How to find and fix the root cause of stress at work

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

There is no person who is not familiar with stress at work. Entrepreneurs and freelancers, office workers and startups - all of us, in one way or another, are faced with professional burnout, fatigue, and overexertion. Stress reduction tips are great, but they won't work until you find the root cause of all your problems.

Most articles on dealing with stress say: exercise and yoga, eat right, meditate. These tips are good and you should definitely follow them.

But the secret is different. To get rid of stress, you need to understand what causes it. The cause of the stress must be dealt with directly, and once you deal with the problem, it will be easier to deal with the stress.

What causes stress

Let's describe the things that can make you stressed and overworked:

1. Tough deadlines.
2. Colleagues or a boss with whom you find it difficult to communicate and collaborate.
3. The uncertainty that you are doing what you need to do.
4. Uncertainty in their own professionalism.
5. Competition, office politics and interpersonal conflicts.
6. Lack of time for family or personal life.
7. Large amounts of work.

These stressors have one thing in common. All of them arise due to the fact that we are very clear about how the work process should look like, what its results should be and what it means to be an effective employee.

We somehow compare ourselves with a certain ideal. It is he who is the main cause of stress.

We all dream of work being stable, enjoyable and a minimum of anxiety. Reality does not correspond to this ideal, and therefore stress arises.

The same goes for all those factors that we have listed above. In each individual situation, the problem of inconsistency with the ideal arises: we do not meet the deadlines, colleagues do not justify trust, the boss does not always turn out to be a good leader … This happens every day, our ideas about the ideal are broken against reality, needs are not met, which means that we cannot avoid frustration and anxiety.

How to deal with this problem?

How to deal with the cause of stress

If all our problems arise from some ideal, perhaps it would be better not to create one at all? Well, that would be great, but it is impossible to give up such aspirations. One way or another, we always hope for the best and strive for more.

To deal with your stress, you need to:

1. Realize that you are under stress.
2. Understand how much you strive for the ideal.
3. Try to find joy in the present moment, slow down in the race for the unattainable.

How to do it?

Learn to Record Your Stress

Anxiety, frustration, tension are the first symptoms that you need to stop and relax. These signs are like notifications on your smartphone: you need not ignore them, but deal with them and understand that you are about to plunge into a state of stress.

Understand what your unattainable ideal is

Why are you starting to worry right now? What can't you achieve? How much is the actual state of affairs different from how you envisioned your work? Perhaps you have modeled an overly stable, calm, controlled situation that does not correspond to reality.

For example, you've always dreamed of having a fixed amount of work and reasonable deadlines. It gives a feeling of security and comfort. But life is developing in such a way that the number of tasks is only growing, and most of them have the ASAP mark. Instead of calmness, you feel confused, and the orderly schedule gradually turns into pure chaos. It can be frustrating, but then the stress will take over. Change your point of view on such situations, because they arise not only during work, but also in life as such.

The choice is yours: either you love these states, or you hate them.

Loosen your attachment to the ideal

Tell yourself: “Striving for the ideal does not help me. It hurts me. I am open to new possibilities. I am ready for unexpected situations."

Thus, instead of striving for some ephemeral ideal image of a worker who can do everything, you will become a person who makes mistakes and learns from them, is not afraid to take up challenges and is ready for difficulties.

You will love the element of chaos in your life, because this is the only way to learn how to focus on the most important things. Even if you face incredibly difficult problems, you will understand: after failure, life goes on.

By abandoning the pursuit of an unattainable ideal, you accept life as it is. It doesn't necessarily fold the way you intended. You will have to learn to love her all, without exception, with victories and defeats. In return, you will receive a great interest in life's turns and will be able to enjoy each of them. You will forget what it is like to complain and whine, but you will see only the best in people and stop blaming others for your own failures.

Too much work accumulated? Pick the most urgent task and complete it perfectly. Is your colleague annoying? Find out what his problems are and try to look at his behavior from a new point of view, learn to empathize with him. Afraid of losing your job? Try to focus on doing your job well, and along the way look for alternate routes in case you do get fired.

To some people, this advice will seem useless and annoying, because the speech is about the fact that the ideal cannot be achieved. Many people want to control every minute of their lives, present and future. Well, if this path is good for you, good luck. Those who cannot get rid of stress in any way should abandon the race for a distant and unrealizable dream and concentrate on what is happening here and now, open their hearts to everything new and unexpected, be interested, and not condemn.

After all, life is beautiful.