American Psychological Association reports that American companies lose an estimated $300 billion every year as a result of workplace stress.
Workplace stress is experienced by a good number of workers of both gender and it has existed since as long as there have been workplaces.
Heidi Golledge of CareerBliss says “Ability to do their job well and therefore keep their job is a major stress for most employees, especially in a fluctuating economy,” so it might likely get worse as you move up in your career.
But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do anything about it. Since it is most prevalent in working places, here are some amazing ways to get some respite in the office.
Take breathing breaks
It might not seem like it but taking short breaks to “really” breathe is one of the best ways to relieving yourself of stress even while you are still working. It is the same mechanism that works when you feel nervous and you take a deep breath; suddenly you are relaxed.
Or have you ever thought about how you breathe really deep just right before you fall asleep? It’s your body trying to get relaxed the way it knows how to.
Slow deep breathes are capable of calming your nerves, and when you work, you hardly ever get the time to take short pauses to inhale and exhale deeply. You will be doing yourself a lot of good if you steal some quick minutes in between work to go through “breathe” medication.
It is really easy to do. Take 5 – 10 minutes, any time you can get, find a quiet room or anywhere you would feel comfortable doing it, slowly take a deep breath in as you count from 1 – 6 in your head, then breath out completely as you count 1 – 7 silently.
Repeat as much time as you can in less than 10 minutes or when you feel relaxed already.
Sit Right
As simple as it sounds, sitting really does relieve stress more than you know. You might want to say that you sit all day at work already and it’s probably part of why you are so stressed.
Well, you probably aren’t sitting right. Yes – you read that right.
When you were a lot younger, you might have gotten a lot of “sit right” or “sit straight up” from your mother and brushed it off as another maternal pestering. Well, it’s not pestering at all.
“Your posture influences psychology and that influences behavior,” says Andy Yap, a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He conducted experiments into what causes stress and found at that when we sit in tight and uncomfortable positions, we become less powerful and more stressed.
So if your workspace is all cramped up or you have to sit on an uncomfortable chair, you should do something about it. You probably want to invest in one of those chairs that are made of superior leather like those at kinzd or you could occasionally strike periodically strike power poses.
Use Relaxing music
If your office does not have a policy against playing nondisturbing music at work then listening to soothing tunes during office hours might be the most entertaining way to relieve yourself of stress.
Music has very specific ability to destress you and the right sounds would cause you the calm and freshness you need. Different people have different taste in music so what necessarily calms Jack might not have the breeze effect on you.
Even while you have your own music collection, using it the wrong way will give you no result. You would want to maintain a steady tempo or progress steadily if you aim to use the sounds to relax.
Steer clear of depressing lyrics. The whole idea of relaxing and destressing is to NOT stress. While depressing sounds are elegantly slow, they are still depressing. They would do little to soothe you or even dampen your mood the more. If you need to listen to vocals at all then choose songs with positive lyrics, otherwise, opt for audios without vocals.
Monitor your heart rate as the sounds filter into your ears. Close your eyes and picture yourself in the scene that the sounds profess. If your heart rate slows down, it means that it is working; if it doesn’t then you might want to consider a change of sound.