Stress is inevitable. It’s a natural part of life, especially in the workplace. That doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, though. When your anxiety shifts into overdrive, it can make just getting through the day feel like an utter impossibility. Luckily, with a few simple life hacks, you can de-stress and re-energize yourself for maximum peace and productivity.
Switch Your Focus
One of the hardest things about work stress is that you can’t make it go away by just not working. These things have to get done, and that’s part of what causes stress in the first place. But just because you have a list of tasks that need to be completed doesn’t mean you have to finish each individual task before starting another one.
Say you work in the redfin.com. Why not take a break from all marketing properties on social media and send out emails with clients or research property value fluctuations in the neighborhood? That other work will still be there when you feel ready to go back to it. Unless you’re on a very pressing deadline, sometimes just moving your attention away from a task that’s stressing you out can do wonders.
Fix Your Posture
These days, many jobs are sedentary in nature. They require sitting at a desk for many long hours, hunched over a computer screen. It might not sound like much help, but you’d be amazed how much something as simple as standing up to straighten your back can reduce stress in these kinds of work environments.
Bad posture caused by too much sitting, slouching, and hunching can cause physical discomfort, which only makes it harder to deal with work responsibilities and related stressors. Even worse, bad posture inhibits circulation, reducing the oxygen content in your blood to the point where it’s more difficult to stay focused. If you’re feeling tired and out-of-sorts, it might help to stand up, stretch, or even go for a quick walk.
Write Things Down
More than any other life hack on this list, I can personally vouch for the stress-relieving powers of writing things down. When you’re stressed out and have a lot of things to worry about, it can be hard keeping it all straight inside your head. You don’t know which end is up, let alone what tasks need your attention first and foremost.
When that happens, I find that making a checklist or itinerary to organize my thoughts and calibrate my schedule is incredibly valuable. It allows a person to take all the things that are stressing them out and lay them out in front of them. It all suddenly becomes a lot more manageable when you’re anxieties are just items on a piece of paper that you can scratch out one at a time. What’s more, helps you avoid making mistakes that only add more stress later.
Take a Moment to Breathe
Whenever you feel overwhelmed in the office and you can not handle the stress that bothers you, take a moment to relax. For a while, just forget about everything and take a few slow, deep breaths. Deep breathing has numerous benefits for our organisms. It helps our body remove the tension from the muscles, slow down the blood pressure and send extra oxygen to the brain. In that way, we can clear out thoughts and feel relaxed, and focus on things that matter. It also gives you the opportunity to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Therefore, you will determine whether those things actually represent unsolved problems.
Visualization
Imagining a peaceful and idyllic scene every time you feel stressed at work, will help you relax and boost your energy level. For instance, you can imagine that you are walking along the beach and you hear the sound of peaceful waves. We suggest you use all of your senses and indulge at the moment completely. Our bodies can not tell the difference between a thought and a real scene, so that means that we can completely feel even the image scene. For that reason bring a peaceful scene to your mind every time you feel anxious and overwhelmed from the work. Visualize the stress flowing out of your body and that will have a huge impact on you.
Consider self-talk exercises
Interestingly, studies show that talking to ourselves in third-person during a highly anxious and stressful moment can help us successfully manage and handle our emotions. More precisely, while we are talking to ourselves, we can objectively resolve our problems the same way we would help others with theirs. In fact, at that moment we feel psychological distance from our experience, which can help us control our emotions and see things from a new perspective. This is actually a very easy and quick exercise that significantly impacts the stress level in our bodies while we are working. Therefore, instead of using pronouns such as me, my, I, use pronouns such as he, she, you, or your own name. So, instead of saying to yourself “I can not do this project” tell yourself from a third-person perspective something couraging like “You can do this, do not give up”. You will be surprised to see how better you will feel after those motivational quotes from yourself.
Organization apps
While we are living in technology modern world, we can take advantage of different mobile apps that can improve the quality of our lives. For instance, people use time and task management apps all the time. In that way, they do not have to remember everything that they have to finish because they have the assistance device that will remind them. You can use apps for different things. Therefore, if you have a problem with sleeping, you can use some app that will help you regulate your sleep and you will feel more rested every day. Also, if you have problems with forgetting things, you can use online apps to help you organize assignments or organizing your emails.
In fact, studies show that organization and routines are there to boost efficiency, and when you start feeling overwhelmed you can always reorganize your schedule.