Reduce Your Stress Levels

Stress is fierce and manipulative. It comes when we’re faced with challenges, obstacles or major deadlines, and high levels of stress have been associated with heart attacks, hypertension, depression and various other disorders. Here are five ways to beat it.

Only Worry About What You Can Control

Focus only on the tasks you’re able to handle. There will always be external forces that influence a project beyond your control, so don’t expect things to always work out perfectly.

Eliminate Coffee

Coffee boosts your adrenaline, but it also bottles up a natural relaxant in your brain known as adenosine. Adrenaline is a stress-triggered hormone that increases your energy for a short period of time. If too much is released over a long period of time, the body becomes overly stressed. The adenosine, on the other hand, gets released when the adrenaline levels go down, leading to the dreaded “caffeine crash.”

Exercise

Not only does exercise boost your health and confidence, but it also produces endorphins which are “feel-good” neurotransmitters. When these are blocked, so is your ability to properly work through stress. Exercise also provides a natural escape: when you’re focused on a game of tennis or a run, you naturally forget about the tensions in your life and allow your brain to breathe.

Manage Interruptions

Interruptions such as phone calls, emails, texts, walk-in meetings and last-minutes deadlines are inevitable and sometimes overwhelming. Identify which interruptions are routine and plan for them.

Organise Yourself

The more stressed we are, the more disorganised we become. Try to do an end-of-week review on Friday and assess your inbox and work-to-do lists. Also, try to complete the largest task first: you’ll feel much better at having finished the biggest pain point in your day rather than three inconsequential ones. Get help from technology. Remember to delegate tasks to others; for the self-employed there are sites such as Fiverr or TaskRabbit where you can outsource work.

Whatever you are worried about, remember that stress is all in the mind. If you allow your mind the opportunity to believe in these methods, you’ll be on your way to a stress-free work life!

Are you effectively managing your stress levels?

Adapted from an article by Sean Bradley, docstoc