Essay: Confidently live with Stress at workplace “Why me?”, “It is hard to stay focused”, “I am overloaded with work”, “I even have no time to breath!” or “My work is boring and degrading”… These are the phrases we usually hear around the workplace or even from ourselves. They are accompanied by headaches, insomnia…The sign of depression –“stress” in modern life, appears when work and life tense us up and make us tired. For the positions that are constantly put under pressure such as the manager, securities brokerage , when a particular decision can result in either success or failure of the whole organization, the stress can be assessed as a kind of "occupational disease". Stress increases heart rate, leading to dyspnea and produce energy. Thus, what is Stress? Is it harmful or beneficial in this modern world? How can we ensure punctual completion work and good health care when we live with Stress? Answering these questions help to recognize Stress properly. Stress symptoms: Physical symptoms: there might be one or many following symptoms: cold limbs, hands sweating, rapid heartbeat, headache, dizzy, dry mouth, muscular spasm, and dyspnea. Prolonged effect may cause diarrhea or constipation, abdominal pain… sometimes sphincter cannot be controlled, bursting out into tears. Cognitive symptoms: Strong heartbeat causes abnormal blood flow. Stronger capillary attraction makes the nose and ears red. Fingers may tremble. Behavioral symptoms: Eating more or less; sleeping too much or too little; having nervous habits. Some even addict to wine and drugs… Emotional symptoms: Some are exhausted and shrink back; some let emotional outpouring without restraint or lack of concentration, being impatience, unwise, innocuous and insensitive. They are pessimistic and overcoming inferiority complex and despair. They tend to blame themselves or others. Some are forgetful. Causes of “Stress” at work can be: - Autocratic management style. - The physical problems (Weather, noises and pollution) 1 - Too many changes happen in a short period of time - Excessively high workloads with unrealistic deadlines and goals. - Always in passive or highly mobile situation. - Being overwhelmed by inferiority, hatred or guilt. - Regular use of Internet, phone can make your brain tired leads to Stress. - Anxiety from family and society outside. - Negative thinking. When “Stress” is mentioned, we tend to think that it needs to be eliminated, but clearly “we really need stress!” Imagine when work without any moment of anxiety and challenge facing. It comes to us smoothly like there is no ripple in a glass of water. Letting life pass through quietly is extremely boring and tasteless. Positive side of “Stress”: Stress stimulates creativity. At some point, “Good Stress” is necessary for us to be young and healthy, making us be familiar with dilemmas and challenges. Enough and increasing good stress can reinforce and strengthen natural self-defense. For instance, when trying to achieve something, our body creates “protein” rejuvenating cells. More than that, the assigned tasks and challenges excite us, making it a good mental tonic. We all know the terminology in management “Storming Interview,” which is used to overwhelm candidates for testing their stress tolerance. In training, variety of situations and conditions that easily cause stress are offered. This way, it helps the students to overcome and mature gradually. Therefore, stress resistance is varied and is not completely negative. It depends on the attitude the the situation to approach. To “live with Stress,” we need specific methods of avoidance and treatment: Stress avoidance: - Instant method • Take a deep breathe. Close your eyes in 30 seconds or look far away. • Position: Note the release muscle tension (Stress makes some muscles shrink like reflection and self-defense), correct sitting position to feel comfortable. 2 • Therapy to convey anger from an individual to an object – This can be done when the individual is being alone and there are available specialized tools to release Stress. • Therapy to convey psychological disorders to cute images, focus on the thing that make we cheer and most satisfactory; a warm, beautiful and happy scene that we have experienced or dream to have (prepare related items, beautiful landscape images or family photos) - Separate between work and family. Considering the act of wearing uniform as a "switch" from family to work or vice versa. This “switch” reminds us to temporarily forget the worries occupied with the old role to completely concentrate on the new role and improve it. - Take the brain out of anxiety by giving it 15 minutes to 1 hour a day to rest (apart from sleeping time) and entertain. Using reasonably annual leaves and weekends to completely separate us from the burden of our business. - We need skills to prioritize: • Come first do first • Urgent do first • Interested in do first • Important do first • Urgent and interesting do first. - Skill Demonstration: getting familiar with “war games.” We need to set out certain emergency cases that require quick response (eg: fire). The solutions to solve those problems would become a script pre-programed in our mind. - Improve your skills to accomplish tasks successfully. In addition, strengthening relationships, communicating with colleagues as friends not only help us release Stress, but also make us work more efficiently. Maintain sporting habits, healthy diets with various vitamins and minerals. Stop smoking, Limit alcohol, and chocolate. Drink more water. These actions enable good resistance to many diseases, including Stress. In the Security Company where I work, the nature of work is very stressful, especially during trading hours (e.g: brokerage have to enter the transactions command as fast as he can, when the phones ring constantly). The pressure is extremely high because if there is a wrong number or letter input into the system cause huge damages. Also, customers’ attitudes are erratic, depending on the changes of the index. If paid some attention we can dicover on every staff’s desk, there is a small vase of flowers, a family frame, a small commemorative item or an aquarist vase. This still meets the one-page-long regulations of not placing personal stuff, according to Company’s policy. 3 My colleagues shared to me that, although they are working under high pressure and tired of having their eyes “glued” to the computer screens, they feel warmer, open their minds more and release stress when they move their eyes from screen to look at pictures of their beloved family a few seconds. This is because they realize that sacrificing their time and effort to fully fulfill their responsibilities to their family is worthy. This psychological therapy, in my opinion, is simple, cost-saving, effective and feasible when flexible combined with the other approach. It really can help office staff to avoid Stress effectively. Treatments: Base on records, we can statistically list out the Stress symptoms that we have: - What factors often cause stress effects. - A specific time when Stress happens (day / week / month) - Response to Stress and evaluation upon the results obtained compared with the previous situations. - How would the Stress be if it cannot be released? How long would it happen? Then, we make a specific plan to control the most important radical: eliminate or minimize the cause of stress, adjust the biological clock This record also makes the treatment be more effective (through medication, psychotherapy and electrical shock; among those, medication is the most popular). Conclusion: Stress is simply body’s response to changes. It might be caused by many positive and negative factors. Stress is beneficial when you need to work hard or reflex well. Yet, when stress happens too often or lasts too long, it would put negative effect on you. Being in a stressful situation for a long time would likely to harm your relationships, reduce your ability to socialize. Acquiring basic knowledge of Stress and understanding stress avoidance gain us strong confidence to “live with stress”. When making decisions in a stressful situation, we tend to be reckless and radical such as: choosing a riskier option, select the most profitable solutions in time but do not match (even contrary to) the strategic objectives, choosing an option without the team agreement. To mitigate these limitations, before making any decision, we need to ask ourselves: Is there any better way? less expensive? and causes less opposition? Strictly follow the motto: Careful never redundant./. 4 HLQuang 5 . Essay: Confidently live with Stress at workplace “Why me?”, “It is hard to stay focused”, “I am overloaded with work”, “I even have no time to breath!” or “My work is boring. Therefore, stress resistance is varied and is not completely negative. It depends on the attitude the the situation to approach. To live with Stress, ” we need specific methods of avoidance and treatment:. tasteless. Positive side of Stress : Stress stimulates creativity. At some point, “Good Stress is necessary for us to be young and healthy, making us be familiar with dilemmas and challenges.