How Stressed Are You? You’ve seen them – those quizzes in the magazines. Answer these 10 or 20 questions and find out where you stand on the stress scale. Mostly, they don’t tell you anything you didn’t already know, right? And you already did what they suggest and it wasn’t enough.

I read an article this morning that suggested packing lunches and setting out clothes the night before. Well, if you had time to do that, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article, would you? In reality, how much stress you experience at any given time depends on many factors.

Your Childhood – As your therapist always told you, your childhood experience does have something to do with how much stress you experience in your life. How your parents handled tough situations taught you a lot – or not. Also, how supported you felt when you went through tough times makes a difference.

Your Recent Life Changes – Most often taken out of context and presented as a complete stress assessment, the index of recent life changes highlights the basic aspect of stress. Going through many changes in a short time significantly increases your likelihood of illness. Notice I didn’t say negative change, just change. Even desirable experiences like weddings, graduations, and promotions demand adaptation and create stress.

Your Health – Your physical condition impacts your stress levels more than you may think. Not only does stress make you sick, but both short-term and chronic illness cause stress.

Your State of Mind – Any true measure of stress must measure psychological symptoms as well. The most common psychological symptoms caused by stress are anxiety and depression. Some people can sail through a tough time without experiencing either of these, and others may be affected strongly by a seemingly small event.

Your Personality – Your habitual behaviors and emotions also influence how much stress you experience. Your usual pace, outlook, assertiveness, emotional tone, and way of relating to others, as well as how often you work overtime, all impact your stress level.

Most stress assessments leave out the factors working in your favor, as well. Yet these vitally important factors can make the difference between healthy functioning and developing symptoms of stress-related illness.

Your Health Habits – Your use of caffeine, nicotine, and other recreational drugs influences your level of stress. Diet, exercise, and the pace of your life play a part, too.

Social Support – A strong and close-knit group of friends can carry you through tough times.

Your Responses to Stress – Whether you ignore problems and hope they will go away, get stuck in guilt and self-blame, or proactively make a plan and work it adds another piece of the puzzle.

How Satisfied You are with Your Life – Basic satisfaction with your job, health, relationships, finances and home provides some insulation from stressful experiences.

Purpose and Connection – People who believe their life has meaning for themselves and others experience less stress than those who don’t share this belief.

No one factor determines your level of stress. The balance between your stresses and your coping skills, constantly changing, determines where the scale stands at any given moment.

We all know that stress levels in the workplace are reaching unreasonable levels. And most sensible human beings will agree that we have to take action to fix this problem.

However, some government agencies and, I must say, some consultants are all for creating yet another paper and theoretical exercise that will have little benefit to the employees or the business. Managers don’t need lectures on how too much stress diminishes people’s creativity and productivity, increases absenteeism, extended sick leave and can result in tribunal payouts of tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds. Managers want assistance not lectures.

Do whatever you can to escape the form filling that supposed ensure you meet certain “stress management standards”. Avoid like the plague what are now being called “stress risk assessments”. These will require the resources of a full time employee and lead to even more stress!

Rather concentrate on straightforward and easily applied measures to reduce stress and at the same time show employees and regulatory authorities and legal courts that your organisation does stake stress seriously.

Here are just ten you could start with.

1. Ensure your Employee Handbook and Induction has plenty of wording in it that shows that management knows about the adverse effects of too much stress. Explain what people must do if they feel under stress. Go over the top to show that management wants and welcomes discussion reporting of excess stress. Who ever is giving the induction must state this orally too.

2. Have a clear, written and concise procedure that people can follow if they find stress getting out of hand. What can people do if they feel under stress? Who should they speak to? What do they do if it’s their boss who is the cause of stress? What help can the business offer? Make sure employees know they also have a responsibility to look after their physical and mental health.

3. Give people clear job descriptions so they know what is required of them and revisit the description every six months to update them. You can do this in the annual or (better) twice-yearly appraisal Involve people in writing and re-negotiating job descriptions. Specifically ask about what can be done to reduce stress and record the answer.

4. Keep referring to stress in newsletters, speeches and meetings. Put stress reduction on the agenda of management meetings and have a set section in the newsletter. Senior managers should include a mention of stress in at least one speech per year.

5. Offer people-management/leadership workshops to managers and supervisors. Many of them don’t know how to get the best from their people. Unnecessary tension is caused by ignorance of how to speak to and treat people effectively in the modern workplace. Often supervisors don’t know they’re a source of stress – nobody tells them. Keep it simple: one day is enough and avoid “models and theories of leadership”!

