, jobs, houses, wardrobes, and even hobbies. We willingly change when we see some benefit in doing so. The trick, then, is find the benefit in changing yourself.
Try taking a positive approach to life. Smile at others. Be optimistic. Avoid talking negatively and being critical about everyone and everything around you. And especially avoid being critical of yourself. You know you better than anyone else does. You know your shortcomings as well as every mistake you’ve ever made. Forgive yourself your humanness. After all, no one is perfect.
When you give yourself a break you’ll project a positive image of you to others and they will respond. Imagine what it would be like to have people glad to see you heading toward them rather than hope you don’t stop at their work station. Imagine others smiling as they eagerly approach you. It could change your workday tremendously.
Something else you can do to change your relationships with those who create stress in your workplace is be assertive. In my seminar, “Living Between Pushy and Pushover,” I tell people that you cross the line that separates assertiveness and aggressiveness when you intentionally hurt someone or infringe on their rights. Do I mean you should never be aggressive? Absolutely not. It’s fine to be aggressive when you see a child about to chase a ball into the street and into the path of an oncoming car. You should grab the child and yank them from harm’s way. Could you hurt them? Sure. You may not hurt them physically, but you may hurt their feelings. Could you infringe on their rights? I suppose one could say you’d infringe on their right to have their toy at that moment. But I’d rather defend my aggressive action than see a child hurt or worse.
Being assertive simply means taking care of you and your needs without infringing on others. If you need help on a work project, ask for it and be prepared to explain why you need the help. People can’t read your mind and most likely don’t know everything that you know about you, so it’s up to you to find a way to get the resources or help you need to reduce your work stress.
One of my speaking colleagues said in one of his recent presentations that we shouldn’t all take life so seriously since we won’t get out of it alive anyway. The audience laughed, but it’s a profound thought.
Let’s put a perspective on job stress. If I asked you, as I do many of my audiences, what’s really important to you, what would you say? If I had you list the things that you value in life, what would make your list? I’ve been asking audiences and clients to consider what they value in life for over twenty years. Thousands have responded. Always they list family, friends, faith, and honesty. Sometimes they list health. And they never list career and money.
Once I point that out to them, they appear to get a little nervous. Then they start to smile as they realize their jobs aren’t the most valuable thing in their lives. I’m not saying that money and jobs aren’t helpful in assisting us in creating the life we want, in purchasing the homes we have, and in enjoying the people we love. I am saying that my audiences tell me that money and jobs are means to an end. They are not the end.
Creating a peaceful work environment requires getting a perspective on what’s going on. If you’re having a problem with a coworker or client, ask yourself, “Is this really a problem at all?” Perhaps it’s a misunderstanding that can be fixed. Perhaps it’s not worth the energy and time you spend on it (both on and off the job).
If you decide you really do have a problem, ask yourself, “Has anyone else ever had this problem?” Chances are you’ll find someone who has. If you can, talk with them and see how they handled it. If you can’t talk with them, search your resources of books, periodicals, workshops, seminars, or other people for some ideas.
Sometimes you can anticipate stress before it actually happens. For example, you know taxes are due April 15 every year. Rather than wait until April 1 to begin working on them, start earlier in the year to reduce or even avoid the stress that comes with not being able to find what you need as the deadline looms in front of you.
Another way to calm your job stress environment is to reduce uncertainty by getting as much information as you can about whatever is causing you concern. If you’re getting a new software package, go to the training or spend some time with it once it’s installed. If you’re assigned to new work team, learn as much as you can about the rest of the team members and their work preferences. We live in the information age. There’s no reason you have to feel uninformed if you take the initiative to find out as much as you can about whatever is stressing you.
If you can’t find a way to work with others to reduce your stress, concentrate on working with yourself. No matter what your job, you can practice deep breathing exercises. You have to breathe anyway, so don’t worry that you’ll bother someone else when you do the exercises.
You can also try gentle muscle stretches when you sit or stand. Tense your various muscle groups and then relax them. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you feel the difference.
Listen to soothing tapes or CDs. I have some that are all nature sounds, some that are instrumental, and some that combine nature and music. You can find tapes and CDs like mine almost anywhere music is sold.
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