From being caught up in traffic to being late for an important meeting, trying to impress your crush or meeting up a deadline, everyone experiences stress from time to time. Stress is a natural physical and mental response to life experiences. It could be positive or negative. When it becomes negative, stress causes irritability, anxiety, depression, insomnia and headaches.
When you are self-aware and know what you can control, it becomes easier to manage for stress.
So what are the modern causes of stress?
- Busyness
In today’s world, people take pride in being busy. There is a lot of difference between being busy and productive. The goal should be to be productive and not busy. A person can be busy without achieving anything. A productive person is using time wisely and achieving results.
- Multitasking
It is possible to engage in more than one tasks but it better to focus on one at a time for maximum results. Doing several things at the same time can be stressful. Which is better doing several things at the same time with no results or just one with maximum result?
- Newscycle
The media is designed in such way only bad news sell. If you consume too much negative information, it would affect your thinking. This would increase your stress levels. Switch off from any news source that negatively impacts you.
- Emails
With so many emails to respond to, you find that you may not have time for other businesses. It is advisable to set specific times to respond to your emails especially the not so urgent ones. Also, know the ones to address and the ones that are irrelevant. You don’t have to answer all of them.
- Family/Children needs
We all have 24 hours a day and face different demands for it. Don’t devout so much time to work at the expense of family. There should be a balance. Don’t be over-pressured to meet every family/child’s need. Do what you can do while you can.
- Keeping up with the Joneses
We are constantly bombarded with the display of wealth and ‘perfect life’ on social media. In order to prove that we are also living the life, we might be under pressure to live above our means or be fake. Know that social media is different from reality. Nobody would put their failures out for the world to see. No need to be under pressure to live up to people’s expectations.
- Overworking
You should find time to relax your body, muscles and mind. The work would go on with or without you. While it is good to be hard working, find time to rest and relax. A healthy body can only do a good work.