Sometimes the workplace feels like a battle zone. With much emphasis placed on the importance of the company goals, markets and business plan much of the workforce feel an increasing pressure to perform at top levels at all times. Inevitably these requirements lead to stress and this must be tackled before it affects staff morale and productivity!

I remember working in a restaurant many years ago and having to go out into the main mall and perform, what appeared to be, ludicrous exercises. We all thought it was designed to keep the workforce fit but it is actually an ancient Chinese method of stress relief.

Tai Chi Chuan is a practise that the Chinese used to relieve stress and, in fact, try to avoid it in the first place. During the time of Mao Tse Tung this practise was widespread. At the beginning of each work day hundreds of employees were asked to meet at the main squares all over China to exercise. It is an elementary form of Tai Chi, the practice of extremely slow martial arts movements designed to balance the flow of Chi (life energy) around the meridian points of the body.

The majority of people who practise some kind of stress control in the work place tend to be more successful in their careers and much more productive. You know the old axiom “a happy worker is a productive worker!”

Some careers may be more stressful than others or more stressful at other times. However, the machine operator in a factory can be just as stressed as the office Administrator because each person is unique and each person’s problems are just as important to them as the CEO’s company problems are to him/her. Large corporations and medium sized companies tend to overlook this and must become aware of the situation if they wish to improve company productivity because the workers are the company!

“Tension Prevention” is the name of the game. Stress management can be easily taught to the workforce by providing the knowledge and skills needed to identify rising stress levels and how to combat them.

Good communication between all levels of the workforce, from upper management, to the labourer, is a very effective way of combating stress. Just the knowledge that someone is listening and prepared to take action on issues is enough to seriously reduce stress levels.

Some jobs require a certain level of pressure but when this pressure get to a point when the worker feels he/she has no control then stress ensues. This sense of urgency can have a very destructive effect on not only one worker but on the company as a whole and starts snow-balling out of control badly affecting staff morale. Controlling stress at work will also reduce the negative impact on inter personal relationships outside work. Improving communication, time management and understanding of the affects of stress is key way to generate a peaceful environment and increased productivity.

Current research suggests that fixed work-schedules contribute the most to increased levels of stress, the feeling that there is insufficient time to complete personal daily work tasks accounts for the greatest cause of stress at work.

By incorporating a stress management system which is focused on time-dependent tasks, an anti-stress program to help workers combat stress, scheduled rest breaks, reward for productive stress-free work and combating non-productive workers that put pressure on their colleagues are all solutions that work.

The world we live on is nothing but a mound of chaotic pressure that is building to the point it bursts like a volcano. We are bombarded with pressure from our employers, our customers and families to the point where some people actually do break. Most of us today in professional lives spend between 8 and 16 hours a day at the office, which equates to almost two-thirds of our lives being in a place we really do not want to be in, but there are things you can do to decrease the stress in your office.

Remember this, what we call stress, is really what we put on ourselves. Whilst other people can influence the way we feel, ultimately we are the ones who choose whether we are going to be stressed or not. You are in control of how you are going to feel, no one else. Stress as such is going on in our heads, so the real secret to de-stressing is to find things that would make you happy and content within.

#1. Have a Photo Of The Happiest Time In Your Life

Think back through your life, what is the happiest moment in your life. It could be the birth of your child, getting married, going out on a fantastic date, visiting some outstanding place or maybe it is when you bought your puppy dog but no matter what it is, you will almost certainly have a photo of that time. Take that photo and put it on your desk to remind you of those happy times as this will be one of the tools you need to beat stress in your office.

The happiest time in my life, and where I felt like the luckiest man in the world, was the day my wife stepped out of the limousine at the church for our wedding. I had never seen my wife look so beautiful and I made sure when I felt those feelings that I would remember them forever. So on my desk at work, I have a picture of my wife getting out of the limousine and each time I feel stressed I simply take a few moments to look at that picture and remember that moment in time. You brain is an amazing part of your body, no matter how many times I look at that photo, my brain releases the same feelings I had on the day and helps me snap out of feeling stressed.

Use the happy times, to control the times when you feel the most vulnerable and stressed.

#2. Think Of Your Boss Yelling At You Naked

Everyone has nightmare stories of their bosses being a grouch and I certainly have had my fair share, but most people who talk of being excessively stressed often relate that stress to a boss who is abusive and yells a lot. Well first off, if you are working in an environment where you boss is abusive, get out NOW! Nobody has to put up with that and remember life is way to short regardless of the money. Is money worth that much that the stress is worth dying tomorrow from a heart attack? NO!

