Moving sucks. You know it’s true; I won’t hear any arguments from my readers on that point!
They say moving is one of the life’s most stressful experiences. For the last two months, I’ve been in moving mode. I am simply moving from one part of the City to another. But, after living in my condo for 12 years (with a home office for Scarlett Consulting and my travel photography business, to boot), I had an enormous amount of ‘stuff’ to reckon with.
So I donned my ‘master organizer’ persona (which only comes out on special occasions), and made sure to take care of everything from storage to insurances to utilities far in advance. But alas, even with all that effort to make sure everything went smoothly, there were many many glitches. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say that I was (and still am, to some extent) at my wit’s end.
One of the imperative issues is around keeping my business phone number even though I switched my service provider. Apparently, that’s not as simple as it first appears, and even though I followed their instructions to a ‘T’, they still got it messed up. At this stage, it’s about 50/50 as to whether or not I’ll be able to keep my business number. And losing my business number would be catastrophic….or at least highly inconvenient.
I share this today because it reminds me of the importance of handling stress in all areas of our lives, including work. I am no expert on handling stress. Yoga and meditation help greatly. Even so, I too, have physiological implications when stressed (usually a tight knot in my upper right back).
There’s abundant books and articles on stress management—they are all fairly consistent. In my moving situation, the best advice has been around changing my attitude towards the particular stressor. {Taking a: ‘in the big picture, this blooper is not such a big deal’ approach}. Here are a couple of links that I’d like to share regarding stress:
1. http://helpguide.org/mental/stress_management_relief_coping.htm
2. http://www.studygs.net/stress.htm
#2 is actually intended for college students who experience stress in school, but I actually preferred it to some of the others that I reviewed. Suggestions such as ‘Do something for others; it will help you get your mind off yourself’ really do help!
In the workplace, I’ve seen stress take major tolls on the ability for teams to function in a productive, healthy manner. I remember one particular person (a marketing coordinator) that would get quite moody and mean when stressed, for example. As I read the aforementioned articles and consider former professional scenarios, I feel certain that some of those tips would apply for all of us.
How about you? What do you do to manage stress in the workplace? What lessons have you learned? Feel free to share privately or by posting.