Signs Of Stress: Mental

Do you know the signs of stress? Not just feeling stress. Because waiting until you feel stress is like deciding to fight the enemy after they’ve come through the gate and over the walls. Your body and your mind let you know that stress is coming.

Stress makes your body go into “fight or flight” reaction. There are countless systems and methods to minimize the effects of this once it kicks in. But what if you got ahead of the stress? What if you could cut off the reaction before it started?

Here are 5 signs of stress that affect you mentally (as opposed to emotionally or physically):
1. Memory problems. Stress acts a silent, internal distracter. Part of your mind is literally always focused on the stress, thinking about it, trying to figure it out. This sometimes results in you forgetting little things (like how to tie a tie) or big things (a missed appointment). If you notice this happening, start looking for stress that you aren’t dealing with.
2. Concentration problems. Since part of your mind is tinkering with the stress, your concentration is not 100% on whatever task you are trying to focus on.
3. Judgment problems. Many times, to escape the pain or unpleasantness of the stress, you will unconsciously make self-destructive decisions. More drinking, overeating, and promiscuous sex are all poor judgment decisions that people make when under stress. If your behavior in these areas increases, start thinking about attacking your stress.
4. Worry problems. A little bit of worry is natural, and even good. It protects you from rash decisions. But if your worry is starting to overwhelm your decisions or your actions, it is a sign that stress is increasing in your life.
5. Uncontrollable thoughts problems. Your thoughts rise up, like bubbles from the bottom of the lake. And you, when you are not being pushed by stress, can pick and choose the thoughts you want to entertain or follow up with. But when your thoughts come faster and uncontrollably, and you are losing the ability to rein them in, take time to step back and find the stress in your life that is contributing to this.

Think back to the last big fight you had with stress. Wouldn’t it have been easier if you could stay focused? If you weren’t fatigued? If you could think clearly, and not be distracted? Wouldn’t it have been easier if you had fought the stress before these signs kicked in?

A stress management system that (kicks in) immediately on seeing one of these or other signs of stress will give you a better chance of fighting through the stress successfully. A system that has components specifically focused on strengthening these areas is more likely to make the stress feel – well, stressless. Having the right tool for the job is a lot easier when the job tells you what tool to use. Learn to recognize and react to the signs of stress.

STRESS JUDO COACHING is a 6 step comprehensive stress management system, designed to train you to attack stress and transform it into opportunities.

Is Workplace Stress Frustrating Your Effectiveness?

The hidden key to career success is how you react to workplace stress.  Much more than your technical skills, your people skills, or even your suck-up-to-the-boss skills, it is how you manage and deflect stress that determines your success in the company.  This is because the company can train anyone to perform technically.  They can hire gregarious people and educate them technically.  And the boss will always find someone who will suck up.  But it is a rare to find someone who can keep his or her head in the middle of chaos, or who doesn’t call in sick every time a crisis deadline looms.

Workplace stress is relentless.  It presses on you without relief.  It attacks you from all sides, in all situations, at all times.  It causes pain.  It causes health problems.  And ignoring it, or treating it like just-part-of-the-job, means that you will never rise above it.  It will frustrate you.  And you – the real you, who can do the job and command advancement – will fade from anyone’s notice.

Here are 5 ways that workplace stress frustrates your personal effectiveness at work:

1. You spend so much time dealing with stress that you have less time to do the extras on your job that get you noticed as a go-getter.  This is mischaracterized as time management.  Real time management is creating those gaps in your day that you fill with what you want to do.
2. You spend so much energy on stress that you don’t have the ability to compete with younger or newer co-workers.  Stress is like a hole in the gas tank of your car.
3. You spend so much money dealing with the bad health effects of stress that you cannot afford those social outings that develop teamwork between you and management.  Upper management is looking to promote the people they know and trust.  Social outings help establish this.
4. You spend so much emotional energy on fighting off stress that your personal attractiveness and appearance look neglected and older.  This does not mean “dress to impress.”  But it does mean that those bags under your eyes from lack of sleep make you look incompetent.
5. You spend so much social capital complaining to your co-workers about the stress in your life that they cannot view you as their effective leader.  People will not follow someone who tells them that he or she cannot get the job done.

It is very easy to go along with everyone else and treat workplace stress as a sort of natural disaster: something you plan for, but cannot prevent.  This approach leads to an attitude of complacency and passivity.  By attacking stress, you can break out of this mental defeatist attitude and take control of your life in a tangible way.

The way to attack stress is with a comprehensive stress management strategy and system.  Stress attacks you externally and internally.  It affects and weakens your physical body, your emotional systems, and your will.  Having a system built primarily to help one of these, with some add ons for the other types of stress, is the least effective.  Stress needs to be met as hard and aggressively as it attacks you.  Take control of stress and you take control of your life.  Remember: life is what happens to you; living is what you do to life.