However, if you have a boss who yells at you a lot, just for the sake of yelling and really is quite rude, simply imagine them yelling at you naked. If someone flew into your office absolutely starkas, that is with absolutely no clothes on, would you take them seriously. Course not! So, why take a boss that comes in and yells at you seriously. If your boss is an effective communicator he or she would not need to yell at you.

The next time your boss comes in, force yourself to think of them absolutely naked. When you do that, see just how you actually react and whether you deal with the situation better than when they are yelling at you absolutely naked. After a bit of practice you will find you are able to handle the situation much better and cope with a grouchy boss.

#3. Get Up and Do Some Office Exercises

Look no one on the planet can deny that doing exercise, gets the blood going and burns off the stress however sneaking away during the day can be really difficult but there are other Office Exercises that can bring you a lot of benefit to you. There are many office exercises that you can do like rolling your shoulders, clenching your hands and releasing them and even neck exercises that will help release the stress.

Often, much of our built up stress is simply due to sitting at the computer all day looking at the screen. Make sure that every hour you get up and stretch for at least five minutes. You will find that if you do not do that over a period of time this will lead to aches and pains, which can help increase your stress.

To get the best Office Exercises for you to do simply talk to your General Practitioner or visit a Physiotherapist and they will be able to help you develop an Office Exercise plan and you will be surprised how much easier life is to cope with.

#4. Schedule Enough Time to Go From One Meeting To Another

I worked for a bank about five years ago and I have never met an organisation that has so many meetings. My whole days constituted going from one meeting to another and I learnt one very important lesson. If I did not run my schedule my meetings would. Make sure that when you schedule an appointment or a meeting that you include travel time to and from a meeting.

Whilst working for this firm, if you did not schedule travel time, they would simply book meetings next to each other even if the meeting was across the other side of the city. They would simply expect you to immediately appear at that other meeting.

Message to All Humans – we do not have an instant teleporter, the Stargate is a fantasy, so make sure you give yourself enough time to get from one meeting to another or you are going to stress out.

#5. Plan Your Day

We talked about scheduling time to get from one meeting to another in the previous point but there is an extension to this. Make sure YOU plan your day, not your business associates. All too often I hear management say, “I did not get lunch today” or ” I have been on the run and have not had a chance to stop”. Come on, get a grip, you are in control and it is up to you.

The first thing you should do in every job you work in, is to make sure you schedule two decent breaks a day which include at least half an hour for lunch and a 20 minute break somewhere else in the day. If you are like most people you will be using something like Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes to manage your day. Both allow you to schedule unavailable time in your calendar, so do IT!

By scheduling YOU time, you can ensure you have enough time to have a break, do a little meditation and relax and prepare for the rest of the day. If you are like me and work 16 hours a day, then you should also be putting into your plan a decent Dinner break of at least an hour and half an hour at the gym, even if it is just using the treadmill. If you do not do this, it will catch you up to you and you will be a statistic at 40. Do not laugh, my leading hand lost his life because he did not do the right thing. It can happen to you.

#6. Limit the Amount of Time Spent Dealing With Emails

Technology is a wonderful thing, but when technology rules your life, then you have a big problem and very quickly technology like email can overwhelm you causing you to become stressed. One of the rules my team and I have in the office is that nobody must respond to emails for more than 60 minutes per day. The reason we have put this rule into place, is that many of my team and our corporate clients spend their whole day emailing each other rather than dealing with the issues at hand.

How often have you received an email on one topic and then have the content of the email go off in another direction right before your eyes? I was working in one corporate organisation as an external consultant and very often all I would do is simply respond to emails all day long and get nothing done. Most of the emails could have been dealt with a 2 second phone call. In one of the offices I was working in, it was an open plan office layout and I had a bloke working directly across from me, who refused to speak to me or anyone else on the floor and all he did was when he had an issue, he would send an email.

This is a crazy way to do business and it does not work and only causes technology stress. My solution, each time he emailed me, I simply spoke the answer back to him. He got the point after a while and my email load went down when he spoke to me rather than emailed me. Technology is supposed to make life easier, not take over your life, so if you have a question and the person is sitting in the next office, get up and knock on their door and ask the question.

By doing this you are undertaking item number 6 which is limiting your emails and item number 3 which is get up and do some office exercises. That little bit of walking will help get the blood flowing through you veins.

#7. Be Prepared To Say “NO!”

