How can you prevent stress at work?

Workplace stress is a common issue that can impact the mental and physical health of many individuals. It’s important to recognize potential causes of workplace stress in order to take measures to prevent and address them. Here are the top 3 causes as we see them:

1. You’re Burdened with Excessive Workload

You might be under excessive pressure due to a high volume of work, tight deadlines, and unrealistic expectations. Our brain is constantly calculating information. If you convince yourself that you need to achieve a goal but these unconscious calculations conclude that the goal won’t be met, your brain will secrete high levels of stress hormones because it perceives you’re in an insecure situation and defends against it. The defense against insecurity here will create and reinforce the problem.

2. You Lack Control

You may feel stressed if you believe you don’t have sufficient control over your work or if you feel blocked from achieving your goals. Humans have a difficult time coping with the feeling of being unable to attain what they perceive as necessary for their happiness or further fulfillment.

3. You’re Dealing with Conflictual Relationships

Clearly, the work environment greatly influences daily emotions. Conflicts with colleagues, supervisors, or clients can cause stress and anxiety.

We believe in an individual’s sense of accomplishment through work, but this should never come through the lens of suffering. That’s why there are measures you can take to prevent workplace stress and maintain your mental health and well-being.

Here are some tips to prevent workplace stress:

First tip: Prioritize work-life balance

You must understand that a sense of peace in your body is triggered by emotions secreted by your system when you feel balanced in your life. This means you won’t have frustrations between your personal and professional accomplishments.

Try not to work during your rest time and don’t bring work home. Don’t let work take up all the space in the hierarchy of your priorities. Never forget that your passions, dreams, and everything that constitutes your personal life are priorities to feel well.

Second tip: Reduce your mental load

Plan your workday in advance. Create a list of tasks to accomplish and prioritize them based on importance. Implement all possible and feasible strategies in your professional and personal lives to reduce any form of mental load. Mental load is what we feel when we have to manage a bunch of information or tasks simultaneously. Small changes create significant transformations. For example, unsubscribing from newsletters you never read that clutter your inbox and create unnecessary clicks and attention every day, choosing your outfit the night before rather than during the morning rush are examples of insignificant small changes that have a big impact on mental load.

Third tip: Get moving!

Be physically active: Exercise regularly to maintain your physical and mental health. Exercise releases endorphins, hormones that provide a sense of well-being and happiness. Plus, you’ll feel progress in your self-image, body, which will generate an additional long-term sense of accomplishment.

Fourth tip: Learn to say no

Learn to say no to extra tasks when you’re already overwhelmed with work. It’s important to set boundaries and protect your time and energy. Saying no is self-respect, self-love, self-care, and taking back control over your life, your person… thus reducing your daily and long-term stress.

Fifth tip: Use hypnosis as a stress management tool

Hypnosis is one of the most effective therapeutic techniques as the relationship between time invested, logistics to access, and actual self-changes is unparalleled. With Hypnoledge, you gain access to over 130 hypnosis sessions like having a real hypnotherapist in your pocket, helping you work on all these dimensions and on your workplace and daily life stress management.

In summary, if you’re starting to feel overwhelming stress at work, don’t hope for change without changing something on your end. Don’t wait, start implementing changes now that will have immediate and medium-to-long-term effects. You’re a human being, not an object of suffering to serve your job, you need to respect yourself.