Stress is one of the challenges of a modern, busy life. The increases in heart rate and blood pressure that are part of the stress response are part of the body’s natural way to deal with danger. However, our bodies do not do a good job of separating a real threat, like a wild animal, from a perceived danger, like an angry email or missed deadline. Managers and executives deal with this kind of mental stress on a regular basis, and it can have serious effects on their health and wellbeing. Here are four techniques to deal with daily stress.
Find a Meditation Space
Meditation is another common way to deal with stress. By studying meditation, you are learning how to refocus and slow down your mind. The rapid thoughts that come with stress are allowed to pass. The more adept you become at the practice, the easier it becomes to enter that quiet, single-minded state. If you have trouble sitting still, yoga classes often combine a time of meditation with physical activity.
Breathe Deeply
The first step in dealing with stress is slowing yourself down. Although it is difficult to control your heart rate or blood pressure, you can control your breathing. When you feel stressed, take three deep breaths. With each breath, you will slow down and feel a little more in control. Try it now!
Head to the Woods
Spending time in the woods has been found to be a surprisingly effective way to deal with stress. As you walk down a woodland trail, you step away from the stressful situations. The sounds and smells of nature surround you, pulling you away from anxiety. The air is cleaner, and the world is calmer among the trees. You do not have to travel far — most areas have nature preserves and trails nearby, even in the desert here in Arizona.
Schedule a Regular Spa Visit
Visiting a spa is a great way to recharge your batteries. These facilities offer many options for stress relief including massages, hot springs, and saunas. A sauna with a wood-burning heater is a time-tested solution to help clear your mind and relax your body. As you sit in the warm room listening to the cracking and popping of burning wood in the sauna heater, you cannot help but relax. Follow that sauna with a cold dip in a pool or lake and you will be energized for your next project. For the ultimate experience, try a retreat that combines personal growth with spa time. As a business executive, you have many things on your plate. The stress that comes with making tough decisions and meeting expectations is inescapable. When you learn to slow down and step away from stress, you will be a better and more productive leader.
As anyone who has worked in human resources for a long time can tell you, the hiring game is changing and it’s only getting harder for employers and potential employees. Once upon a time, potential employees looking for work were tasked with proving their worth to potential employers. Today, top talent comes with a list of skills as well as a list of demands. Job applicants are willing to work hard for their employers, but they expect more than a paycheck in return. Here is a look at what today’s college graduates are looking for in an employer.
Flexibility
Today’s college graduates care deeply about work/life balance. Generation Z works to live rather than living to work and won’t tolerate being tied to a desk for more than 40 hours per week. Today’s college grads want you to judge their performance based on the quality of their work — not how long it takes them to do it. As long as they get the job done and do it well, they expect you to offer flexible scheduling policies so that they can tend to aspects of their life other than work when necessary. It’s all about paying for results, not hours.
Company Culture is Everything
Gone are the days when employees tolerate being micromanaged or caught up in difficult company politics. The current shortage of truly skilled workers gives top talent lots of choices in employers. Without fail, these employees express a desire to work in respectful and kind company cultures that emphasize teamwork, inclusion, innovation, and promotion from within. Gen Z college grads want an employer that is transparent, flexible and whose mission aligns with their beliefs — or in other words, they pay attention to how you’ve branded your company. Spend time on employee engagement if you want to retain your top talent.
Compensation and Benefits
Members of Generation Z want more than just a paycheck, but pay still matters. Today’s college grads don’t expect to start at the top of the pay scale, but they do have bills to pay. Many take on substantial debt in the form of student loans with the expectation that their degree will garner them better jobs and higher pay. Student debt repayment begins at graduation, often occurring at the same time when they lose their health insurance coverage under their parents’ policies. Upon graduation, Gen Zers immediately need a living wage. If you can’t provide it, the best and brightest will find an employer who can. Practical realities limit what you can offer potential employees, but focus on delivering as much as you can. If you balance your company’s benefits well, you’ll attract high-quality college grads to your job listings. Keep them happy, and many will stay and grow with you for a long time.
Not sure if your company has what it takes to attract and retain top talent? Ask The Corporate Fixer for help.
Most of us experience periods of high stress while on the job. However, the ways that you manage the anxiety will determine whether you can successfully overcome it in order to perform your best. Here are some ways to handle stress while on the job.
Exercise Your Stress Away
Exercise is well-known to reduce anxiety by producing endorphins that act as medicine for the brain. You do not need a full-fledged workout at the gym in order to get exercise. You can do it at your desk or during a brief break from your job. You can do squats at your desk or even jog in place while in your office. There are also things you can do with your legs such as raises. Of course, there is always the time-honored tradition of taking a ten-minute break to go for a walk.
Get Creative
Most employees get brief breaks in addition to their lunchtime. Those can be used to your advantage to engage in a stress-reducing activity. Creative expression disrupts negative thought processes that lead to stress and anxiety. You can write a journal or take time to enjoy your favorite beverage. Do not just stick to usual, but consider ways to indulge your personality. One recent trend for stress relief is adult coloring books. Your treatment of yourself during your time away can easily color your time back at your desk.
Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the recent behavior to which people are turning to reduce their anxiety. This practice involves keeping a continuous awareness of your thoughts at all moments. This also means that you are accepting of your thoughts and are focusing on the moment. When you practice mindfulness, you are feeling your thoughts at the same time that you are an observer of yourself. Techniques can involve mindful breathing or focus on one part of your body at a time. This can reduce your stress by lessening the intensity of your reaction to something that would ordinarily cause your angst. Mindfulness can be practiced at work to improve your overall well-being.
Take a Break
Time after time science has proven that taking a break from your day to day can help relieve stress. A great way to take a break and learn something at the same time is to do a retreat.
You do not have to be a hostage to the current stress of the moment while you are on the job. Instead, you can come to work armed with some strategies for how to reduce your stress by engaging in certain activities and exercises. Going on an international retreat is an awesome way to take a break.
For ways to do more with your job, and how to gain more control of your life, private coaching sessions with Sears Coaching can help!
Improving workplace efficiency should be the goal of every business owner. When employees work more efficiently, they produce more and waste less. A more streamlined use of human and material resources cuts costs and increases net income. As profits grow, the business will have the capital to acquire better resources for their employees. Ultimately, improving workplace efficiency can transform a business from mediocre to successful.
Communicate Clearly
Clear and effective communication ensures that problems are addressed immediately through the proper channels. Management is able to address employee concerns and solve the problem before it causes irreparable damage to the business. Clear communication also makes employees feel that their concerns are important and valued. Management Study Guide explains that when employees communicate well with each other, it reduces the likelihood that multiple employees will act redundantly and perform the same task. Instead, clear communication allows employees to assume complementary roles that increase total efficiency.
Streamline Processes
Contract ERP explains that instead of repeatedly passing product between departments, look at the process to determine how you can decrease product handling, which saves time, labor, and decreases product loss. Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP software, streamlines management processes through monitoring production benchmarks, employee progress and productivity and centralizing the display of goals and administrative benchmarks. Not all ERP software is created alike. If your business operates within a specialized sector, such as healthcare or retail sales, there is ERP software specific to your type of business that you can use to organize all processes. Streamlining processes lowers the potential for errors and reduces inefficient delays that can cost you money.
Encourage Autonomy
If every employee has the tools and training to perform their tasks quickly and efficiently, then they will require less hands-on managing. Detailed, hands-on managing can lead to micromanaging and micromanaging is a waste of time that lowers employee morale. It also takes valuable time away from senior employees and top management that they could be dedicated to innovation, employee growth, and client development. Hubstaff explains that an employee with greater autonomy will feel confident and take responsibility for their performance. As they feel more invested, they will work harder to exceed their productivity goals and excel in the workplace. Workplace efficiency doesn’t happen overnight. Even once you’ve started implementing new employee management systems to broaden channels of clear communication and streamline work processes, it can take time for employees to adapt to the new system. Once they do, the business will gradually become more efficient and be able to meet its key performance indicators. Improving workplace efficiency is an investment in a business’s future.
For improving your ability to lead, let Sears Coaching help!
You may not realize it, but your self- confidence is under your control. If you want more self-confidence, get some! Here are 5 easy steps to boost your self-confidence to feel better about yourself and what the future has in store for you.
1. Celebrate a small success: When you check something off of your to-do list, even the tiniest thing, celebrate. Find something meaningful to you and do it. Have a piece of cake, buy a pair of shoes, go on a spa day. Celebrating the small successes will motivate you to get the bigger things done, too.
2. Don’t carry mistakes into the future. Everyone makes mistakes. What’s in the past can’t be changed. How you react to your mistakes is critical. Carry what you’ve learned from your mistakes with you and use that knowledge to fuel your further success.
3. Face a fear. What’s something that you’ve always been afraid of? Spiders? Flying? Heights? Go tackle a fear and feel like a bad ass! Travel down to your local pet store or zoo and ask to hold a spider. Book a trip, hop on a plane and have the time of your life. Get a two for one and fly to the Grand Canyon to tackle your fear of heights. Rather than avoiding your fears, face them head on and bask in the confident feeling that you’ll have afterward.
4. Make an achievement list. You have probably achieved much more inf your life than you think you have. Take 15 minutes and write down as many things that you have done that you’re proud of, or that has made you happy. Start with your kindergarten graduation and keep on going! When you’re done, pack it up and take it with you everywhere you go so that you can take a look at it when you’re feeling low for an instant confidence boost.
5. Go do something you’re good at. What are you good at? Crossword puzzles? Juggling? Writing? Spending time doing something that you’re great at will instantly boost your confidence. Spend 15 minutes writing down all the things you’re good at and spend time every doing at least one of those things.
Taking just a few minutes each day can truly enhance your self-confidence Remember, you are in control of your self-confidence and no one can take that away from you.
