How Can I Fight Stress? Plan

Stress is disorganized. It feels focused, unrelenting, and probably targeted right at you. But stress is not a thing. Stress is, in large part, the conflict you feel when your boundaries are being stretched. Stress in the workplace is your boss testing your boundary for autonomy. Or it could be you pushing your boundaries of experience and insight out from what they have been pigeonholed in for so long. You have a better chance of answering "How can I fight stress?" if you hit back at it with a plan.

Stress is daily. It is always there, because you boundaries are always being tested. Stress comes at you from different sources. Unfortunately, this is how most people have been trained to fight stress. Reactively. Submissively. Passively. This is not the best way. Planning for how you will meet and defeat stressful situations gives you the most likely way to find the opportunities that the stress is hiding.

Now, here are 5 ways to plan for stress and for fighting stress:
1. Have a support system. This needs to be more than just that group of friends that you meet with after work to gripe and complain. They have their purpose, and it may be simply stress relief or distraction. However, this will not help you attack the stress itself. For this, you need a support system who will help you come up with, and put into action, a plan to attack stress.
2. Have goals that cannot be bumped. In the workplace, stress very often comes from conflicting goals. Or too many goals. Or a fight between which goals take priority. Having a system that clearly identified the priority of goals will have the effect of stress smashing against them like a rudderless ship being smashed against an immovable cliff.
3. Identify tasks that can be delegated or deferred. Workplace stress very often arises when you take on too many tasks. Deferring a task until later is not sloth, it is assigning it a time when your maximum resources can be brought to bear. Delegating a task is ensuring that it gets completed and by the most appropriate person.
4. Plan fitness periods. Keeping your body in “fighting shape” is crucial to effectively fighting and defeating stress. Stress breaks down your body’s fighting mechanisms, and unless they are restored and strengthened, you can become weaker – physically, mentally and emotionally – for each successive encounter with stress.
5. Do not drink or smoke. These weaken your body’s ability to fight stress. They also waste money (adding to your financial stress), time (adding to your time stress), and focus (you may be thinking of the problem while you are smoking or drinking, but these chemicals also erid your ability to think well).

By not planning for how you will face and defeat stress, the stressful situations adds to the stress of the stress. The uncertainty of how to face a stressful situation is itself stressful. The bad health effects of stress, untreated and unstrengthened, weakened your ability to fight stress. The confusion over how to prioritize your reaction to stress only adds to the stress you feel.

Successful trial attorneys script out their presentation. They plan for interruptions, problems, and surprises. Boxers and martial artists have a plan for each fight. They plan for applying their strengths against the opponent’s weaknesses. They plan for the “lucky punch” by the opponent. In this way, these skilled combat veterans use planning to eliminate the stress that someone like you would feel in their highly conflicted situations. You can use these tips to combat workplace stress.