Question:- How to deal with stress at work?
Payal's response:
Stress has become such a common word in our workplace and it seems as if it has taken a permanent place in our life. We are in an age today where corporates are giving us the best of the benefits and the ease to do our work, so everything seems to have improved with technology and with the way we are moving ahead. Even though everything has improved in our life, stress seems to have only increased. This indicates that stress is not because of a particular situation because I believe that a situation has no power to make you stressed, you have the power to decide whether the situation is going to be stressful or not.
Stress is not because of your work or your boss or economy, etc. Stress is not because of all that. Think about a day when your boss was absent or a day when work was relaxed and wasn't too heavy and yet you are stressed which means that all these factors are secondary and are not the primary reason for your stress. The primary reason for our stress in our work life is our own inability. As leaders, it is our inability to manage, to manage our emotions, thought process, energy, responses, reactions, actions, etc.
As leaders, we love to set goals and we love to move towards achieving them, and that's great. The problem is that we start to get so hooked on to the outcome that we get ourselves into the cycle of what-ifs? What-ifs are detrimental to your success because it distracts you and robs you of your concentration in your present work and it takes you away from there and makes you think of things that may or may not happen.
I think that if we can manage our outcomes, it will be much easier to manage our stress and for this, I always recommend being like a river. You see when a river starts to flow, it just flows, it does not think of the what if's, what if there are mountains on the way, what if there are rocks and stones, etc. it does not think of that, it just starts to flow and it reaches its destination and it knows the goal that it has to achieve. So you got to be like that river, once you have decided what your goal is, you have got to keep flowing, you don't have to bother about the what-ifs and don't hook yourself to the outcomes. Definitely look at the outcome and work on the outcome but do not get yourself so closely attached to it that it gets you stuck and does not let you progress ahead.
Another way which could really help you in dealing with the stress at your workplace is to talk to yourself, is to spend time with yourself, something that we leaders have forgotten long back. We get so busy moving ahead, achieving our goals, and moving ahead with our meetings and day-to-day work, and moving from one client to another that we are left with absolutely no time to spend with ourselves.
Swami Vivekananda said that “Talk to yourself at least once in a day. Otherwise, you may miss a meeting with an excellent person.”
So talk with yourself and spend time with yourself, it really helps you ease out so many of the things and problems that you may be facing.
What we should remember here is that a person who cannot manage themselves is always going to be stressful regardless of their situation. We all need to work on managing ourselves and once we can do that, stress will manage itself. Start to flow like a river, don't worry about the what-ifs, don't get hooked onto the outcomes that distract you from your present, and start to talk to yourself and I think all this will help you manage yourself and stress will be taken care of once you manage yourself.
Hope this is of much value to you in your journey to success.
Your Friend + Mentor
Payal Nanjiani
Do you have leadership challenges right now? #ASKPAYAL your burning leadership questions.
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