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Thursday, October 15, 2020
New YouTube series "How to achieve Peace of Mind?"
N.Ganeshan
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
How to manage work stress effectively?
In psychological terms, stress is defined by Professor Richard Lazarus as "a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize." This means that if you believe that you don't have the time, resources, or knowledge to handle a situation, you experience stress. In short, you experience stress when you feel "out of control."
The
stress response is the body’s way of protecting you. When working properly, it
helps you stay focused, energetic, and alert. In emergency situations, stress
can save your life—giving you extra strength to defend yourself. Stress can
also help you rise to meet challenges and sharpens your concentration. But
beyond a certain point, stress stops being helpful and starts causing major
damage to your health creating cardiovascular
disease, stroke, depression, high blood pressure, and a weakened immune system.
It also badly affects your
mood, your productivity, your relationships, and your quality of life.
Stress
in workplace
Stress in workplace is
expected and normal. But, in today’s hectic world, the workplace too often
seems like an emotional roller coaster. Global urbanization, competition and
the spread of technology have created a world in which access to information
has become an obligation and necessity. People are now held accountable for
their actions and whereabouts 24/7 and they are losing both their privacy and
down time. Long hours, tight deadlines, and ever-increasing demands can leave
you feeling worried, drained, and overwhelmed. And when stress exceeds your
ability to cope, it stops being helpful and starts causing damage to your mind
and body—as well as to your job satisfaction.
You can’t control
everything in your work environment, but that doesn’t mean you’re powerless,
even when you’re stuck in a difficult situation. If stress on the job is
interfering with your work performance, health, or personal life, it’s time to
take action. Whatever may be your work demands, there are steps you can take to
protect yourself from the damaging effects of stress, improve your job
satisfaction, and bolster your well-being in and out of the workplace.
Ways to manage work
stress
"Everyone feels
overwhelmed and overly busy in modern world" says Sharon Melnick Ph.D., a business
psychologist and author of the book “Success Under Stress”. Citing 10 years of Harvard research and
field-tested by more than 6,000 clients and trainees, Sharon Melnick offers the
following four strategies to take your work stress down a peg, before it takes
over your life.
Act Rather Than React:
"We experience stress
when we feel that situations are out of our control," says Melnick. It
activates the stress hormone and, if chronic, wears down confidence,
concentration and well-being. She advises that you identify the aspects of the
situation you can control and aspects you can't. Typically, you're in control
of your actions and responses, but not in control of macro forces or someone
else's tone, for example. "Be impeccable for your 50%," she advises.
And try to let go of the rest.
Take A Deep Breath
If you're feeling
overwhelmed or are coming out of a tense meeting and need to clear your head, a
few minutes of deep breathing will restore balance, says Melnick. Simply inhale
for five seconds, hold and exhale in equal counts through the nose. "It's
like getting the calm and focus of a 90-minute yoga class in three minutes or
less at your desk," she says.
Eliminate Interruptions
"Most of us are
bombarded during the day," says Melnick. Emails, phone calls, pop-ins,
instant messages and sudden, urgent deadlines conspire to make today's workers
more distracted than ever. While you may not have control over the
interrupters, you can decide what you should meet, what you should delegate and
what you should avoid and act accordingly.
Prioritize Your Priorities
With competing deadlines
and fast-changing priorities, it's critical to define what's truly important
and why. That requires clarity, says Melnick. It's important to understand your
role in the organization, its strategic priorities, and your personal goals and
strengths. Prepare and follow your to-do list by focusing on those projects
that will have the most impact and are best aligned with your goals.
Other useful tips
The following tips are
taken from articles and books of other stress experts and they can help you to
reduce and manage the work stress.
·
Create a balanced
schedule. All work and no play is a recipe for burnout. Try to find a
balance between work and family life, social activities and solitary pursuits,
daily responsibilities and downtime.
·
Break projects into small
steps. If a large project seems overwhelming, focus on one manageable step
at a time, rather than taking on everything at once.
·
Delegate
responsibility. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Let go of the desire
to control every little step. You’ll be letting go of unnecessary stress in the
process.
·
Turn to co-workers for
support. Having a solid support system at work can help buffer you from
the negative effects of job stress. Just remember to listen to them and offer
support when they are in need as well.
·
Develop healthy
responses. Instead of attempting to fight stress with fast food or
alcohol, do your best to make healthy choices when you feel the tension rise.
Exercise is a great stress-buster. Yoga can be an excellent choice, but any
form of physical activity is beneficial. Also make time for hobbies and favourite
activities.
·
Don’t make mountains out
of molehills. One of the best ways to make your day and life easier, lighter
and less stressful is to not build mountains out of molehills. Do not create
extra drama, over-think or create a problem out of something that doesn’t matter
much.
·
Above all, remember that there
is nothing exists like work pressure until you are doing the things you love.
We have been heard the phrase "Do what you love, and love what you
do", but rarely we believe in it. If you understand your work as your job,
as your money source, you would get tired soon in your life. So discover
positive things in your work and learn to love your work for them. You will
never feel work pressure.
Conclusion:
Some things we can’t take
back. We can’t flick a switch and slow down the world – the pace of innovation,
market competition and limited availability of time are just too fast for that.
To some extent, all that extra stress and pressure will be here to stay. But if
we follow the above suggestions and make small changes to our work styles we
can hugely reduce our stress levels and cope with our work better.
