5 Steps To Managing Workplace Stress

Workplace stress management is a unique form of stress management. This is because workplace stress can have consequences that last well into your time at home or even your vacation. It also has stress management techniques that are adapted to the workplace. Desk yoga is one example. But confronting your boss about an unreasonable deadline is another.

Too many people think that excessive stress is a natural state of employment. Some stress is inherent in a job. The stress of deadlines, of trying to perform better, of seeking promotions or new opportunities are all legitimate and positive forms of stress. There is also the stress of having to interact with co-workers, customers, management, and vendors, which may or may not be positive stress. All of these situations which cause stress and anxiety are manageable.

Here are 5 ways to reduce or control workplace anxiety:
1. Eliminate annoyances. Take some time and list everything that annoys you. Everything from a squeaky chair to a printer that is too far away to a co-worker who talks too loudly on the phone. Develop an action plan to eliminate or reduce these. Removing the daily stress of dealing with these annoyance will dramatically improve your attitude.
2. Wake up ready to “face the day” as opposed to “face the job.” Put your work in context. Very few people spend the majority of their day at the job. Start the day off by thinking of everything you want to do that day, instead of just thinking about everything you want to do at work.
3. Realize that some consequences just are not important. Don’t take every rejection as personal. When the clerk at a fast food restaurant asks if you want fries with that and you say “no,” the clerk doesn’t go to pieces. He or she processes your order. You take the same approach toward requests that have minimal impact for you.
4. Use different words. Sometimes the words we use can cause stress. If you tell yourself that your co-worker “always” speaks loudly on the phone and feel how much it annoys you, then you are telling yourself that there is nothing you can do about it. But if you change the words so that you tell yourself that your co-worker speaks loudly on the “when speaking with a friend” then you have defined how to eliminate this annoying behavior.
5. Become more organized. A lot of workplace anxiety is caused by simply not being able to find something when it is needed. While you may pride yourself in knowing what is in every stack of papers on your desk, that is not functional when you have to find a document – or worse, all the documents – very quickly. Having even a minimal organizational structure can eliminate this level of stress.

Some of these are specific actions you can do immediately. Some of them are mental approaches that you must get into the habit of using. But doing nothing is not only bad workplace stress management; it will result in the stress getting worse. You may tell yourself that the stress will lessen once the project is completed or the deadline has passed, but the reality is there is always another project or deadline looming on the horizon.

Each of these suggestions involves changing some habit you have become comfortable with. Habits are hard to break, but easy to replace. Probably the most effective way to replace old habits with new habits is by working with a coach focused on personal transformation and managing workplace stress. Or by disciplining yourself to work on the new habits every day. Either way, these 5 steps can be used by you to reduce or eliminate work anxiety.