6. Offer stress management workshops and literature. Even if there are no current stress problems offer the workshops anyway. Even insist people go. Keep it simple – a half-day is enough and avoid all theory! Give people a book or CD on stress management as part of the induction.

7. Offer a time management workshop. It’s amazing how people can take better control when they know it’s okay to say “no”, to scrap a meeting, to scrap a report, to cut short appointments and to find better, quicker less burdensome ways of doing things. Most people get bogged down because they don’t think in terms of time management and even when they do, some are too afraid to approach the boss. They will think you’ll think, they’re lazy or uncooperative.

8. Monitor stress levels.
No, you don’t need an 80-question stress climate survey or bureaucratic stress management standards. Just twice a year issue a half-page with one question: “For you personally give three things the organisation could do to reduce unreasonable stress”. Make this an anonymous exercise and publish the results with actions taken.

9. Take time to listen and act. If a stress issue is raised, be seen to be taking it seriously. Make time to listen, document the issues and then take action. Whilst keeping confidences publicise what action has been taken.

10. Unfortunately, sooner or later you’ll have to prove to some authority that you are doing things to combat unreasonable stress. Therefore keep a running and up-to-date record – just a simple book – of all the things your organisation is doing to reduce stress in the workplace. Record everything. For example, if you run a Recruitment Interviewing Course, record how you amended the content to include an hour or so on testing to see if candidates can cope with the stress of a particular job.

Debate about what stress is, the relative responsibilities of employers and employees and what systems to use will go on and on. You might as well just get on and do what commonsense and good leadership dictates.

Copyright (c) 2004 Dr William Robb. Electronic distribution to ezines, friends and colleagues permitted but publication in print prohibited without written permission.

So are you ready to learn about stress related behaviors, symptoms and illnesses? Studies show that when people are under stress they tend to overeat and crave foods that make them feel good. Men often go for fatty foods such as potato chips and cheeseburgers and women go for sweets like chocolate or cookies. Obviously, your weight suffers if you habitually use high fat foods as a strategy to cope with stressful situations in your life.A simple solution: have healthy snacks handy and eat them instead!

Stress by itself is not good or bad. Often it is stress that motivates us to a higher level of creativity and performance. However, too much stress — DISTRESS — experienced over a long period of time has a negative effect on our health and effectiveness. People who are under a lot of stress may experience some physical, mental and/or behavioral symptoms:

Symptoms of Distress

Physical

• Sleeplessness
• Too much sleep
• Shallow, rapid breathing
• Oily skin
• Cold hands & feet
• Lack of interest
• Fatigue
• Racing heart
• Tight, sore muscles
• Back, neck and shoulder pain
• Increased blood pressure
• Chest Pain
• Digestive problems
• Grinding teeth
• Excessive perspiration
• Jaw Clenching

Mental

• Anxiety attacks
• Forgetfulness
• Depression
• Irritability
• Impatience
• Lack of interest
• Sadness
• Apathy
• Worry
• Poor concentration
• Mental fatigue

Behavioral

• Outbursts of anger
• Crying too easily
• Overeating
• Fatty, sugary snacks
• Excessive use of alcohol and/or drugs
• Too much smoking
• Isolation – avoiding social contact
• Procrastination
• Reckless driving
• Poor hygiene
• Poor performance

A combination of these symptoms experienced over a long period of time could lead to a growing list of stress related illnesses listed below. Experts claim that over 50% of all physician office visits in the U. S. are stress related. Stress Related Illnesses

• Cardiovascular disease (CVD)
• Heart attacks
• High blood pressure (hypertension)
• Obesity
• Migraine & tension headaches
• Insomnia
• Diabetes
• Ulcers
• Asthma
• TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint Pain)
• Immune system diseases
• Many types of cancers

Distressed people often adopt destructive, unhealthy approaches to managing their stress despite the potentially harmful effects. The next article in the Stress Management Series will discuss the difference between Destructive & Effective Stress Management. For a Deep Relaxation Experience click BestofHealth.com!

For most people, stress has become an inevitable part of their lives. It may be hard to believe, but stress can be beneficial for us. During the ancient time, stress made our ancestors react to danger and helped them to survive. Today, it can help motivate you to achieve your career goals and the quality of lives you want.

Of course too much stress can be harmful to our emotional and physical health. But small amounts of stress could help you to focus and energise you to perform better in your works. Everyone will experience stress in their life and different people experience stress in different levels, some more than others. The key to managing and easing stress lies in how you respond to it.

