Excessive stress can interfere with your productivity and overall performance, impact your physical and emotional health, and affect your work and personal relationships. It can even mean the difference between success and failure on the job!
Although you can’t control all that happens within your work environment, you can learn how to respond to workplace stressors. Try taking these steps:
S.O.S. or stand back, observe and steer
Stand back
To avoid an immediate irrational or angry reaction, take a step back to allow you to cool off and think rationally. You might take a short walk, count backwards from 10 to 1, or practice deep breathing.
Observe
Once you’ve regained your calm, give some thought to how you felt and why. Were you sad, hurt, disappointed, overwhelmed, angry? Did you feel that you have too many responsibilities, that there are too few hours in the day? Or did the company culture get you down or your boss, colleague or client give you a hard time?
Once you have identified the trigger and underlying feelings, you can start making a plan by asking yourself what reaction would achieve the best outcome.
Steer
Now you can steer, meaning you might talk to the person who upset you to explain why and try to resolve it or avoid a similar situation in the future. If you believe your workload is unmanageable, you may want to talk to your boss (not always easy – making a plan prior to your discussion would help).
While the S.O.S method can help you react to workplace stressors in a rational manner, breathing exercises can provide you with an extra boost and sustain stress management in the long run.
Breathing exercises to help and prevent stress
Breathing exercises can help to both prevent and relief stress. They work quickly, are easy to learn, free of charge and take very little practice.
You can start by practicing for just a few minutes each day, preferably in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. A setting in nature would be perfect, but even at your desk they will work.
Deep abdominal breathing
Start by sitting down in a comfortable position, a firm chair is best.
Keep your knees bent and your shoulders and neck relaxed.
Place one hand on your chest and your other hand on your lower stomach.
Bring your focus to your breath.
Close your eyes.
Notice whether you breathe into your chest or abdomen. Are you breathing slow or fast? Are your breaths shallow or deep?
Now begin to inhale through your nose, making sure the hand on your lower stomach rises while the hand on your chest remains relatively still.
Inhale until you cannot take in any more air comfortably.
Contract your stomach muscles to exhale, breathing out through pursed lips or through your nose.
Continue breathing in this manner for 5 minutes.
Counting the breath
Sit comfortably in firm a chair.
Close your eyes.
Breathe in through your nose for a count of 5.
Breathe out through your nose to the count of 5.
Repeat for 5 minutes.
You can gradually work up to taking breaths that last up to 10 counts.
Alternate Nostril Breathing
Sit in a comfortable position and place your left hand comfortably on your lap.
Close your eyes.
Place your right index and middle fingers against your forehead, between your eyebrows.
Place your right thumb over your right nostril, gently closing it, and inhale through the left nostril.
Now take your ring finger and use it to close left nostril, release the right nostril and exhale through the right nostril.
Inhale through your right nostril.
Exhale through your left nostril.
This completes one round. Continue breathing this way for as long as you want.
Breath Focus
To help deepen your state of relaxation, try to focus your mind on an image and/or phrase as you do your breathing exercises. Try using these steps:
As you breathe in, imagine that the air entering your body is filled with a feeling of calm and peace and feel it spread across your body.
As you breathe out, imagine that all tension and stress leave your body along with the expelled air.
You can add mental phrases such as “I breathe in calm and peace” while you inhale, and “I breathe out tension stress”.
These breathing exercises take only a few minutes. To get even greater benefits, you can work up to doing them for 10 minutes or more.
Make the S.O.S. method and breathing exercises a regular part of your workday to enjoy more pleasant and productive days at work.
