A diamond is just a piece of charcoal that handled the pressure – How to manage work induced stress

During the pandemic I embarked upon a training course with Mental Health First Aid England to become a certified Mental Health First Aider. I found the course thoroughly helpful as it covered a broad range of interesting topics including stress in the workplace, an area I wanted to explore further in this article.

Certain levels of stress are unavoidable in most office-based jobs, however when these levels get excessive there can be adverse effects which impact our mood, state of mind and work productivity. We spend so much time working, it can feel impossible to separate it from our personal lives, especially when working from home, and unchecked stresses from the office can impact our daily lives outside of the work setting.

It is important to have methods in place to manage stress levels and techniques to reduce stress when you encounter particularly demanding periods at work. These can be simple, every day changes which collectively will have a significant impact on your state of mind and mood.

Some suggestions:

• Mindfulness meditation – “the ability to be fully present in the moment”, mindfulness helps you refocus energies and close off those background thoughts nagging you to get back to that stakeholder at work or that project that’s taking up most of your bandwidth. Mindfulness is an excellent tool for clearing the mind and also helps you come to natural solutions to problems whilst reducing stress levels. I would strongly recommend giving this a go , potentially over your lunch break, and to bring a pen and paper as you normally come out of these sessions with an amazing ‘to do’ list.
• Walking / getting out of the office – with the weather improving and sunlight hours increasing, it’s a far nicer experience to break your day up with a walk out of the office. Bask in the upcoming spring sunshine, sunlight helps boost the body’s vitamin D supply which again impacts your mood and helps lower stress levels. I’ve found a 15 minute route round Exmouth market that helps me clear the mind and has a couple of spots built in where I can pick up a coffee or a pastry. The small pleasures in life.
• “Breathe it in” – similar to meditation, 1 minute of focused, deep belly breathing can help relieve stress and help you feel grounded – Click here for a breathing guide.
• Minute to arrive” – linked to mindfulness exercises, before dashing from one meeting to the next, take a minute to focus on your breath, clear your mind and begin to focus on your next interaction. This helps again with getting rid of some of that background noise and focus on the job at hand.
• Exercise – build into your weekly routine some sort of exercise programme to help you stay active. Using your lunch to go for a run or any other kind of activity can be a good way to stay active – if you’re not a fan of gyms other options are available!

This is far from an exhaustive list and I would appreciate any thoughts / suggestions you might have on how to reduce stress levels both personally and amongst your team as this is an area in which I have a genuine interest. Please feel free to leave a comment or get in touch if this is something you’d be interested in discussing further – I always welcome a conversation!