You work hard and smart in ensuring that your company is running like a well-oiled machine. You hustle to close those big deals because you know those will take your business to the next level. You survive through 5-minute lunch and 3-hour sleep, building your dream business. You even sacrifice your personal life and skip that daily exercise and school recitals of your kids.
All for the sake of the bright future ahead of you, when you’ve (finally) succeeded in building a multi-million-dollar business.
But suddenly, things aren’t going too well. Why? Because you’re sick. Eventually, you’re hospitalized. The cause? Work stress. Lucky for you, you survived the worse impact of stress. It’s time for you to change direction – pronto.
Control your work stress – not vice versa
You see, stress is no joke. It can paralyze you from making proper decisions. It makes sufferers impulsive and careless. Left unmanaged, stress can make you feel like you’re straight up going to die causing alarming physical, as well as devastating mental symptoms.
Once this evil moves into your head, it’s like a bad tenant with a penchant for destroying your property; on who refuses to pay rent and simply will not leave until you spend months in court getting them evicted.
Eventually, stress and everything that comes with hit can destroy everything that you care about: your personal life, family, career and business. It’s time to step up your game: Not only hustling to get more business for your company, but you must also hustling to beat stress out of your life.
Fortunately, it’s never too late. You’re reading this for a reason, and hopefully you take action – today, not tomorrow.
Ways to manage your work stress level
Here’s a few great ways to help manage your stress levels before they become a disrupting force in your personal and business life:
1. Stop viewing stressful thoughts and feelings as temporary
Oh how I’ve tried to use these and many other delusional mantras so many times:
“I just have a million things to do right now.”
“This too shall pass.”
“This time it was just bad luck.”
“It’s not my fault, it’s so and so’s.”
These might not be the best examples of the different ways you might try to punt off stressful circumstances and feelings you have as just a passing phase in your otherwise trouble-free existence. If you have any good ones to share, I’d love to get a dialogue going in the comments so we can help other readers to see they’re not the only ones who engage in this very unhelpful coping mechanism.
Just realize that, like all other problems that crop up in life, you can’t run away from work stress. If you find yourself locked in front of the tube every night with a racing heartbeat and hammering back a pound of chocolate (or something far worse for you), it’s not temporary and will continue to build until you get to the core of what’s really eating at you.
2. Stick to the present tense
This may not apply to all who read it, but I have a pretty good feeling it does to most. The kind of many of us stress the most about, that can really set you back in life, is often the kind that you really can’t do much of anything about. Dwelling on past events that have long since past and/or worrying about that which has yet to happen.
When you allow your mind to time-travel things can get so overwhelming that your brain just isn’t up for dealing with the things you can actually do something about, such as work and family issues. Stay ever-present and watch that veil of unhappiness and uncertainty melt away.
3. Create a social life that de-stresses
I’m not going to lie, this one isn’t easy. Friends, families, enemies – all knowingly and unknowingly seek to make your life evermore hectic. The real key here is to try to at least balance the good with the bad. For instance, you can’t very well disown a family member because the only thing they add to your life is higher blood pressure. But you can limit your time with them.
4. Enemies? Ignore them
Removing negative influences from our life is often simpler than we all think. Adding in positives is even easier. Join a book club, playing volleyball at the community center, volunteering your time with children or at an animal shelter. There are tons of options here.
5. Eliminate unhealthy stress-management crutches
Sugar, alcohol, drugs, smoking, over-eating, over-sleeping, anger and more, are all unhealthy ways to manage ever-growing stress levels. Anything that gives you temporary relief, covering up anxious thoughts and physical symptoms for a few short hours or days will only lead to a more stressed out you in the end.
Get rid of anything that damages the body or soul and find new outlets. Learn how to reframe problems in your mind so they don’t get your blood pressure up.
6. Find a counseling center in your area
We’ve never been so lucky as we are in this day and age when it comes to finding professionals to talk to about the stressors weighing us down in life. The things that modern medicine understands about stress; how it begins, how it builds and effective coping strategies, are many.
The first step is to tell your family doctor that your stress levels are beginning to wear you down and that you want to talk to someone. They can then refer you to a stress management professional and get the ball rolling in the right direction. The process isn’t complicated. Generally, they’ll sit down with you for a consultation, ask you several questions and determine the level of help you need.
Never accept defeat!
Occasional stressful periods in your life, such as a lost loved one, impending birth of a child, upcoming marriage, starting a new business, etc., can often be dealt with on your own. When battling this mighty demon that lives inside you, the worst thing you can do is to sit back and just deal with or to ignore it.
Once it begins to build and manifest itself in uncontrollable or hard-to-control physical and mental symptoms like high blood pressure, chest pains, irrational fear, dizziness, fainting, racing thoughts, and others, it’s important that you be willing to step back, analyze your situation and formulate a game plan to attack it.