Unusual causes of stress
This blog is directed to executives in the workplace and the aim is to identify and deal with some of the causes that you may not have thought of, or perhaps need to reconsider.
We are inherently creative beings. Creativity necessarily involves spontaneity. If there is no room for spontaneity in your life the brain cannot play and relax and the resulting tension will become counter-productive.
News – no one is indispensable. If you took a couple of days off or even a week, the skies will not fall. Are you sure all the things you are doing are really essential? If you find your productivity going down, then take sick leave, seek out an environment away from your usual reference points, and let the brain get on with the task that it enjoys so much - solving problems. The brain is the ultimate relational database but it needs the right conditions in which to function.
If you cannot delegate work, think why. Is it a lack of trust of others? I have observed that more work and imagination needs to be put into the planning and conceptual stage and in the execution; if you don't fulfil the initial allocation of energy execution may well go awry.
Failure to confer with colleagues about points that you were concerned with at the time will catch up with you later and you will find yourself in a tangled web which could have been avoided. There is a difference between aggression and assertion, and to assert something means to state or express positively, to defend or maintain your rights. Assertion should be the natural stance of someone with self-respect.
It is a very good idea to have a mentor because holding all the worries in your head can be just too much for the psychology. Having a mentor is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of wisdom because you know that as you speak out a particular problem the solution is more likely to become clearer because you have unburdened yourself. Remember the dictum “two heads are better than one”.
Stress can also arise through you making yourself too available. This is particularly important if you have no secretary who can field calls. You will benefit enormously through fixing boundaries and it's not that you're being unloving or inconsiderate, just respectful of the need for the developing situation to breathe.
Another cause of stress is the expectations of others. If you have difficulty with the task then you will reduce your stress levels by informing the waiting party that, for example, you need more time because of this that or the other. Say that the situation appears to require more research then you thought in the first place, or that the person you had hoped to cooperate with has not been available.
Basically, the further you plan ahead, and the more you plan for contingencies, the famous plan B, you can relax knowing if things don't go the way you wished there will always be a fallback.