Whether you feel overworked, overloaded, or overwhelmed by personal and professional concerns, stress is probably the root of the issue. Feeling stressed at work not only is unpleasant but can negatively affect productivity. When you start to feel stress creeping up, try these four activities to manage those emotions, and optimize your performance to best reach your professional goals. 

Stretch 

Having to sit all day at work can leave you feeling tense, stagnant, and gloomy. Instead, get up and get moving. It’s important to do some stretches from time to time to help unwind poor posture and fight against slumping at your desk. There are numerous ways poor posture can harm your health when we’re sitting in poor posture for years on end. Sub-optimal circulation, respiratory issues, and a heightened chance of injury to name a few. Why not encourage your co-workers to get active too? Try doing some group stretching with your co-workers to take a break and get in some healthy movement! This could be the start of getting your workplace conscious about wellness. Helping your workplace become more health conscious can lead to establishing regular corporate wellness sessions to help foster healthy activities at work and beyond. 

Rest Your Eyes

Staring at your computer screen all day may not make you feel that great. Too much screen time can bring on computer vision syndrome causing you to feel things like sore muscles and eyestrain. Before you know it, you are so dialed in that you have been looking at your computer for hours, stressing over getting everything done. Do yourself, your eyes, and your mind a favor by allowing them to rest. It is important to take in a different view from time to time. Get up and look off in the distance, or, if you’re able to, go outside. This can help relieve some tension and prevent your eyes from feeling tired and dry. In addition, trying some eye exercises or even using a blue light screen filter may help. 

Seek Support

If you are feeling anxious at work, it is important that you seek support. Speak with your supervisor and let them know that some assistance would be helpful, whether it be loosening up a deadline, providing you with extra hands on deck, or allowing you to take a personal day. Knowing how to talk to your boss about burn-out can be hard. However, it is better to let them know and advocate for yourself rather than have assumptions made based on your attitude or work performance. Don’t hesitate to talk to someone outside of work either. Managing work stress can be difficult, especially if it’s impacting your performance and more importantly your mental health. Seeking professional help and finding some anxiety treatments online could be highly beneficial. Addressing your concerns can help to alleviate some anxiety, shift your perspective, and create a better work-life balance.

Decompress

Stress at work can come in many forms, whether it be being under pressure, at odds with a colleague, or feeling unsatisfied or unfulfilled. Stress can crop up throughout your workday. It is important to not be too reactive, and rather just pause, breathe, acknowledge the feeling, and then take a break. When you feel stressed or anxious, do something to get your mind off it and decompress. Take out your headphones and put on your favorite song, doing so can lift your mood, be motivating, and energize you to get your work done. To step it up a notch, use noise-canceling headphones, which can help you block out any frustrating and distracting background noise, and help you meditate as well. You can also try something like deep breathing during a quick desk meditation session. Close your eyes, and count to five as you inhale slowly and exhale. Doing so will slow you down if you have a racing mind or heart. 

You are probably not the only one that experiences lots of stress and pressure at work. Many of your co-workers are probably feeling the same way at one time or another. Therefore, share what you know about stress management, and doing so will help to create a supportive environment and help to make your team and workplace more wellness conscious.