Whether you’re climbing a stack of folders that needs to be filed yesterday, barrelling down a cavernous hallway to avoid break-room banter, or scavenging for a lost sticky-note amongst a tumulus of old coffee cups, pens, rubber bands, and tissues, there are stressors hidden in even the most serene office settings. Maintaining a positive mental outlook, remembering the nature of your work, and finding passion in it, will help you avoid some nasty workplace stressors.
Are you all there? Mindful
Are you aware of where you are, and why you come to this place everyday. Are you working for this company because you believe in their cause, or are you trying to secure as much money as possible? Before accepting work, make sure your goals are being met by the company that you might potentially work for. Test the waters to see if their culture matches with your own. This could mean taking less pay, but working for a company that provides extensive on the job training, or taking a lower position if your morals align with theirs. Dipping your toe into the bath will prevent you from getting burned.
The temperature at work might take a sudden upswing and your personal stress could flying off the handle and out the door. This is a fairly normal development in our active work-world. The very first step is to take a step back, relax, and look at this issue from a larger stance. Then you can move forward isolating the source of your problem and focusing on what you can do to relieve some of that stress. There are typically solutions to problems, and long-term solutions are enormously instrumental to any industry who wants to maintain long-standing stability within their internal productivity. If there is nothing that can be done about it today, creating a plan to deal with it in the future, or communicating your feelings on this issue can help your stress levels hugely. Even just maintaining a positive outlook will reduce stress and give you space to facilitate the creation of steps to reduce the impact of concrete tension in the long-term.
Nothing is personal
It’s not personal, it’s business. As much as you want to think Julie from Accounting snubbed you at the coffee machine, you’ve got better things to do. As much as you want to track her errors and maintain a folder on her inaccuracies and the relative cost it has on the company, but it wasn’t personal, and you should let it go.
And if it was personal, it’s because Julie sucks, and we don’t play that game. Everyone goes home sometimes wondering if everyone at work secretly hates us. They don’t, or they do, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how you react and how you use that information to to do your work. If you use what seems like a personal attack to fuel a gossip mill, that will just make you more stressed, and flame the heat. Breathe deep, office politics happens with everyone, try to understand where they are coming from, and what could have motivated them to act accordingly. 85% of Americans have parasites, maybe they do too, it can cause irritability. Use this information to encourage people to take their lunch break, clear their desk, and keep the phones tidy. All of these initiatives will make the office cleaner, and your co workers happier. Nothing is personal, and if it is, they suck. We don’t suck, so rising above will help your nerves, your career, and the general mood in the office.
Find passion
Passion will fight your stress for you. Find passion in your work, or find passion in your home life. Creativity is a forward moving locomotive that leaves stress sweltering in the stillness it breeds. If you have a passion in your home life or are simply passionate about your work, it will help you escape stress. Whether it’ something silly like taking a 15 minute brainstorm at the start of everyday for ways to make your job better, and trying to implement said ways through-out your day or just switching up your routine daily, there are a ton of ways to add creativity to your job. You could increase the clean desk initiative compliance by adding hand sanitizers at the entrance and exits. There is nothing more stressful than passion murdering jobs. Everything can ruin creativity, and everything can inspire it. Thinking of creative solutions for everyday problems will fuel your solution processes, give you more focus, and help you become better at life.
Work can fill you with a rising pile of dread, but acting with purpose, creativity, and reason can keep the stress from splooshing and make you a happier, better, employee. Move yourself forward, and closer to your ultimate business goals with some simple steps to sidetrack stress.
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