Downsize Your Work Stress
Where there’s work, there’s stress.
Deadlines, meetings on top of meetings, difficult boss, unpleasant coworkers, they all can put a little stress in your life. Try incorporating these changes into your day to help remedy work stress.
1. Don’t Bring the Ring
Designate a chunk of your day to interruption-free time. Turn off the cell phone, mute the ringer on your landline, and log out of email. The silence will be sweet music to your ears.
2. Go Out to Lunch
Instead of grabbing a snack from the vending machine and working through lunch, take a break. Give your mind a rest and your body a chance to refuel.
3. Manage Your Time
If you give up your free time to get work done, you might pay for it with stress-related symptoms such as an upset stomach, backache, or headache. Schedule your work time to get your regular work done, plus handle any unplanned projects that might crop up. Then be just as vigilant toward planning in free time.
4. Get Physical
Exercise can help alleviate stress and it doesn’t have to be strenuous. Think you don’t have time to exercise? Yoga at your desk can make a difference. Light yoga exercise and meditation can do the job. It will help to relax the mind and energize the body.
5. Talk It Out
Find a friend to laugh, cry, and complain with, but preferably not a co- worker. It’s hard to carry the burden of your feelings all by yourself. You will feel lighter by unloading some of your concerns with others you trust.
6. Learn to Say “No.”
Most of us want to be a nice guy, but sometimes enough is enough. If you don’t have time to do something, speak up. Don’t commit because you feel you have to help others. Learn to say “no.” Listen to your feelings. If it feels like a burden to you, it probably is. Say, it will take time, but you can do it.
Guru Ranjit, founder of Charlotte Meditation, offers individual and corporate wellness programs and yoga therapy in Charlotte. His holistic health programs use the Ayurvedic diet/lifestyle and meditation to restore balance.