People experience stress on so many levels. Some of them experience anxiety attacks, others start crying… I personally used to eat nonstop until I made sure that there’s nothing left on the table. Stress is a feeling that you can’t prevent, but you can manage to coexist with.
What are the common causes of stress?
- Work Stress: being unhappy with your job, overloaded in tasks, losing your job, working under dangerous conditions, having to give speeches in front of colleagues, facing discrimination in your day to day interactions with people especially when your organization doesn’t support you…
- Life Stress: moving to a new home, illness of the ones you love, the recent death of someone you care about, getting married, taking care of an elderly family member, increase of financial obligations.
- Overthinking: overthinking about scenarios that we all know won’t be happening anytime soon but that’s a whole other level!
- Procrastinating: to leave all your daily tasks to the last minute.
"Don't play the victim to circumstances you created."
One of the most important skills that recruiters nowadays care about is to cope with a stressful environment and maintain a productive attitude. From a fulltime working student’s perspective especially in Lebanon, I either had to get over myself and start working, or I would’ve drowned in my own hole. It took a lot to stand up again and to implement tips and tricks to finish my daily tasks.
Want to know how to work under stress? By asking this question you already did the first step!
Acknowledging that stress is the main reason that’s holding you back from your goals is a huge step that people fail to accomplish. You need to start understanding yourself, understand what are your top priorities, and what are the things you can let go to start planning your day ahead. By planning your own schedule, this will help you get a clear vision of your day, and what you would do in crunch times. Second, focus on the present rather than thinking about what would happen if you go talk to your crush or if you do a presentation in front of your coworkers. Third, stop procrastinating, pressure comes because you failed to act and prioritize. We both know that it’s hard to keep track, and we all like to have fun during the day, but it’s all fun and games until have your boss waiting for your email and you losing control of what you can finish in a really short period of time.
Change how you think about pressure, and this my friend might be the hardest part. To be stressing out is normal but to live with stress while working is torture… You should perceive it as a simple feeling that is caused unconsciously by your mind, otherwise it will eat you up and forbid you from doing any action. Use some behaviors from the past that helped you build yourself up in these critical times. As we all know, each and every one of us handles their problems differently. Expect the unexpected, that way you will develop the mental readiness for upcoming tasks. And finally, get a good night sleep. Beauty sleep is good for you anyways!
We’re meant to be different, we’re not the same, and we’ll never be. But what’s sure is that we all face similar problems that might harm our well-being especially if we neglect them. So start by understanding yourself more and the rest will follow.
Elissa Bourgess