6 EASY STEPS TO SAY GOOD BYE TO STRESS

ARE YOU WORKING UNDER STRESS?

Sometimes in life, it becomes difficult to overcome stressful situations. Consider an example of my friend, Sunny. He was extremely tensed & had lot of stress. Why? Because:

1. At job, he was extremely busy with a project in hand. There was tremendous pressure to meet the targets.
2. At home, his teen age son was not performing well in school. His wife wanted him to put some quality time with their son.
3. At social front, he was the Secretary of the Housing Society. The Annual General Election date was approaching fast for which he was to make lot of preparations.

His problem was that he wanted to give his best at all the fronts but was not having enough time. Now tell me friends, how could he avoid stress?

Friends! Are you today passing through a similar situation? Are you too busy to relax? Let us explore, seriously, the possible ways to come out of such situations.

CHRONIC STRESS CAN HARM YOU:

Let us understand what happens when you work under stress:

• Your nervous system releases stress hormones including adrenaline and cortisol.
• Your heart pounds faster, blood pressure and blood glucose levels increases.
• The problem becomes serious when you remain under pressure for a long time. Many people are working under constant stress throughout their life. If you work under stress every day, you will develop risk for heart attack, stroke and hypertension etc.

A brief review of data confirms the seriousness of this problem. According to the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC), 90% of illness and disease is caused by stress. Another survey suggests that about 75 to 90 % of all doctor’s visits are related to stress related issues.

https://www.karinagrant.co.uk/blog/90-of-illness-is-caused-by-stress-according-to-the-us-centre-of-disease-control/

Let us learn to control stress before it takes over you.

DON’T ALLOW MR STRESS TO TAKE CONTROL:

We all know that stress is inevitable, and it is difficult to avoid it. But you have to learn the art of moving ahead without carrying the stress baggage. Let’s understand this with an example.Once I was working with my team on a major national project. When it was about to complete, one of the team members committed a mistake, which pushed us backward. Message went up to PMO and I knew that backfire will take its toll on me as well. And eventually it happened. My boss,whom I really respected a lot,barged into my cabin. He shot his collection of angry words for over 10 minutes. And guess what? I spoke nothing.I just listened with a sorry and pity look. At the end, he asked me why I am not responding. I told him that he,in fact is right. I admitted my mistake. But just imagine, if we both started shouting at each other, the chaos would have happened. So, I took the best way – I kept myself calm and discussed a solution instead, which was already in my mind. Just observe friends,with this approach, I managed to cool down my boss, without getting stressed.

https://thelifeuddeshya.com/journey-of-life-focus-with-enjoyment/

6 STEPS TO AVOID STRESS:

Let us see how you can make your life stress free.

1. Set goals & learn to prioritize.
   1. 1. The first priority should be given to God. While working in a job I did not have time for God. But, then I learnt to pray and meditate. Prayer is something like your positive self-talk. Meditation gives you strength to become a powerful person. This made a great difference in my life.
      2. The next priority goes to family. You should keep time and plan activities for keeping your family happy.
      3. Your current job comes next. You must do your best to give excellent performance in job without getting overburdened.

And finally, you must have goals related to your future growth in current or new areas.                                     

    2. Make action plan and follow it.                                                                 

 If things do not happen as per your plan, don’t panic. Take a break & prepare another plan. Consider a case when our team was working on a project during the Final year of our Engineering. We found that our experiment has failed just 3 days before the exam. But instead of allowing pressure to take on us, we roamed around the whole city singing songs loudly. Then we went to ICH and enjoyed masala dosa and coffee. After relaxing, we coolly planned action and got our project in line before the exam. This happened because we did not allow the situation to take control.

3. Do not play blame games.                                                                     

  Take responsibility. While in job, I used to blame my boss. But then I realized that I have freedom to use my capability in other directions for my personal growth. That changed my life dramatically.

4. Develop a healthy daily routine.                                               

  Remember:

          Early to bed and early to rise,
          Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
     

Put some time for exercise, yoga or running. Learn to practice meditation for some time daily.

Avoid junk food and eat healthy food.
Plan your next day activities before going to sleep.

     5. Enjoy your weekends.

         This is the time when you de stress yourself. Gain physical, mental      and spiritual energy for the upcoming week.

     6. Develop positive relationships.

          This is the most important activity but is most neglected one.          Develop positive relations with family members, friends,             colleagues, boss and business partners. Remember, you have to take      first step to build a positive, healthy and fruitful relation.

TAKE AWAY:

Let us recall the Serenity Prayer written by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:

God, grant me the serenity,
To accept the things that I cannot change,
The courage to change the things that I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer

ESPECIALLY FOR YOU:

• Was this article useful? Feel free to share your experience in the comment box.
• Are you facing any situation in life? Don’t worry. Just send your email id. I will personally contact you.

Dr Lokesh N Rai