3 Strategies To Manage Work Stress

Managing work stress is a task whose effectiveness is closely related to effective strategies to modulate the intensity of our emotions, when things do not go our way at work. Most people need specific mechanisms to deal with small and large work realities that are conflictive, frustrating, to some extent, and also normal.

Most of the current jobs force us to expose ourselves to a multitude of simultaneous stimuli . Almost everyone feels overloaded with demands. There is pressure to work faster, more productively, and with less conflict. All that pressure creates stress.

This happens almost every day. It is very rare for someone to be able to carry out their work slowly, or to feel that they will be understood if they make a mistake. This alone is stressful. And if we add to this the economic pressure and perhaps the occasional personal problem, the situation can be complex. That is why it is good to know some guidelines to manage work stress. These are three of them.

1. Digest the available information

One of the main reasons for stress is the light interpretation of the facts. When we are under pressure and feel distressed by the imperative to fulfill our duties, we may tend to analyze things without much objectivity. This does not help to manage work stress.

The state of mind influences our perception and vice versa. Under pressure we are given to interpret many stimuli as threatening, when they are not. This occurs especially when we have the solution of a pressing order in hand and a conflictive or problematic event is added to it.

In these conditions, we come to feel that things are getting out of control, or that the situation is overwhelming us. This is when it pays to take a minute to view the facts more coolly. We almost always realize that it was not as bad as we were feeling. Acting quickly and impulsively is not a good idea. It is always better to digest.

2. Avoid mental restrictions to manage work stress

Stress brings out our daily prejudices (stress makes us look for shortcuts to process as much information as possible in the shortest time possible). That “bad vibes” that sometimes invades us and fills us with discomfort. It happens when, for example, we are entrusted with one task and then another. So we say “It’s all up to me to do it.” It is very likely that such claims have no foundation.

The worst thing is that these prejudices only increase the discomfort that we already felt. They prevent us from managing work stress in an adequate way. On the contrary, they increase it. They lead us to victimize ourselves and see potential enemies in others.

Here it is important to stop. Do not allow those mechanical thoughts to take over our reasoning skills and lead us to misrepresent everything, in a way that is self-destructive. It will help us a lot to breathe for a couple of minutes and keep in mind that analyzing at a greater level of depth can help us.

3. Be flexible and know how to relax

Mental rigidity often complicates our lives. Knowing how to live is learning to adapt to different circumstances, without meaning to say that you should not have lines of conduct or predominant principles. Most of the time we do not have to go against ourselves on something essential, but simply give in a little to be more calm.

The usual thing is that the pressure of the environment and the internal tension make us more rigorous and inflexible. It is also a way to defend ourselves, to preserve ourselves and to reaffirm ourselves. Deep down there is a kind of fear of not being able to handle the situation and rigidity becomes a wrong strategy to assume that fear.

To manage work stress in an adequate way it is necessary that we find or design techniques to relax. Any means is valid if it allows us to calm down and, consequently, become more flexible. Many unnecessary conflicts are born from that tension between two realities that seek to occupy a predominant place.

What all these guidelines for managing work stress have in common is that each of them highlights the value of not losing control in the middle of the storm. This is the beginning and the axis of everything else. Unleashing anxiety does not lead us to be better workers, quite the opposite: it makes us anxious people on the brink of conflict or error.