Tips to reduce or avoid stress at work. Stress in life and therefore in the work situation is inevitable. Stress depends on many factors, both personal and environmental. Stressful situations at work can differ per company or institution and depend on, for example, the type of work, the organizational structure, the way management is provided, the atmosphere, etc. Tips for what you can do yourself to reduce or avoid work stress can be found here. you can read in this article.
Work Stress
Work stress . Various factors play a role in work stress and stress in general, both personal factors and stressful situations and (private) events, which of course also have an impact on your work situation. Information about this can be found in personality and stress and stressful events respectively.
Furthermore, there are of course a number of stress factors that have to do with the organizational structure, the type of work you do, the overall atmosphere of the company or the institution where you work, etc. The tips below are aimed at what you need to do apart from these factors. you can do yourself to reduce your stress, by looking for solution options in a structured way and actually tackling them. The tips below may seem like a bit of a kick in, they don’t sound spectacular and they won’t be new to you. However, they will actually be able to help if you really take the procedure below seriously. These tips not only help with work stress, but often also apply to other situations where there is a problem, or a situation that requires a solution or making a choice or difficult decision. This structure is also recommended or applied in various forms of therapy.
Tips to Reduce Work Stress
The tips below provide more insight into and control over problems, stress or stressful situations.
Make a list of causes of stress at work
Overview of stressors. Make a list or a kind of diary of the problems or stress you experience at work. It may not seem useful to write or type it, ‘because you know it all anyway’. Still, putting it on paper makes a big difference. A clear and well-formulated problem is already a step towards the solution. It is important to gain a good insight into the essential causes of stress or your feeling of stress. What exactly makes you upset, what exactly causes stress, in what situations? Is there a pattern or common thread? As a possible aid to your personal inventory of causes of stress (stressors), you can also find information about stressors that generally play an important role in the development of stress in stressors and causes of stress at work.
Turn the list into a Top 5 of most important causes
Key stressors . From the points written down, select a top 5 of the most important stress factors at your work. Identify the biggest problems. In general, these are the things that you worry about the most or that are on your mind or frustrating aspects that you get excited about and that keep coming back. At this stage, do not concern yourself with a ‘blame question’ as to whether this is the case through your own part or actions or not.
Brainstorming – Come up with as many solutions to the problem as possible
Brainstorming . Brainstorming is a process that most people often skip. People often go around in circles with annoyance, without coming up with a solution at all, or they think of only one possible solution too quickly. It is important when brainstorming not to think too quickly that there are no good solutions. In this phase you should not yet judge any possible solutions on their value: ,I just don’t write this down, because it won’t work anyway,. You can think of the image of a pyramid and use the style of ‘pyramid thinking’. This means: first think from a broad base and, while eliminating, you focus your thinking towards a top. This is what brainstorming essentially is or should be. So also write down solutions on the list that initially seem absurd or unrealistic, such as resigning or looking for another job, etc. These are conceivable solutions.
Choose a solution and actually tackle it
Tackle . This too may sound like too simple or a door kicked open. It is remarkable, however, that many people do not achieve this at all in practice. For example, you have known for a long time that you should talk to your boss or a colleague to resolve a conflict, but you keep not doing so. You become grumpy, complaining, against the grain, etc. And this only makes the problem and the stress worse. Another example. You have known for a long time that you should start half an hour earlier every day for a week, in order to fundamentally organize the chaos before everyone else arrives, but it doesn’t happen. Do you recognize these examples or something similar?
Remember, there are actually two options at heart. Either the problem tackles you or you tackle the problem…! It is not difficult to guess which of the options will lead to the most stress.
Try to become aware of and gain insight into your coping style when it comes to problems and stress at work, see work and stress coping and also when dealing with conflicts in general (see dealing with conflicts, conflict test).
Accept the aspects that are truly unavoidable
Accept . There are aspects that are unavoidable in a certain work situation or inherent to a certain profession and you will have to accept them. A bus driver who becomes stressed by heavy traffic and broken roads, which he personally cannot do anything about or something that he cannot tackle or solve, will either have to accept this or choose another profession. Accepting actually means letting go of the frustration about it as much as possible. You will see if you make a conscious choice about this, it will be placed in a different place. Even if it’s just because you’ve considered it and made a conscious choice, instead of letting it run its course and feeling like it’s all happening to you.
Other work situation . You may also discover that you may have ended up in a job or work situation that is unsuitable for you (see stress in professions). Although it is of course not that easy to leave the safety of your current job, if you really experience too much stress and are in danger of breaking down, other work is the best option. And while it may be a bit scary to switch jobs (or professions), it’s worth remembering that we (generally) spend most of our lives at work. This means that if there is too much stress, you will be wasting most of your time and life. Which in itself is also a reason for stress and so the vicious circle continues if you do not break it yourself.