5 Ways to Reduce Stress at Work

Do you ever find yourself working from a place of stress instead of calm? You’re sitting at your desk and you feel like your whole body is squeezed in a tight ball. You want to relax, but you feel like you can’t. You are uncomfortable, tired and need a vacation but you can’t take one just yet. If this sounds like you, here are a few simple tips to add to your day at work. The key to remember is that these things need to be done consistently. Memorise this list, print it out, put it on your desk, whatever you need. Make sure that these techniques are on your mind and that you are practicing them every day.

ONE – LOWER YOUR SHOULDERS

If you are feeling stressed, chances are your shoulders are up near your ears. This is a clear sign of stress and an indication that you need to take a step back and relax. Keeping your shoulders raised creates tension in your neck and results in a headache. And trust me, there is nothing worse than being busy at work and dealing with a headache. Set the intention to consciously check in with yourself throughout the day and notice when you are doing this. Once you notice it, you can take a few deep breaths and lower your shoulders. Your body will thank you.

TWO – PRACTICE MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness is simply the word for paying attention to one thing and one thing only. All of your focus goes to the one task at hand. When you think about it, people aren’t very mindful anymore. We watch TV while scrolling on our phone or we cook dinner while listening to a podcast. We are almost always thinking about or doing more than one thing at once. By simplifying whatever task you are doing, it will help you focus better and get the task done quicker. And trust me on this – it will also reduce your stress. I remember one time sitting at my desk and feeling my shoulders up around my ears. I was stressed from trying to do too many tasks at once with all the tabs open at the same time. Then, I relaxed my shoulders (in step one) and started to focus only on the one task I was doing. I felt so much more relaxed and time flew by instead of going super slow like it normally did. This brings me to step three …

THREE – CLOSE ALL THE TABS YOU AREN’T USING!

This is more of a practical tip of how to only focus on one thing at once. If you are anything like me, you have a million tabs open of unchecked tasks on your to do list. It’s time to make some new habits. Only doing one task at once means that you have less stimuli to distract your mind. All those open tabs are distracting, your essentially telling yourself ‘hey look how much more I still have to do‘ and it makes it a lot harder to focus on the task at hand. Start getting into the habit of closing tabs when you are done and limiting the amount of tabs/tasks you start at any given time. Less is best.

FOUR – TAKE AN ACTUAL LUNCH BREAK (AND REGULAR BREAKS IN GENERAL)

Yes, a real lunch break. As in: not eating at your desk and working through lunch.

Your lunch break is your one hour (or half hour – sorry if that’s you) to yourself, where you do not have to answer the phone, reply to emails, take meetings or do any sort of work that you are paid to do. This is ‘YOU’ time, and when you work a full-time job, ‘you’ time is quite rare.

Take your lunch break as a sacred, non-negotiable time for you to look up and away from screens and focus on the food you are eating. I promise you that taking a lunch break will actually make you more productive for the final hours of the day.

Use your lunch break to:

• Chat with a colleague
• Get some sunlight
• Explore the city you work in
• Take a break from screens
• Reset before the afternoon
• Meditate
• Have gratitude for your food, job, colleagues and life in general

FIVE – GET SOME FRESH AIR

Fluorescent lights, computer screens, air conditioning. Not at all the most natural environment.

Office spaces can suck the life out of you, but only if you let it.

Make it your priority to get outside at least once per work day (no, traveling to and from work doesn’t count. I’m talking about going downstairs for an afternoon coffee and taking an extra few minutes to breathe in the fresh air). This time is just as important to how you feel at work as your lunch break is.

Getting fresh air has the power to reenergise you, refocus you and keep you connected to the planet that we live on. Not only that, it breaks apart your day (which also makes it go way faster).

And now a couple of tips for not just at work but everywhere:

1. Get a good nights sleep – preferably every night. 7-8 hours, you know the drill.
2. Eat well – limit your packaged and processed foods to nearly zero and focus on good nutrition with lots of fruits and vegetables.
3. Practice meditation and mindfulness out of the office to help make calm your new default setting.
4. Lay your clothes out the night before so you have one less thing to think about in the morning.
5. Journal every night to brain dump all the tasks of the day, tasks for tomorrow and tasks for the future that are taking up space in your mind.

I hope this has helped you with some ideas on how to stay calm in the office. There is nothing worse than working from a place of stress and chances are, its become so natural that you can’t even tell your doing it!

Here’s to a much calmer, much more productive workplace.