We all want to get ahead in the world today and I am sure in everyone there is a little part of us that wants to live the life of Bill Gates and Donald Trump and be as rich as them. However, most of us make the mistake of simply saying yes to everything that is thrown at us. Now whilst that is great to say yes, people like Bill Gates and Donald Trump have teams of people to help them, and in all honesty you maybe on their teams, but all of us are only human and sometimes we simply have to say “NO!”

Where is the point in saying to our bosses, “Yes we will have this 500 page report written for you tomorrow”. When in reality there is absolutely no chance of that occurring. Sometimes in this world you simply have to say no and that does not go just for the boss, it also goes for the customers as well. My team and I have a seven day schedule across the various businesses I run and whilst we do not all work seven days a week, sometimes we do work six days a week to get through our responsibilities. One weekend I had one of our customers, mind you it was 6:30 am on a Sunday morning demand one of my team from our car cleaning business, drop everything and clean their car at 7:00am because an important family member was coming.

There were many responses I could have given, but my simple answer was NO! The customer ranted and raved for about 10 minutes by which time I was imagining them naked yelling at me, which really was a funny site and then when they were finished and I simply asked them would they be prepared to work all week including Saturday and Sunday for the next 2 weeks and their reply was “NO, My Weekends Are My Own and I am not working them for anyone.” Then I simply responding by saying to them, then there is your answer and I hung up. You know the funny thing, they rang me on Monday morning and apologised and we did the top car cleaning service on their car the following week. I charged them more as well.

Most customers will accept the answer of No when they understand why you are saying No. Some will not, but then do you really need them as customers anyway.

#8. Take your shoes off and walk on the carpet

This is my favorite de-stressing activity and it shocks the living daylights out of everyone. I first met a lady about 10 years ago who was in her early fortys and nothing seemed to shake her stature. She was always calm and never got flustered and I asked her what her secret was and she said, “I always take my shoes off as often as possible so I can stay in touch with the earth”. This was a really prominent statement for me, because I never really thought of my shoes as a tool to disconnect us from our surroundings but if you think about it, it makes sense.

If you go down to the beach, what is the first thing you do. You take off your shoes to feel the sand through you feet and how does it make you feel, relaxed. If you go to the park with the children, what do you do? Take your shoes off so you can run around and have fun or to play in the mud. Whether we realise it or not, when we disconnect ourselves from mother earth we really do start to stress.

I now always take my shoes off when I am working in my office, including my socks just so I can feel something more inspirational under my feet rather than just the hard soles of my shoes. I know another corporate CEO in Brisbane Australia, who used to walk down to Anzac Square every lunch hour to walk on the grass so that he could stay in touch with the world. Hey, if it works in the movie Pretty Woman, surely it must work.

#9. Play Music

Listening to the right type of music is really important when you are trying to reduce stress and find your inner peace. Some music when listened to, whilst stressed, can in fact heighten your stress levels. One type of music, which research has shown to help reduce stress is Baroque music. This music is written so that there is only 60 beats per minute and funny enough that is what our heart rate should be. The baroque music has been found to increase the alpha waves in your left and right sides of your brain which help improve your learning ability, creativity and calmness.

Whilst you are working in the office on a demanding piece of work, simply put in a CDROM of music and listen to it as you are completing the work, but honestly do watch the type of music you are listening to or it can back fire. Most corporate organisations are now realising the benefit of staff listening to music during the day and with 90% of corporate computers having CDROMs, it is possible to listen to music on your computer whilst doing your work, you may just need headphones. I work in hundreds of corporate organisations a year and only one had a no music policy and that was because they were a call centre, which I can understand. There is no reason why you can not listen to music during your break though to ensure you a feeling calm before hitting those phones again.

#10. Meditate

Okay, I can hear it now, “Oh Yeah Hippy, Want Us to Meditate do ya.” Absolutely! Look whilst meditation has certainly been a thing of fringe groups in western society or associated with more eastern religions many researchers are now coming to the distinct conclusion that meditation can make a huge difference to our day-to-day lives and helps us to overcome stress.

The core advantage meditation will play in your office is to help you to relax and deal with challenging situations more effectively. The more relaxed you are the more creative you can be in dealing with any issues that arise. I certainly recommend that when you are meditating, that you use baroque music with your meditation as it will help increase the alpha waves which will help lead you to a calm feeling. This is especially useful if you do not have a long period to meditate. I recommend a 20 minute meditation session at least once a day preferably two. You will be really surprised the difference it makes to your day. Just try it out, you have nothing to loose and the rest of your life to gain

The office environment in these millennia is far more stressful than they were a century ago, but there are things you can do about it but it is up to you. Remember, we only have one life and it is not a dress rehearsal so get out and reduce the stress your office gives you and have some fun. To finish off let me reiterate the ten things you can do to reduce your stress at the office.