N.Ganeshan
Published in our bank magazine
Bobmaitri (January-March 2020)
Thursday, October 10, 2019
My first English Book "Attain Success and Retain Peace" published today in Amazon Kindle
Dear Readers,
Success alone does not bring peace and peaceful life alone never leads you to success. If one is there, other seems to be absent in this world. Can you have both great success and deep inner peace? How can you achieve the seemingly impossible task? In this book, you will find the fundamental rules to attain success along with inner peace. It deals with all requirements for great success – identifying your uniqueness, art of goal setting, power of your thoughts and beliefs, coming out of your comfort zones, power of visualization, committing and disciplining yourself for success, time management skills, utilizing your inner voice and signals and many other important eternal principles to achieve and retain your inner peace.
Link to the Kindle e book :
https://www.amazon.in/dp/B07YSTBRCG
For Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/dp/
Both are available in amazon author page
https://www.amazon.com/author/
I request the interested readers to read the book and tell about it to friends who are interested in self development.
Thank you.
Regards,
N.Ganeshan
Saturday, May 25, 2019
Bitter Truths!
Ravi and Rani had very happy twenty three years of their lives. After that they met and married. They felt incomplete until they married. After that they felt that they were finished. Both of them had reasons to blame the other for the problems…
Ravi didn’t have a clue about what real happiness was until he got married. But then it was already too late for him. Rani got upset quickly even on small matters. At that time a simple “Calm down” in his soothing voice was enough to get her more upset.
He learnt many bitter truths within a year of their marriage and he wrote them in a diary on their first wedding anniversary day. He wrote:
1) Women have more imagination than men. But they need men to tell daily how wonderful they are.
2) Women have a number of faults. Men have only two – everything they say and everything they do.
3) Any married man should forget his mistakes – it’s no use two people remembering the same thing.
4) A woman has the last word in any argument. Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.
5) Arguing with wife is a lot like trying to read the Terms of Use on the internet. In the end you just give up and go to “I Agree”.
Rani read the diary and their house was like a battlefield for a whole week. One day Ravi confessed to his friend, “I seriously wanted to throw my wife in pond of crocodiles in the zoo”
His friend asked, “What prevented you?”
Ravi said thoughtfully, “I do not want to be harassed by Animal Rights Activists in a court of law for being cruel to the crocodiles! Don’t you remember Salman Khan’s case?”
Another day he asked his friend, “Do you know why our law doesn’t permit a man to have two living wives?”
His friend didn’t know. He asked “Why?”
Rave said solemnly, “Because our law protects us against cruel and extreme punishment.”
One day Rani was complaining to her husband that only women are capable of doing more than one thing at a time and how unfair that was.
Ravi told her to just shut up her mouth and walk away.
As he expected, she couldn’t manage to do either of that and a new quarrel started immediately.
Rani soon found out that Ravi had neither steady jobs nor money. She said to him, "If I’d known you were this much poor, I’d never have married you."
He pointed out, "Don’t pretend I didn’t warn you! How many times did I tell you that you’re everything I have?"
Rani equally hated many of his character traits especially his laziness, drinking habit and the way he spoke. Soon she found out that her husband’s every sentence had entirely different meaning.
His "Can I help with dinner?" really means.... "Why isn't it already on the table?"
His "You don’t understand me." really means.... "Why can’t you just believe my lies, fool"
His "I was listening to you. It's just that I have things on my mind." really means.... "Who cares your nonsense dear"
His "That's interesting, dear" really means.... "Are you still talking?"
His "Honey, we don't need material things to prove our love" really means.... "I forgot your birthday again."
Trying to get rid of his laziness Rani made Ravi to do many household works. Ravi refused to do the works citing health reasons. So she sent him to a doctor. After taking some tests the doctor asked, “Do you and your wife share the same blood group?”
Ravi said bitterly, “It could be so, by now. She’s been sucking my blood for years.”
Doctor asked, “Do you play dangerous sports?”
Ravi said thoughtfully, “Well, sometimes I talk back at my wife”
Ravi told the doctor that he’s incapable of doing all the things around the house that he used to do. He said, “You have taken all tests, Doctor. Can you tell in plain English what’s wrong with me?”
“Well, in plain English,” said the doctor, “you’re just lazy.”
Ravi nodded. “Now Doctor, give me the medical term so I can tell my wife.”
Ravi’s drunken habit worsened and he lost his job. Unable to tolerate, Rani left the house with children and went to her parents’ house. Ravi became very sad. Pondering over the situation he noticed a crate of whisky bottles and walked toward it.
He took out an empty bottle, smashing it into the concrete wall swearing, "You are the reason I don’t have my wife with me".
He threw second bottle, saying "You are the reason I don't have my children with me"
Smashing third bottle, he said "You are the reason I lost my job".
He noticed the fourth bottle is sealed and still full of whisky.
He took the bottle, put it aside and said "Stand aside my dear friend, I know you were not involved....”
Unable to stay in parents’ house permanently Rani returned with her children. But she and children began treating him harshly for his every wrong behaviour. They didn’t allow him drink liquor inside the house. Eventually he changed his ways to some tolerable level because of their dominance and found a job.
After a few years he fell seriously ill and admitted in hospital. He called Rani, their son and daughter to his side. He asked for two witnesses to be present and a camcorder to record his last wishes. When all were ready he began to speak:
"My son, I want you to take the R.S.Puram and Saibaba Colony bungalows”
"My daughter, you take all the apartments in Race Course”
"Rani, my dear wife, please take all the residential buildings and shop complexes in Town Hall and Big Bazaar area”
The nurse who heard that and two witnesses were blown away as they could not believe about his extensive holdings.
The nurse said appreciatively to Rani, “Madam, your husband must have been such a hard-working man to have accumulated all this property.”
Rani replied contemptuously, “The jackass was lastly a newspaper delivery man and he was telling us to take the paper routes."
- N.Ganeshan
(This humourous article won second prize in our Bank Magazine’s last contest)