Feeling stress at work is the daily routine of almost all workers. This may seem obvious and inevitable since who isn’t going to feel stressed at work? Work is something we are obliged to do, we do not do it for pleasure.
While there are jobs and jobs, all those done in the office are very stressful. It is true that it is normal to sit and not do dangerous activities, but, equally, the pressure of having to meet deliveries can overwhelm us greatly, especially if we are predisposed to neuroticism.
One thing that must be clear to us is that to be a good worker and perform our role well we have to be relaxed. Stress is the enemy of productivity and mental health, which is why today Let’s see some ways to learn how to relax in the office.
No person is immune to stress, and the workplace is the place where there is the greatest chance of becoming stressed. Many people have internalized the idea that this is normal since working is not, at least in most cases, a pleasant activity. This is especially true if we work in an office. Being locked in a claustrophobic cubicle sitting in a chair that makes us shrink in front of the computer is not usually our ideal of pleasure.
Fortunately, There are many things we can do in the office to relax., all of them easily achievable in the workplace. Learning how to relax in the office is essential both for your mental and physical health and for your productivity since, no matter what they say, human beings do not work very well under too much pressure.
People who experience their work in a particularly stressful way sooner or later make mistakes that harm them as well as the rest of their colleagues and bosses, and this is something that no one wants. Below we will see some techniques and tips that we can apply in our office, which are very easy to do and that can help us be more productive.
1. Breathing exercises
The first thing we have to do to keep our stress at bay is learn to control our breathing. Breathing deeply is a classic in any manual for learning to relax, and it is perfectly applicable to the workplace. We just have to close our eyes and breathe as deeply as possible, making sure that the air gradually fills our abdomen. We keep it in our lungs for a few seconds and, little by little, we exhale it very slowly, always through the nose.
We can repeat this exercise a few times, always doing it calmly and slowly to prevent us from hyperventilating. A good guideline is to follow the 4-7-8 rule: inhale the air through your nose for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7, and exhale it very slowly for 8.
2. Good posture
We cannot be relaxed if we are in an uncomfortable position. This is especially important if we spend many hours a day sitting in front of a computer, since as we neglect ourselves we can get stuck in a very unnatural posture, with our back curved and putting too much pressure on the cervical spine. We must make sure that our chair is ergonomic and is set at a height that suits us well for working.
It is essential that we take advantage of the shape of the chair, supporting our back on the backrest and keeping it very straight. To the extent possible, we should support the cervical spine. In this way we will avoid all kinds of physical discomfort such as contractures, headaches or dizziness, in addition to the fact that since we will not be under tension we will not fall into stress while at our workplace.
3. Stretch your arms
Stretching your arms is a technique especially recommended for all those who tend to spend many hours withdrawn. Many people ignore the importance of stretching their arms, which causes them to frequently feel shoulder and wrist pain.
To stretch our arms we don’t need much space or any special material, we can even do it sitting down. We simply have to bring our arms forward, parallel to the ground and with our palms out. The fingers first point to the ceiling and then to the floor. We will rotate our wrists to relax the area a little more.
4. Turn your head
One of the parts that suffers the most when we work in offices is the neck. In order to relax it we can move our head in all directions, always making soft and slow movements, never abruptly. First we move it up and down several times, then right and left, and then with 360º turns to the sides. The important thing is that we notice how we are relaxing the cervical muscles by “removing the dust” after hours of being in the same position..
Another option we have is to place the palm of the right hand over the left ear and gently apply a little pressure towards the right shoulder, stretching the neck a little to the side. Then we will do it with the opposite side, and in each round we will spend between 30 seconds and a minute in this position.
5. Teleport to a colorful world
Staring at a white computer screen all day with the word processor open is tedious, boring and monochromatic. Pleasant colors are rarely abundant in these types of contexts and there comes a time when we begin to see the world in black and white. To break this monotony a little and get happily alienated, we can go from a blank vision with black letters to a multicolored vision by seeing a pleasant and colorful landscape for a few minutes.
For this we can use the visualization technique, which simply consists of closing your eyes and imagining a pleasant landscape, the one that brings us the most inner peace. If we are not very good at imagining things, what we can do is search the Internet for a pleasant photograph such as a field of colorful Dutch tulips, the blue waters of the Caribbean or a traditional Japanese landscape. Let’s imagine that we have teleported there and that we can hear, smell and feel what we are seeing.
6. Relax your eyes
To relax your eyes, it is very important to take them away from the screen, especially after spending several hours in a row looking at the monitor. Constantly active eyes are more likely to dry out and develop pathologies such as infections. This is why it is so important that, even if it is not even 5 minutes, we take them away from the monitor and move them a little.
A good exercise consists of Close your eyelids, drawing the infinity sign (∞) with your eyes about ten times. We can also do it with our eyes open, although we are more likely to get dizzy if we go too fast. This exercise is not very difficult to do and we do not need any material at all, making it a perfect exercise.
7. Listen to music
If we are one of those who do not lose focus when we listen to music, we can try putting it on while we are doing our homework. As long as our boss doesn’t mind us putting on headphones we can listen to our favorite genre of music, which It will make our work go from being stressful to more fun and enjoyable, making the work day fly by..
8. Look out the window
It may be that our office has a window with an interesting landscape, whatever it may be. It may not be much, but this is a lot better than the claustrophobic cubicle we’re stuck in. We can look through it, entertaining ourselves for a while gossiping about what people are doing in the street, what the weather is like, the shape of the clouds, if there are any details in the buildings in front that we hadn’t noticed…
Everything that a simple perspective of something as mundane as the street where our office is located can offer us is so immense that it will never cease to surprise us.. It can even give us some ideas, making our work more creative and enjoyable.
Many people, especially on work days, cannot the WHO recommended goal of taking between 8,000 and 10,000 steps a day. Many will think that those are a lot of steps but, in reality, it does not take more than an hour to do them and they can even be achieved at the workplace, either by walking through the hallways or climbing stairs. When we talk about walking to relax in the office, we are not talking about doing it while talking on the phone or checking your cell phone, but about just walking.
On our walks around work we can visit a colleague who is not too busy, take a closer look at what the building we work in is like, or go have a healthy snack, a glass of water or an infusion. If tea or coffee relaxes us, we can also drink them, but we must keep in mind that these drinks have methylxanthines, substances that can overstimulate us and cause stress.
10. Exercise your legs
We can stand up and briefly exercise our legs. This is necessary because our legs end up getting tired from spending so many hours sitting and not moving, especially if we are in a job where it is difficult to take walks around the company or its surroundings. When standing up we can raise one knee until it forms a 90º angle with respect to the trunk and we remain there for a few seconds. If we don’t have balance problems we can stay like this for about 30 seconds or a minute. Then we repeat the exercise but with the other leg.
11. Meditate
Meditating is also one of the most recommended techniques to relax. However, there is a problem: an office is not a yoga room. The space is smaller and there are more distractions, which will make it very difficult for us to meditate like a Buddhist monk from Tibet. Fortunately, it is not necessary to meet absolutely all the requirements to meditate, as long as we can relax a little in the office. For example, We can stop looking at the screen for about 5 minutes, play music on our cell phone or computer and close our eyes..
12. Take breaks
The good worker is not the one who does not stop for a moment, but rather the one who knows how to manage his time and rests regularly. Many times, something as simple as taking 5 minutes every hour as a short break helps our energies not to fail.. Furthermore, given that it is difficult for us to be focused and attentive for more than 50 minutes, we cannot expect to do our job well if we dedicate ourselves for 3 hours straight without any rest to doing what we are doing. You have to recharge.