By responding and understanding stress in a positive way, you can actually turn it to your advantage. If you actively try to turn bad stress into good stress, it can actually help to propel you to move forward in lives. Without stress, people will tend to take everything easy and get into the habit of procrastinating things that they’re supposed to do. Small doses of stress will keep you on your toes and stimulate you to take actions. If not for good stress, you might not get anything done at all!

Highly successful people often know how to manage and ease their stress by converting it into positive energy and then use the energy to their advantage. They are often able to outperform others when it comes to developing solutions to their problems. While others dwelling on the problems, successful people focus their energy on the solutions.

There is no way you can completely eliminate and escape stress from your life. So why not learn to use it in a positive way? If you can cultivate a positive attitude towards stress, you can actually eradicate the negative effects of stress and free yourself from the problems that are holding you down. You will be able to develop creative solutions to your problems and propel yourself to greater heights.

I hope this short article can help you handle your stress better.

The “I Need to Be in Control” Stress Hot Button

If you are feeling out of control and angry, anxious or revengeful — again! — you probably have a stress hot button labeled “I need to be in control.”

What Not to Do and What to Do Instead for Stress Reduction:

1. If another person challenges your authority and control — such as subtly or openly disagreeing with you:

Dig in and insist you are right. Try to emotionally overpower or outmaneuver the other person. Raise your voice to make your points. In the end the only winner will be your skyrocketing blood pressure and stress level.

Instead, change how you think and talk to yourself:

I can never truly control how another person (even my child) thinks and speaks. I might prefer that we agree or do it my way, but I don’t have to be right. I am willing to listen as a neutral, objective observer. I am willing to stay calm and just look at this. As I listen and speak calmly, more creative solutions are bound to arise.

2. If outer circumstances challenge your level of control – such as a traffic accident ahead causing you to be an hour late:

Cuss. Get out of your car and stomp around impatiently. Worry incessantly about how terrible it is that you’re missing your meeting. You will eventually arrive in mental and emotional disarray, frustrated and stressed.

Instead, switch your pattern of thinking and your inner self talk:

I don’t like this (weather, traffic tie up, disaster) at all, but the best thing I can do right now is stay calm and fully functional. I am doing whatever I need to do to get help or be accountable (calling ahead to say I’ll be late, putting a HELP note on the windshield, calling fire or police authorities). I am consciously relaxing and staying alert so I can stay safe and arrive ready to participate in the remainder of the meeting. I’ll get there when I get there. It will all work out fine.

3. If an inner conflict challenges your level of control — such as going on a diet, but gobbling chocolate.

Blame yourself as lacking will power and betraying yourself. Call yourself names. Renew your battle of wills with yourself over what you will eat. Punishing yourself locks you in to the struggle between different parts of yourself with different needs. Both parts lose and you are left struggling with a mountain of conflict and stress.

Instead, compassionately alter your inner discussion:

OK, Honey (or your childhood nickname), we slipped up. I forgive myself. Let’s do better next time. Let’s look at what we were needing when we ate that chocolate! Did we need comfort? Reassurance? Let’s figure this out so we can cooperate better together. I know you and I are on the same side, wanting to take good care of me.

When you accept what is going on (you don’t have to like it!), when you observe with compassion and speak kindly to yourself, you alter your patterns of thinking. This triggers positive emotions such as relief and relaxation instead of negative, stress hot button reactions. Use these examples to springboard creative thinking about your unique stress hot buttons, and you’ll soon be on your way with next steps for healthy stress management.

Stress is a common problem that everybody faces everyday. People have different environments that cause stress: work, home, traffic, etc. It is hard for you to find a place to work that does not have some stress. Feeling stressed out lately? These tips are designed to ease and relieving your stress. Not all of them will work for you, but some of them may work for you. These tips might be helpful but are not a complete solution. If you are having a more serious stress problem, please be sure to consult a health professional.

Tips for relieving stress

1) Eat Healthier

You need to ensure that you nourish your body with the nutrients it needs to combat stress, and limit your intake of foods that aggravate stress. Eat plenty of grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, super-foods, herbs. These extremely healthy foods should be the basis of your diet. Fruits and vegetables is a must if you want to stay healthy for life. If you are concerned about eating a balanced meal despite your efforts, consider taking nutritional supplements. You can take such as vitamins, Vitamins C and minerals, and various antioxidants unless you are getting plenty of these from your regular diet. Animal fats are basically bad and not necessary to a good diet.

