Ten Things You Can Do To Decrease Your Stress At The Office

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Article Title:

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Ten Things You Can Do To Decrease Your Stress At The Office

Article Description:

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The world we live on is nothing but a mound of chaotic pressure

that is building to the point it bursts like a volcano. We are

bombarded with pressure from our employers, our customers and

families to the point where some people actually do break. Most

of us today in professional lives spend between 8 and 16 hours a

day at the office, which equates to almost two-thirds of our

lives being in a place we really do not want to be in, but there

are things you can do to decrease the stress in your office.

Additional Article Information:

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2971 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line

Distribution Date and Time: 2006-08-24 12:12:00

Written By: Le Roy

Copyright: 2006

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Ten Things You Can Do To Decrease Your Stress At The Office

Copyright © 2006 Le Roy

Meditation Music

http://www.1-on-1.biz/meditationmusic/default.asp

The world we live on is nothing but a mound of chaotic pressure

that is building to the point it bursts like a volcano. We are

bombarded with pressure from our employers, our customers and

families to the point where some people actually do break. Most

of us today in professional lives spend between 8 and 16 hours a

day at the office, which equates to almost two-thirds of our

lives being in a place we really do not want to be in, but there

are things you can do to decrease the stress in your office.

Remember this, what we call stress, is really what we put on

ourselves. Whilst other people can influence the way we feel,

ultimately we are the ones who choose whether we are going to be

stressed or not. You are in control of how you are going to feel,

no one else. Stress as such is going on in our heads, so the real

secret to de-stressing is to find things that would make you

happy and content within.

#1. Have a Photo Of The Happiest Time In Your Life

Think back through your life, what is the happiest moment in your

life. It could be the birth of your child, getting married, going

out on a fantastic date, visiting some outstanding place or maybe

it is when you bought your puppy dog but no matter what it is,

you will almost certainly have a photo of that time. Take that

photo and put it on your desk to remind you of those happy times

as this will be one of the tools you need to beat stress in your

office.

The happiest time in my life, and where I felt like the luckiest

man in the world, was the day my wife stepped out of the

limousine at the church for our wedding. I had never seen my wife

look so beautiful and I made sure when I felt those feelings that

I would remember them forever. So on my desk at work, I have a

picture of my wife getting out of the limousine and each time I

feel stressed I simply take a few moments to look at that picture

and remember that moment in time. You brain is an amazing part of

your body, no matter how many times I look at that photo, my

brain releases the same feelings I had on the day and helps me

snap out of feeling stressed.

Use the happy times, to control the times when you feel the most

vulnerable and stressed.

#2. Think Of Your Boss Yelling At You Naked

Everyone has nightmare stories of their bosses being a grouch and

I certainly have had my fair share, but most people who talk of

being excessively stressed often relate that stress to a boss who

is abusive and yells a lot. Well first off, if you are working in

an environment where you boss is abusive, get out NOW! Nobody has

to put up with that and remember life is way to short regardless

of the money. Is money worth that much that the stress is worth

dying tomorrow from a heart attack? NO!

However, if you have a boss who yells at you a lot, just for the

sake of yelling and really is quite rude, simply imagine them

yelling at you naked. If someone flew into your office absolutely

starkas, that is with absolutely no clothes on, would you take

them seriously. Course not! So, why take a boss that comes in and

yells at you seriously. If your boss is an effective communicator

he or she would not need to yell at you.

The next time your boss comes in, force yourself to think of them

absolutely naked. When you do that, see just how you actually

react and whether you deal with the situation better than when

they are yelling at you absolutely naked. After a bit of practice

you will find you are able to handle the situation much better

and cope with a grouchy boss.

#3. Get Up and Do Some Office Exercises

Look no one on the planet can deny that doing exercise, gets the

blood going and burns off the stress however sneaking away during

the day can be really difficult but there are other Office

Exercises that can bring you a lot of benefit to you. There are

many office exercises that you can do like rolling your

shoulders, clenching your hands and releasing them and even neck

exercises that will help release the stress.

Often, much of our built up stress is simply due to sitting at

the computer all day looking at the screen. Make sure that every

hour you get up and stretch for at least five minutes. You will

find that if you do not do that over a period of time this will

lead to aches and pains, which can help increase your stress.

To get the best Office Exercises for you to do simply talk to

your General Practitioner or visit a Physiotherapist and they

will be able to help you develop an Office Exercise plan and you

will be surprised how much easier life is to cope with.

