In our busy and hectic life, who doesn’t feel stressed at times or all of the time? We have got a lot of plates up in the air and we’re running from one place to another trying to let not one fall down. Is this healthy? Probably not….

Stress as such is not a bad thing. We all need some level of stress in certain situations but it gets bad when we’re in a continuous state of stress. 

What is stress actually?   

It’s the response of our body to a dangerous situation.  It will activate the fight or flight response and will shut off the bloodstream towards non-important processes in the body such as digestion. It will pump blood towards the limbs so we have enough power to run away or fight the situation. The body also releases cortisol, also known as the stress hormone. When the situation is over, the body gets back to its normal state, called homeostasis. 

Now we used to have real dangers like being chased by a T-rex. These kind of challenges we don’t have anymore but nowadays we create dangerous situations in our mind. The brain does not differentiate between being in front of the T-rex or the thought of being in front of it. The brain doesn’t know either if you’re stressing out because of a real danger or because your mother-in-law is upsetting you or any nasty co-worker, or maybe you have a too big workload etc, because it perceives it the same way.

Common causes of excessive workplace stress

• Fear of being laid off
• Overtime due to staff cutbacks
• Pressure to perform 
• Low job satisfaction
• Pressure to work at optimum levels – all the time!
• Too big of a workload

The body can only handle a certain amount of stress and then it has to return to its natural relaxed state. If this doesn’t happen, disease will step in and this can manifest itself in oh so many ways.

Some of them are: feeling anxious, irritable, depressed. You sleep bad, you’re tired all of the time. It costs you a lot to concentrate. You might have headaches, stomach problems, low sexdrive and so on. 

As you can see it’s not something we want to work towards, so how to cope with it?

First, work on your perception. Two people can be in the same situation but one gets totally freaked out and the other person takes care of the issue and solves it. The situation is the same, the reaction totally different.

Then there are some tricks to set you up to deal better with stress.

For example:

• Prioritize and organize
• Look at your habits and replace the bad ones that bring you in a state of stress
• Take care of yourself, physically and mentally
• Don’t live in the past or the future
• Don’t assume but get facts
• Recognize your state and change your thought pattern
• Meditate and practice gratitude

The last one was a game changer for me personally. I love to meditate and I do it twice a day whenever I can. Then I practice gratitude also on a daily basis.

Maybe meditation or gratitude doesn’t sound really corporate and a lot of people think it’s all hippie-chippie, but science has proven time and again that these two things bring a lot of advantages.

Too much to mention so I will write a different blogpost about this soon.

Wanna learn how to get your stress tamed? 😉

Get on a call/skype with me and we will figure it out!

With love and health,

Monique