Important Question
Are stresses on the job holding back your performance? Do you know how to attack work-related stress?
Sometimes, without warning, suddenly you become immobile in the middle of a work assignment or a project. You don’t where it came from or know what to do or how to move ahead. Your mind is locked tight and thoughts circle the drain, anticipating your inevitable defeat. It’s simply a matter of time until your co-workers and your supervisor realize you have failed and toss around blame.
Stress has a way of wrecking everything about your workday. Being in the moment and aware of what you are doing, and not overwhelmed by what’s going on around you though, can be a quick, easy way to get things back on track.
7 Ways to Attack Work-Related Stress
Below are 7 suggested ways to attack work-related stress and put some space between you and your reactions by analyzing and interrupting your feeling of stress.
- Stay in the Moment
- Find Your Emotions
- Attack Your Stress with Normalcy
- Look for Patterns
- Redirect Your Focus
- Allow Your Emotions to Take their Course
- Reverse Your Approach
Review Each Way to Attack Work-related Stress
Let us review each of the 7 actionable strategies to attack work-related stress to see if you can conquer some of the concerns that may hold back your performance, your health, or even your career.
1. Stay in the Moment
You begin by taking a step back to examine the stressful thought, starting with the acceptance of the thought itself. This is the foundation of being aware. Trying to ignore the stress only diminishes your ability to deal with the situation. By giving the thought your attention, and then placing a label on it, you diminish the control it has over you and you begin to power away from it. For example, if you are worried about how your performance will affect your appraisal and whether you will receive a raise, you might start by telling yourself, “Yes, I am worried about how my boss perceives my value and whether that will hold back my career.”
2. Find Your Emotions
Once you have labeled your worries, identify the emotion accompanying them. Once you have got this, ask yourself candidly, what do your emotions make you feel like doing?
3. Attack Your Stress with Normalcy
Instead of avoiding the worry, pay mindful attention to it and remind yourself this worry is normal. Do this every time it comes up. Eventually, it will seem less threatening.
4. Look for Patterns
Do these worries creep up at certain times? Using mindfulness means you’re paying attention to your thoughts in the moment. Understanding your triggers is a great way to keep the worrying thought from happening at all, as you’ll find yourself catching those damaging thoughts much faster and will be able to shut them down that much faster.
5. Redirect Your Focus
With mindfulness, you are very much aware of the stresses as soon as they begin. This also means you’re capable of taking control of those thoughts and redirect them toward something else immediately, putting your attention there instead.
6. Allow Your Emotions to Take their Course
Stress comes with a hatful of negative emotions. Mindfulness means you’re aware of what you’re feeling right now. If you discover yourself succumbing io fear and anxiety coupled with worry, let these emotions occur naturally. Watch them as if from a distance, as it were. Rather than try to smother them, allow them to dissipate naturally rather than intensify by trying to fight them off.
7. Reverse Your Approach
Worried about taking on a new project or moving to a higher profile position? Rather than avoid it, try it anyway. By reacting with positive activity to worries you know are irrational, more frequently than not, you will discover you really had nothing to stress about in the first place. A word of caution? Sometimes worry is there for a good reason. Be careful which stresses you challenge.
Conclusion
Remember, the whole point of being conscious of your actions and reactions when you feel frozen is to be in the moment and pay very close attention to what’s going on both internally and externally. Stress really does not bear up under such close scrutiny. The act of simply paying attention will change your situation and reaction meaningly.
Flexicrew Support
Do not let the strain to fill an important position or difficulty of finding qualified workers be one of your work pressures.
If you need help planning for your balanced workforce this year, let Flexicrew help. Test us and see if we can attack work-related stress with a flexible workforce model.