#4. Schedule Enough Time to Go From One Meeting To Another

I worked for a bank about five years ago and I have never met an

organisation that has so many meetings. My whole days constituted

going from one meeting to another and I learnt one very important

lesson. If I did not run my schedule my meetings would. Make sure

that when you schedule an appointment or a meeting that you

include travel time to and from a meeting.

Whilst working for this firm, if you did not schedule travel

time, they would simply book meetings next to each other even if

the meeting was across the other side of the city. They would

simply expect you to immediately appear at that other meeting.

Message to All Humans - we do not have an instant teleporter, the

Stargate is a fantasy, so make sure you give yourself enough time

to get from one meeting to another or you are going to stress

out.

#5. Plan Your Day

We talked about scheduling time to get from one meeting to

another in the previous point but there is an extension to this.

Make sure YOU plan your day, not your business associates. All

too often I hear management say, " I did not get lunch today " or

" I have been on the run and have not had a chance to stop " .

Come on, get a grip, you are in control and it is up to you.

The first thing you should do in every job you work in, is to

make sure you schedule two decent breaks a day which include at

least half an hour for lunch and a 20 minute break somewhere else

in the day. If you are like most people you will be using

something like Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes to manage your

day. Both allow you to schedule unavailable time in your

calendar, so do IT!

By scheduling YOU time, you can ensure you have enough time to

have a break, do a little meditation and relax and prepare for

the rest of the day. If you are like me and work 16 hours a day,

then you should also be putting into your plan a decent Dinner

break of at least an hour and half an hour at the gym, even if it

is just using the treadmill. If you do not do this, it will catch

you up to you and you will be a statistic at 40. Do not laugh, my

leading hand lost his life because he did not do the right thing.

It can happen to you.

#6. Limit the Amount of Time Spent Dealing With Emails

Technology is a wonderful thing, but when technology rules your

life, then you have a big problem and very quickly technology

like email can overwhelm you causing you to become stressed. One

of the rules my team and I have in the office is that nobody must

respond to emails for more than 60 minutes per day. The reason we

have put this rule into place, is that many of my team and our

corporate clients spend their whole day emailing each other

rather than dealing with the issues at hand.

How often have you received an email on one topic and then have

the content of the email go off in another direction right before

your eyes? I was working in one corporate organisation as an

external consultant and very often all I would do is simply

respond to emails all day long and get nothing done. Most of the

emails could have been dealt with a 2 second phone call. In one

of the offices I was working in, it was an open plan office

layout and I had a bloke working directly across from me, who

refused to speak to me or anyone else on the floor and all he did

was when he had an issue, he would send an email.

This is a crazy way to do business and it does not work and only

causes technology stress. My solution, each time he emailed me, I

simply spoke the answer back to him. He got the point after a

while and my email load went down when he spoke to me rather than

emailed me. Technology is supposed to make life easier, not take

over your life, so if you have a question and the person is

sitting in the next office, get up and knock on their door and

ask the question.

By doing this you are undertaking item number 6 which is limiting

your emails and item number 3 which is get up and do some office

exercises. That little bit of walking will help get the blood

flowing through you veins.

#7. Be Prepared To Say " NO! "

We all want to get ahead in the world today and I am sure in

everyone there is a little part of us that wants to live the life

of Bill Gates and Trump and be as rich as them. However,

most of us make the mistake of simply saying yes to everything

that is thrown at us. Now whilst that is great to say yes, people

like Bill Gates and Trump have teams of people to help

them, and in all honesty you maybe on their teams, but all of us

are only human and sometimes we simply have to say " NO! "

Where is the point in saying to our bosses, " Yes we will have

this 500 page report written for you tomorrow " . When in reality

there is absolutely no chance of that occurring. Sometimes in

this world you simply have to say no and that does not go just

for the boss, it also goes for the customers as well. My team and

I have a seven day schedule across the various businesses I run

and whilst we do not all work seven days a week, sometimes we do

work six days a week to get through our responsibilities. One

weekend I had one of our customers, mind you it was 6:30 am on a

Sunday morning demand one of my team from our car cleaning

business, drop everything and clean their car at 7:00am because

an important family member was coming.

