3 Easy Steps Towards Nursing Stress
There are many factors that can lead someone to develop feelings of stress in their life, and most people will probably experience this at some point. Stress, as we all know, is not a good thing for our health. It can cause health conditions such as heartburn, anxiety and exhaustion. In order to cope with these symptoms more quickly and effectively it's necessary to learn how to keep stress from taking control of your mind and actions.
This article explores three easy steps you can take towards alleviating some stress you may be experiencing while still keeping up the quality of your work.
Step 1: Learn and Apply Relaxation Techniques
For many people, this is the best (and easiest) way to kick stress in the teeth. There are so many techniques out there to choose from that there's a good chance one of them will suit you. Here are a few common relaxation techniques:
The Progressive Relaxation Technique involves systematic muscle relaxation by tensing and then relaxing each muscle in your body starting with your toes, moving up your leg and then moving through your body until you reach your scalp. Guided imagery is achieved by using mental images or thoughts while following someone else's script as they talk you through it or you visualize specific scenes. Yoga is also a great way to achieve relaxation, and it can be used by anyone no matter how physically fit they are.
For people who are more visually or kinesthetically oriented this kind of technique might be perfect for reducing stress.
Yoga is the ancient practice of moving your body into different positions while breathing deeply in order to relax and gain control over your body so that you can reduce the effects of stress in your life. It's great for relieving stress because it gets your blood flowing positively and helps you become aware of areas of tension in your body as to where you should concentrate as part of the relaxation process.
Step 2: Manage Your Time
Time management is the second step in learning to deal with stress. It can be hard for many people to stay productive when they're stressed out, mainly because stress often results in high levels of anxiety and fatigue. This can make it hard to focus on work and other tasks that need to get done. The best way to combat this is by managing your time effectively so that you don't allow yourself more time than you actually need to complete a task or project. By giving yourself more time than you need, you're giving yourself a buffer zone of extra time during which your productivity levels will be higher because you won't feel as nervous about procrastinating or making mistakes. By learning to manage your time effectively you will reduce the level of stress you experience significantly.
Step 3: Learning New Things and Meeting New People Can Help Reduce Stress
There are many ways to reduce stress in your life, but one of the easiest and most underrated is getting out and meeting new people. Many people who are stressed out often feel isolated from other people, which can cause them to feel even more alone. By finding new activities or hobbies to get involved in you'll be able to meet new people and you'll also have a chance to make new friends who have similar interests like yourself. In addition, you'll have a chance to learn something new that will help make your life more interesting and enriching. The connections you make through your personal experience will help reduce stress because they'll prove to be just as fulfilling as the stress reduction techniques.
Study: The percentage of employees who have experienced depression at work rose steadily by 10% or more every year from 1990 to 2009, and researchers believe that this is related to work pressures. For every hour workers missed per week due to work-related stress, their odds of taking a leave due to sickness increased by 19 percent.
A study of 4,582 workers in Australia found that stress-related absences cost the country about $4.6 billion per year in lost productivity.
When workers have too many work related demands, they may become more prone to illness and absenteeism. This is not just a problem for companies, but for the employees themselves, as well as their families. Stress can have a negative effect on relationships at home as well as at work.
Researchers from the University of Bristol and Oxford Brookes University in England studied 1,000 workers and their co-workers to find out how job stress affects relationships with co-workers and family members. They found that the more people at home and in the workplace experience stress, the more likely they are to have a poor relationship with others in their life.
The study also indicated that having a stressful job is linked to higher rates of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, digestive disorders and other serious health problems.
When do you start to develop stress?
Work environment and workload are not the only factors involved in stress management. There are many other things that can affect your stress level and when do you start to develop stress?
We will categorize them as: The Start of Stress Management The Spread of Stress Management The Decrease or End of Stress Management
1. The Start of Stress Management
As mentioned above, stress starts by being accumulated. As a result, it is a gradual, long process with no particular beginning or end. However, in some cases stress management begins very suddenly usually due to an environmental factor, like a job loss.
Job Loss is another environmental influence that can bring on stress management problems. There are many reasons people experience job losses: downsizing (reduction in employee numbers), lay-off (firing of employees) and termination (non-renewal of contract). All these situations bring about stress in different ways.
There are also different impacts on people. For some, a job loss is actually considered a good thing as it gives them a chance to gain freedom from the office and pursue their interests independently. However, for others, losing their job can be devastating as they have to face many problems of unemployment.
For example, people who have a great deal of financial debt or college debt may worry about how to pay off those debts when they lose their jobs. In addition to that, the stress of unemployment is often accompanied by stress from not having control over the situation and from worrying about those unknown future plans.
Sometimes when job loss happens, people can become over-emotional and think irrationally to such extremes as committing suicide.
2. The Spread of Stress Management
The spread of stress management is another factor that causes the stress level to increase. We will talk about some major ones below:
Prolonged Unfair Treatment Around Us
Many people and many things around us give us stress. Not only the big or obvious ones, but there are also those hidden factors which cause us to feel stressed out. Let's take a look at some major factors that we have encountered in daily life:
Family and Family Problems Family members are not always happy with each other or they sometimes create complex problems among them.
Conclusion
The presence of these factors can make us feel stressed out. But how do we know if they are actually creating stress or not? We do not always have a clue about what causes us to feel stressed out.
2.1 People
There are many people around us who may create stress in our lives. They may be the ones who work with you, the relationships you maintain with your friends, colleagues or relatives and even those annoying people who just keep intruding into your life constantly.