Surely you have ever felt overwhelmed at work or overwhelmed by the amount of work you had to do; or also anguished about your future as a professional, or lost perspective on your career goals by focusing only on short-term pressures.
This phenomenon of anguish and discomfort in the workplace is known as work stress, and it is currently one of the main mental health problems faced by workers around the world.
If you want to learn several of the main keys on how to manage work stress throughout your career in the professional field, keep reading.
Work stress can be caused by multiple causes and some of the following are: an excess of responsibilities that are too high; a low salary; a lack of autonomy; labor conflict or excessively long working hours.
People who have a case of work stress can be affected in different ways, since not everyone experiences the same symptoms. Likewise, there are also various strategies that can be put into practice to overcome what is considered one of the diseases of the 21st century.
If you or someone you know has work stress for any particular reason, in today’s article you can find advice that will be useful to overcome this disorder that affects workers both physically and mentally. Of course, remember that in all cases it is advisable to combine these guidelines with psychotherapy attendance.
Getting organized is the first step to achieve optimal performance in the workplace and therefore to avoid the development of cases of work stress of all kinds that can endanger our psychological health. This involves having a global perspective of the tasks to be performed and what our workspace should be like.
In addition to maintaining a time organization, starting and ending the work day at the same time, it is important to start the day knowing at all times everything we must do.
This can be achieved by writing down in advance all those tasks that we must tackle just before getting to work and all the objectives that we must meet that same day.
2. Set reasonable goals
Furthermore, we must ensure that the objectives we set are objective, reasonable and achievable, so as not to get frustrated if we cannot get them in the marked time.
To achieve this we must analyze what our possibilities are and the capabilities we have in a given time, and based on that, establish objectives that motivate us and that can be achievable, never accepting more tasks than we are capable of undertaking. You have to create optimistic and pessimistic hypotheses to, from these two extremes, get an idea of what we will surely achieve in the coming months.
In this regard, it is always advisable to speak with a superior to determine what the amount of work acceptable to both parties may be.
3. Take a break
Work stress can become chronic and become a serious mental health problem in the future. To prevent this from happening, it is important to take a break to recover and completely heal from this problem.
This break can be for one day or several days as agreed with superiors or clients. The important thing is to disconnect for a while from the source of stress and leave behind the feeling of urgency to see things with perspective.
4. Learn to relax during breaks
There are different activities that we can do to relax, the most common are relaxation techniques that are used in psychology and medicine to achieve states of calm and balance.
Some relaxing activities that we can do in our free time or during breaks are walks, eating a snack or talking to someone who comforts us.
In addition to that, the main relaxation techniques that we can use daily are: conscious breathing, meditation, mindfulness, yoga or progressive muscle relaxation.
5. Set limits
In cases where working conditions are excessive, dangerous or uncomfortable, we must establish limits and communicate to our superiors or managers any problems or disagreements we may have.
In addition to that, it is also important to establish limits regarding the use of social networks and make it clear that We will not be available 24 hours a day at work allowing us to leave our cell phone or any electronic device during our rest hours.
6. Identify sources of stress
Identifying the sources of stress or the causes that cause us anguish, fear or work stress is essential to begin to overcome our problem.
Once we have identified the causes that cause us stress, we can work personally or with the help of psychology professionals to increasingly reduce stress symptoms.
Learning to delegate tasks is essential to avoid possible cases of work overload and consequently cases of work stress.
Delegating means that we can transfer some of the accessory tasks that are entrusted to us to other colleagues or intermediate positions so that we can focus on more important or central tasks.
8. Communication is key
As indicated, meeting with our boss to discuss those sources of stress that may be hindering our productivity can be of great help to be more relaxed and prevent later problems.
The interest of each boss is that his employees are as comfortable as possible in the company, for that reason it is interesting share, whenever needed, any problem we may have in our workplace and seek joint solutions with our superiors.
9. Follow healthy routines
Some healthy activities that we can do during the week before or after work can be: playing sports, going out with friends, walking, being in contact with nature or reading and doing another favorite activity.
The important thing is to do what fills us and makes us happy, and at the same time can calm us down and make us feel less stressed.
10. Create a clear job description
In cases in which we may doubt our powers, functions or our role in the organization no company, we can write a detailed description of our job.
This will help us clarify what our functions are and know at every hour of our day what we should do at any time.