2) Exercise

Exercise can be a great stress buster. The heart needs to work hard at least three times a week. Exercise not only can help you to relieve stress, it also has many side effects like helping you sleep, burning calories etc. What kind of exercise is the best? That depends on the individual. Too much exercise can actually suppress the immune system. Try to get about 20 to 30 minutes of moderate exercise most days of the week, leaving one or two days for rest and recovery. It is important to drink extra amounts of water when exercising. Exercise not only helps reduce stress, but it can also help you deal with stress long-term.

3) Happy As You Want to Be

To be happy is easy, just decide to do it and remind yourself everyday that you are a happy person. A spiritual connection is another great way to promote happiness. If you are at the work place, just stand up and smile at your colleague in the far corner.

4) Understand the cause of your stress

No one understands your problem better than you do. A few minutes spend to recognize your true feelings can completely change the situation.

5) Get 8 Hours of Sleep

To relieve your stress, the most important technique is to get enough of sleep. Let’s face it, nobody gets enough sleep any more. People are usually getting at least two hours less than they need every night, putting them into serious sleep debt. The adult body needs, on average, 8 hours of sleep every night, but most adults get about 6 hours. This does not benefit your body and your mind. In fact, it tends to weaken the mind and make it more susceptible to stress, which is exactly what you want to avoid. So get to bed early and make sure that you are getting the sleep you need every night. There is no longer any doubt that lack of sleep affects the immune system and leads to health problems.

6) OCA Water Pillow

OCA Water Pillow promotes ultimate rest when you sleep. Effective in relieving stress and headache, the water pillow ensures you comfort whether cold or warm.

Remember that health is very important. It is very easy to maintain a healthier life if you just have the knowledge. Everyday we all have to face stresses but they do not have to destroy our lives. Being able to control our stress levels is important to our overall body health. Nothing beats a healthy body and a peaceful mind. Start planning now to relieve your stress and enjoy your wonderful life.

Stress Out

We’ve all said the infamous and useless phrase, “I’m stressed out!”

Here’s my question – “How many times do you have to say ‘I’m Stressed Out!’ before saying it starts to help?”

Similar to saying “I’m having a nervous breakdown”, this is a meaningless phrase that only serves to make us feel sorry for ourselves, and leads to no change at all.

Stress Down

Sounds really good, doesn’t it. Just reduce and/or eliminate all the stress from you life and everything will be OK. The problem is it’s just a myth that contributes to our feeling more and more stressed out.

We live in an increasingly complex and fast paced world, and unless we are bombed back to the Stone Age (a entirely different kind of stress), it’s just going to continue. So what we need are powerful tools for dealing with the stress in our lives, which leads to…….

Stress Through

In order to “stress through” you need to learn how to make the stress in your life work for you. To that end, here are 4 Stress Tools that you can use right away.

1. Tool of Resources

There are lots of resources out there to help you successfully manage your stress.

2. Tool of Relaxation

Here’s something I call “push-button relaxation.” Picture yourself somewhere that is very relaxing and peaceful. See, hear and feel everything as if you were there. Now create your own personal button to create this picture and feeling. For some people it’s a snap of the fingers, others use a word or phrase or lines from a song. Whatever quickly takes you there in your imagination. Use your push-button when you are feeling stress and notice the difference.

3. Tool of Battle

This does not mean to grab your sword and shield. It does mean to pick your battles wisely. Whether the situation is parent-child, between spouses, boss-employee, with a co-worker, neighbor or whomever, it’s vital to ask the question, “Is this a battle worth fighting?” Many of us tend to major in minor things. We let too many little things upset us. The more you ask this question, you’ll have less needless battles, less stress and more energy.

4. Tool of Fun & Spontaneity

We’ve just about killed off fun and spontaneity with our over scheduled and day planner run lives. I’ve even seen one friend’s daily schedule that had a 15 minute block that said “have fun.”

Here’s my challenge to you – sometime in the next week, do something totally spontaneous and fun. If you need a suggestion, here’s one from Lollie McLean, author of “Tools for a Happier Life” (www.lollie.com). She recommends going for a “butterfly walk.” A butterfly walk is simply seeing a butterfly and following it wherever it goes. I know this sounds sort of “fluffy”, but try it. I did, and it’s very relaxing.

You will not be graded.

One more challenge, and then I’ll wrap this one up.

Take each one of these tools and regularly use them in your life for the next month. Not only will you notice a difference, I think you’ll like the difference.

Keep the change!