Having headaches, stomach problems, back pain, or trouble sleeping? That could be due to stress.

Stress is what you feel when you have to handle more than you are used to. When you are stressed, your body responds as though you are in danger. It makes hormones that speed up your heart, makes you breathe faster, and gives you a burst of energy. Some stress is normal and even useful. Stress can help if you need to work hard or react quickly. But stress could be dangerous if you’re holding on to it for a long time, it can have bad effects. You may feel headaches, stomach problems, back pain or experience anxiety, insomnia or high blood pressure. It can weaken your immune system, making it harder to fight disease. Stress could worsen your condition if you already have health problems. It can make you moody, tense, or depressed.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to your stress like financial problems, family issues, or work-related concerns. Stress could be due to work, it could be due to excessive workloads, conflicting demands or unclear performance expectations or not having enough control over job-related decisions.

Stress has been part of our daily lives, who else hasn’t experience stress at work? Stress will always be there but the good news is that we can learn ways to manage stress. The best ways to relieve stress are different for each person. Here are few ways to get stress under control:

• Calendar your schedule: At work, I always have my table calendar where I schedule all the appointments with details as to place, time and participants. With this on my desk, I would not be missing out anything and would not be stressing my mind remembering.
• Manage your time and prioritize: Have a checklist of the tasks which need to be done prioritizing what is the most important or the most urgent. Urgent deadlines are stressful and you cannot control it but you can control your response.
• Ask instead of guessing: You cannot read minds and guessing will just cause misunderstanding and waste of time. Ask and get to the point and get things done accordingly.
• Focus on the present: Focus only on today, do not dwell in the past and take care of tomorrow when tomorrow comes so that there no need to worry too much.
• Get done with something that stresses or bothers you: Unfinished task that is disturbing your mind will cause negativity and make you stressed, so get the task done. Think of ways on how you start of continuing the unfinished work, and continue until finished.
• Listen to yourself and learn ways to relax your body: Schedule more time to take care of your health, be kind to yourself and prioritize your health. Take a deep breath and focus only on the air you are breathing in and out, it calms your body and mind. Laugh, believe me it’s really the best medicine.
• Be smart about the three fundamentals of energy; Get enough sleep, eat healthy and exercise. Regular exercise is one of the best ways to manage. Walking is great start.

You cannot always avoid the tensions that occur at work but you can take steps to manage this work-related stress. Slow down and cool down quickly whenever you are frustrated and angry. Stress is already part of work, but don’t focus on stress but focus on the solution to avoid being things stressful. Act rather than react.

Learn to recognize the physical effects of stress and do something about it before it makes you really ill. Beware of work stress spilling over into other areas of your life.

PAMELA L. ASTUDILLO

Administrative Assistant III