The technological advances we have seen in the last couple of decades have enabled extremely high productivity in many areas. We constantly raise the bar further; always set higher goals leading to more innovations that enable higher productivity and efficiency. We tend to believe that we improve our quality of our lives. Certainly in a materialistic way the quality of our lives have been constantly changing at a very fast rate.
The contradiction is that we see more and more cases of work related stress as we achieve greater improvements in quality of life. The very fact that we hear more often about stress management techniques is probably because we have more and more people who need to manage stress. Especially, stress at work has been on the rise. For material success in today's world, growth of business has become the single most important measure. Workers, professionals and leaders get sucked into the whirlpool of work pressure created by the ever-increasing business targets. The competition is so fierce that no one in the business-chain has an escape from this scenario, particularly if one is conscious about one's own performance at work.
But we do come across great leaders who are able to drive huge business successes and still manage the work pressures and consequent stress or, I would even say, remain stress-free! How do they do that? It will be very interesting to understand that success formula. I have seen people crumbling under work pressure; some fail to continue; some with sheer determination achieve their performance goals but completely stressed out at the end. I have also seen people who choose themselves to remain mid-level performers and contain the work pressure; and thereby manage the work-related stress. For many of them, it has become almost a norm today to resort to some kind of stress relieving techniques that are readily available in the market.
My experience is that work related stress materializes primarily from the attitude towards work. The simple observation is that if I consider work as a burden, more work is higher burden. So the mental pressure mounts and stress materializes. Each one of us needs to ask ourselves certain questions: am I on the right job? Or, do I possess all the skills needed to perform in my current job? If the answer is yes, I think, it is relatively easier to train ourselves for a stress-free life at work. If I am on the right job or if I have all the skills to perform in my job, stress cannot be due to my inability to do the tasks in my job. It should be certainly something else. For convenience, I would like to term anything beyond skills and capabilities needed in our jobs as complexity. Complexity at work appear in various forms and colors. Many a time, an instance of such complexities will completely confuse and tire you; it may even give seriously shocking experiences.
How can we address complexity? I am sure we can not avoid complexity in today's world; rather it is increasing in all walks of life on a day to day basis. Complexity can give the feeling that the work is impossible to do or it is too voluminous to complete on time. If I have already done an assessment and I am convinced of my skills to perform in my job, then I need to develop the rght attitude towards work. I need to see every single complex problem that confronts me at work as an opportunity to enjoy. Think of the joy I will have when I would have solved a very complex puzzle. Every complex issue or task at work should be an interesting puzzle for me to apply all my skills, capablities and thought. Doesn't the goal sound a very positive one - the immeasurable joy when I find the resolution to my complex problem? And, I should enjoy the "journey"too. Working through each complex task is a journey to be enjoyed until I reach the destination, only to find the ultimate joy of reaching the destination (which is the solution to your complex problem).
If we develop an attitude like that towards work, we could better manage work-related stress(maybe we could even become stress-free). If we do something that we always enjoy, I do not think that it will cause tremendous stress. Perhaps this approach can help in our personal lives too!
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