#1. Have a Photo Of The Happiest Time In Your Life
#2. Think Of Your Boss Yelling At You Naked
#3. Get Up and Do Some Office Exercises
#4. Schedule Enough Time to Go From One Meeting To Another
#5. Plan Your Day
#6. Limit the Amount of Time Spent Dealing With Emails
#7. Be Prepared To Say “NO!”
#8. Take your shoes off and walk on the carpet
#9. Play Music
#10. Meditate

Stress can be defined as the non-specific response of the body to any demands made upon it. In other words is the interaction between the coping skills of the individual and its environment. When talking about stress, the first question that comes to my mind is, what causes stress? Well, there are 2 factors that cause stress. At first, is a stressor, and second is what we call the stress-reactivity. A stressor is any stimulus which has the potential of trigging flight or fight response. Stressors are those, for which our body is evolutionary trained, when there was a threat to our safety, consider the example, the cavemen who saw a lion looking for its next meal, had to react quickly. Cavemen, who were not strong enough or fast enough, didn’t have to worry about their next threat. They become meal for the lion, so the flight or fight response was necessary, and its rapidity was vital for survival.

Modern day men and women also react to stressors with the same response, for example, when you step off a curb, not noticing a car coming down the street, you hear the car’s horn, you quickly jump back on the curb. Your heart beats faster, breathing changes, you perspire. These are all manifestations of your response to the stressor, which is the threat of being hit by the car. We encounter different types of stressors. There are environmental stressors like heat, cold, toxins. Some psychological stressors like threat to self-esteem, depression. And other sociological stressors like death of a loved one, unemployment and then there are other philosophical stressors like use of time and purpose of life. We encounter stressors everyday and in every walk of life.

The flight or fight response to a stressor is termed as stress reactivity. It includes increase in muscle tension, heart rate, elevated blood pressure, less saliva in mouth, etc. these reactions prepare us for swift response. When we buildup stress products and do not use them, this stress reaction becomes unhealthy.

Some stress is natural and necessary part of life. It is inevitable and also desirable. At low level of stress arousal you are not motivated to try very hard so you don’t perform well. At another extreme, too high level of stress arousal disrupts your performance on all your tasks. Hans Selye (a researcher in stress) summarized stress reactivity as a three stage process termed as General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS).
Phase 1: alarm reaction- the body shows the changes characteristic of the first exposure to the stressor. A burst of energy is made available to you.
Phase 2: stage of resistance- resistance ensues if continued exposure to the stressor is compatible with the adaptation. The bodily signs of alarm reaction have virtually disappeared, and resistance rises above normal.
Phase 3: stage of exhaustion- following long continued exposure to the same stressor, the adaptation energy is exhausted. The similar symptoms of alarm reaction reappear, but now they are irreversible and this could be fatal.

Stress has many effects on our health. If not given proper attention could lead to hypertension, stroke, ulcers, migraine headaches, coronary heart disease, tension headaches, asthma, hay fever to name a few. Have you ever noticed that some people are more prone to stress than other. Some people tend to react to stressors with an all-out physiological reaction that takes a toll on their health. We call these people as hot reactors if you notice people who get angry easily, are often anxious or depressed, urinate frequently, experience constipation or diarrhea more than usual, experience vomiting or nausea, there is a good chance they are hot reactors. People who are perfectionist, obsessive compulsive, etc. are more prone to stress.
The management of the five components of stress in the way to reduce stress:
1) Changing stressors: Identify the regular or predictable stressors in your life. Commonly they are job, relationships, and unreasonable demands. You can change the stressor, quit it, improve it, or tolerate it.
2) Changing your physiological responses: Life style modifications, healthy diet, relaxation, exercise.
3) Changing behavior: An important part of managing stress effectively involves changing your behavior so as to replace old, stress increasing and self defeating behaviors with more successful behaviors.
4) Changing your perception: Interpretation of your situation as a threat makes it a stressor for you. Your expectation whether or not you will be able to cope with it influences your level of stress and your expectations of your not coping also influences your levels of stress.
5) Changing your feelings: How you think is how you feel. Learn to handle your bad feelings. Denying your feelings and pretending they don’t exist will only make things worse.

These are just a few suggestions understand and start working on the stressors you feel in your life. Rare is a person who doesn’t experience any stress. The first step is to be aware. Observe and introspect to identity the stressors in your life. As a starting point think of all the stressors in your life and the level of stress they bring to you.