Managing stress, pressure and anxiety

Truth is, stress doesn’t come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges or other circumstances: it comes from your thoughts about your circumstances,” says Andrew Bernstein.

Last week, I found myself under a great deal of pressure and stress. I was failing to complete important tasks. I was also failing to balance my accounts. In addition, I was anxious about a lot of things.

As I was trying to manage the pressure I was experiencing, I visited one of my business mentors for advice.

She told me that pressure is real and will always be part of life. It comes in many forms, which can be good or bad. In other words, pressure can be a result of good or bad things; positive or negative things. The interesting part about pressure, though, is that the after effects are not good, even though the pressure may be a result of good things.

She told me it was important to focus on how to manage pressure, rather than avoiding it. This is because, inasmuch as we try to avoid certain things, we may still find ourselves dealing with other battles that cause stress, anxiety and pressure without realising how we got involved.

For instance, it is hard to avoid economic challenges in any country because they affect everyone. The best move is to learn to manage life according to the prevailing economic conditions. For example, an employee in America may suffer stress and pressure due to high productivity levels expected of them, while a worker in Zimbabwe may suffer stress and pressure due to low productivity and low income.

The after effects of these different kinds of situations are almost the same.

After leaving my mentor’s office, I proceeded to research on the effects of pressure. I realised there are three words that probably mean different things, and which may result from different things but their after effects are usually the same.

The three words are stress, pressure and anxiety. While stress may appear the worst among the three, it is interesting to note that all of them are bad if not managed and can have detrimental effects on our health.

Organisational status

One of the major challenges facing organisations today is that of having mentally disturbed teams.

When we talk of mental issues, people generally tend to focus on biological mental disorders. However, mental issues stemming from pressure, anxiety and stress are equally important. They are real and do affect performance. There is need to offer counselling services within organisations.

Health and wellness programmes are also good to have. I also discovered that a greater deal of stress and pressure comes from failure to complete tasks.

Generally, a significant number of employees are playful but they do not realise this. Many of them tend to make the mistake of thinking that they have so much time to do what is required of them.

This is until they fail to complete their tasks on time. I discovered this last week in an organisation that I am helping with consultancy. The first two hours of the day are critical to productivity.

Unfortunately, many team members take their time to settle down in the office, and before they realise it, it will be tea break.

Some of the things I noticed include fidgeting, being confused about where to start, failure to start with what is important, addressing home issues during work and arriving late. The other problems include cleaning workstations when it is time to work, too much idle talk among colleagues and unnecessary movements.

The list is long.

I would like to challenge someone to do something deliberate this week.

Take a record of what you do every hour for at least one week. After a week, you will be able to tell whether you are being productive. Be challenged to adjust accordingly after your findings. Be deliberate about your daily activities. Come up with daily priorities, as this will help you to be productive and spend time on important things.

Managing pressure requires order

Organised people tend to do well, even when working under the same conditions as those who fail to manage pressure.

One author once said: “Mental health awareness doesn’t mean fighting stress, anxiety, depression and other everyday mental health issues; rather, it means consciously modulating the habits that intensify those issues. Once you are in control of your habits, you will automatically be in a much better shape, both mentally and physically.”

Rutendo Gwatidzo is managing consultant at The

Consultancy. She is a multi-award-winning consultant, speaker and mentor. She is also author of the books “Born to Fight” and “Breaking the Silence”. Contacts: +263 714 575 805/ winningstrategy.2020@gmail.com/ Facebook: Rutendo Gwatidzo_Official.