There were many responses I could have given, but my simple

answer was NO! The customer ranted and raved for about 10 minutes

by which time I was imagining them naked yelling at me, which

really was a funny site and then when they were finished and I

simply asked them would they be prepared to work all week

including Saturday and Sunday for the next 2 weeks and their

reply was " NO, My Weekends Are My Own and I am not working them

for anyone. " Then I simply responding by saying to them, then

there is your answer and I hung up. You know the funny thing,

they rang me on Monday morning and apologised and we did the top

car cleaning service on their car the following week. I charged

them more as well.

Most customers will accept the answer of No when they understand

why you are saying No. Some will not, but then do you really need

them as customers anyway.

#8. Take your shoes off and walk on the carpet

This is my favorite de-stressing activity and it shocks the

living daylights out of everyone. I first met a lady about 10

years ago who was in her early fortys and nothing seemed to shake

her stature. She was always calm and never got flustered and I

asked her what her secret was and she said, " I always take my

shoes off as often as possible so I can stay in touch with the

earth " . This was a really prominent statement for me, because I

never really thought of my shoes as a tool to disconnect us from

our surroundings but if you think about it, it makes sense.

If you go down to the beach, what is the first thing you do. You

take off your shoes to feel the sand through you feet and how

does it make you feel, relaxed. If you go to the park with the

children, what do you do? Take your shoes off so you can run

around and have fun or to play in the mud. Whether we realise it

or not, when we disconnect ourselves from mother earth we really

do start to stress.

I now always take my shoes off when I am working in my office,

including my socks just so I can feel something more

inspirational under my feet rather than just the hard soles of my

shoes. I know another corporate CEO in Brisbane Australia, who

used to walk down to Anzac Square every lunch hour to walk on the

grass so that he could stay in touch with the world. Hey, if it

works in the movie Pretty Woman, surely it must work.

#9. Play Music

Listening to the right type of music is really important when you

are trying to reduce stress and find your inner peace. Some music

when listened to, whilst stressed, can in fact heighten your

stress levels. One type of music, which research has shown to

help reduce stress is Baroque music. This music is written so

that there is only 60 beats per minute and funny enough that is

what our heart rate should be. The baroque music has been found

to increase the alpha waves in your left and right sides of your

brain which help improve your learning ability, creativity and

calmness.

Whilst you are working in the office on a demanding piece of

work, simply put in a CDROM of music and listen to it as you are

completing the work, but honestly do watch the type of music you

are listening to or it can back fire. Most corporate

organisations are now realising the benefit of staff listening to

music during the day and with 90% of corporate computers having

CDROMs, it is possible to listen to music on your computer whilst

doing your work, you may just need headphones. I work in hundreds

of corporate organisations a year and only one had a no music

policy and that was because they were a call centre, which I can

understand. There is no reason why you can not listen to music

during your break though to ensure you a feeling calm before

hitting those phones again.

#10. Meditate

Okay, I can hear it now, " Oh Yeah Hippy, Want Us to Meditate do

ya. " Absolutely! Look whilst meditation has certainly been a

thing of fringe groups in western society or associated with more

eastern religions many researchers are now coming to the distinct

conclusion that meditation can make a huge difference to our

day-to-day lives and helps us to overcome stress.

The core advantage meditation will play in your office is to help

you to relax and deal with challenging situations more

effectively. The more relaxed you are the more creative you can

be in dealing with any issues that arise. I certainly recommend

that when you are meditating, that you use baroque music with

your meditation as it will help increase the alpha waves which

will help lead you to a calm feeling. This is especially useful

if you do not have a long period to meditate. I recommend a 20

minute meditation session at least once a day preferably two. You

will be really surprised the difference it makes to your day.

Just try it out, you have nothing to loose and the rest of your

life to gain

The office environment in these millennia is far more stressful

than they were a century ago, but there are things you can do

about it but it is up to you. Remember, we only have one life and

it is not a dress rehearsal so get out and reduce the stress your

office gives you and have some fun. To finish off let me

reiterate the ten things you can do to reduce your stress at the

office.

#1. Have a Photo Of The Happiest Time In Your Life

#2. Think Of Your Boss Yelling At You Naked

#3. Get Up and Do Some Office Exercises

#4. Schedule Enough Time to Go From One Meeting To Another

#5. Plan Your Day

#6. Limit the Amount of Time Spent Dealing With Emails

#7. Be Prepared To Say " NO! "

#8. Take your shoes off and walk on the carpet

#9. Play Music

#10. Meditate

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