The modern way of life can take a heavy toll on our emotional, physical, and psychological well-being. Between a hectic work environment and a fast-paced personal life, finding your sense of calm and reinstituting homeostasis in your mind, body, and soul can become quite a challenge. But it is doable, and there are concrete ways to achieve a stress-free life.
There is no single solution for beating work-related stress, but rather a series of steps you should take in order to determine the cause and level of stress, start organizing your life, and finally, distance yourself from stress triggers. Here are the five steps for stress management, and how you can fall back in love with your career, and your life as a whole.
Put the big picture into focus
What is “the big picture”? In a nutshell, this picture portrays your professional and personal life, your dreams and aspirations, your key motivators, but also your key stress triggers and obstacles that might be hindering your progress. So essentially, observing the big picture means discovering pain points, recognizing the positives, and coming up with a concrete action plan using a bird’s-eye perspective.
You can achieve this in several ways, but putting everything on paper is a tried-and-tested method that can help you make the process more efficient. Start by listing the things at work that make you uncomfortable and generally cause you stress. Next, note down your key motivators and long-term professional aspirations. The first list will help you identify the stress triggers you need to eliminate, and the second one will help you keep your eyes on the prize and retain a positive mindset.
Care for your pores: stress is more than skin-deep
If skincare is the last thing on your mind when you’re feeling overwhelmed in life, you’re not alone, but you’re also not in the right. As your largest organ that gets the most exposure to harmful environmental effects such as sun’s radiation, harsh winds, and sweltering heat, your skin also feels all the hormonal changes and the emotional turmoil that you go through due to stress.
When you see dry patches, zits popping up, or start getting itchy rashes, the damage has already been done, which will in turn only lead to more stress. To prevent such situations, build a skincare regime that will de-stress your pores: from using an active hydration serum to keep those stress wrinkles at bay, to soothing facial washes and nourishing oils, your skin will appreciate the effort. Only with a prevention system such as this one can you truly focus on banishing stress altogether!
Don’t be a multi-tasker
You should have heard by now that multitasking is a thing of an inefficient past. It used to be that people were praised for their seemingly effortless ability to concentrate on numerous tasks simultaneously, until it was discovered that multitasking makes you mediocre at everything and can actually cause unnecessary stress.
In order to beat stress at work and build a positive mindset, you should forget about multitasking and instead strive to lead a more organized and streamlined lifestyle. Meticulous organization and spending adequate time on one task at a time will always prevail over multitasking, so do your best to build a schedule that lets you focus on one task at a time, and you can use various apps to limit distractions and keep track of your success.
Clear your mind, cleanse your soul
Everyone needs a break once in a while. When stress accumulates in your body and mind over weeks and months, though, a one-hour lunch break at the park simply won’t do. You need to escape to a place of complete silence and solitude, to find a safe haven where you can clear you mind and cleanse your soul, and just be yourself.
This can be a physical place you like to visit such as a lake or a forest cabin, or it can be a place in your mind that you have built on the foundation of creativity and imagination. Whether you get there via car or meditation, be sure to find a place that truly inspires you to be yourself.
Maintain a positive relationship with your work environment
Lastly, it’s nearly impossible for a mind to thrive in a toxic or negative work environment. You might not like all of your colleagues, but it would do you good to build positive relationships with every person in your office nonetheless. This will allow positive emotions to permeate your work environment, and force negativity to dissipate into the unknown.
Work-related stress is a serious issue the majority of the modern workforce suffers from, but no matter how prevailing it might be, that doesn’t mean that you cannot rise above it and banish it for good. Follow these essential steps, and you will have paved the road to a stress-free future imbued with health and happiness.
