You might be a new business owner a long time business owner, someone’s boss or a young professional but you must have encountered stress. That pressure we feel when a lot is going on, when multiple deadlines approach, when we’re thinking about to how to make extraordinary progress. We all have experienced it. No one likes to be stressed (at least not me).
From experience, stress has a way of distracting us, causing us to lose focus, worry and produce less than optimum results. The resulting question you’d have for me, is how do we conquer stress?
The trick to defeating stress is preparing. I know you’re wondering, how can we be prepared for stress? We don’t know when we’ll be stressed. Stress can show up at any time. We have to have our arsenal ready to fight it when it arrives. We don’t always know when we’d be tensed or anxious. In order to keep producing great results and growing your business, you must remember that you cannot let stress stop your progress. Stress affects both your productivity at work and relations at home.
Here are a few simple tools I learned on my own journey:
Sleep: Sleep is important yet it’s one of the things a lot of us ignore and do not pay enough attention to. In order to be relaxed and refreshed, ready to the next day’s activities, you have to schedule regular sleep times. When you are not well relaxed, you are more likely to be stressed out, tired and unable to think clearly and produce your best. Get enough sleep. Without it, you’d feel more pressure. Make sure you get time to remove all distractions and sleep. Maybe even add a regularly scheduled nap if you can.
Organize, Organize, Organize: Imagine the days when you have a set schedule and follow it, do you feel as stressed? Most likely not. Create a calendar that contains deadlines for your tasks and make sure this calendar is in a spot you can always see. Tick them off as you complete them. Just seeing yourself tick them off would motivate you to keep going forward.
Schedule Downtime: All work and no play makes Jack a stressed man indeed! Work work work, work as hard as you can but set some downtime to relax. Take a weekend vacation, visit a beach, run along the shores, travel. Take a considerable time from grinding to rejuvenate. You’d return to work with a clear mind and with great energy.
Apart from these, we all have personal activities that take the tension off. For some of us, it could be meditation, exercise, hanging out with friends, taking a jog, walking our dogs or dancing. Figure out what your personal de-stressor is because it would work best for you and use it as much as you can. As long as you can escape the little stress points, they’d never be able to add up and smack you unexpected.