Top Ways to Achieve Balance in Your Work and Personal Life Part II
By Laval Denny
Everyone seems pressed for time these days. With the faster pace of business and the push to do more with less, we feel more pressure at work and home. What I am going to try to do is help you recognize the signs of stress.
With new technology it's easier to do work at home, on the road, on the bus on holidays and extremely hard to set aside. It seems we are always rushing to get home - once we're there - to get dinner ready, get the garbage out, take the kids to their sports, pay the bills, bathe the children, walk the dog, return phone messages, connect with family and friends, do the dishes, make the lunches, catch up on e-mails, help the kids with their homework, do some laundry, walk the dog, feed the cat and many other little but time consuming and important tasks. This all happens in the time period of 4 hours! We rarely have time for our own needs, for relaxed visits with friends, and for other important things in life such as hobbies.
How can we do our best at work, be available to our families & friends, and take good care of ourselves when there's so little time? How do we come out from under this heavy load and the sense of pressure?
It's not easy but it is achievable. Even though your life may seem out of control, each of us can make it better and the first step is to convince ourselves we NEED to make a change.
In order to manage stress in our lives and achieve balance in our work and personal lives, we need to first recognize its symptoms and understand how it affects our behaviors and our health. Most of us notice stress when the pressure becomes unbearable...but it is always around. There is healthy stress and unhealthy stress. I will discuss and explore unhealthy stress.
Stress can come from the outside world - work, from family, other personal relationships, from our financial situation - and from inside - from guilt, expectations we have on ourselves, from worrying what other think and see about us and from habits of all types that we can't seem to break. Too much stress is unhealthy and can be paralyzing. It can make us afraid to take chances, saps our energy and creativity, damages relationships and even make us physically sick.
As stress levels rise, our tolerance for waiting goes down. We can't bear to go to a restaurant where the service is slow. We hang up the phone when we are put on hold and we interrupt people when they are speaking with us. Red lights are extremely long and we want to be ahead of the line. This is the hurry pattern.
Think about what we are fed visually and verbally all the time - "fast track", "instant meals", "quick study", "fast food", and "overnight" delivery. Sometimes we do need to be quick and efficient in our lives but many of us also need to learn how to slow down.
Be aware of over-scheduling your time. Schedules are important but scheduling the time of those around you and yours is a sign of stress. We need to keep appointments, pay bills on time, shop before the stores close but more importantly we need to know when to let schedules go, when not to look at our watches. Many of us are guilty of over-scheduling our children so tightly that they may feel trapped. We overload our children with organized activities and don't give them enough opportunity to rest, read, imagine, play spontaneously and just be kids.
The on-line/call-waiting syndrome is one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to controlling stress. At the beginning of the phone era it was one caller at a time and if someone else was trying to reach you and the line was busy....that meant you were busy and they would try later. Today with the communication available in our homes it becomes so tangled in that web that we can't get out. We've succumbed to the expectations of others. Some may get pleasure from the feeling of being indispensable, (but that is another issue) the flip side is that we don't realize or notice how it drains us. We forgot how to shut the communication off and get away from work and other responsibilities.
So what is our solution to the stresses we put on ourselves every day? Caffeine of course! We lose sleep due to many factors such as anxiety, watching TV, staying up late reading, studying or working at home. So we drink caffeinated beverage to keep us alert in the day to make it through which spirals into making it harder to sleep that night. What price are we willing to pay for those few more hours of alertness a week? It opens us up to inaccuracy, errors, and forgetfulness, lack of creativity and concentration and increases accidents. The combination of caffeine and sleep deprivation leads to irritability, impatience, and a tendency to react with anxiety or anger to the normal demands of life.
As pressure mounts in our lives, the first needs we neglect are our own. We give up the pleasure and relaxing activities as there is no time. We deprive ourselves and by doing so we end up fueling the stress and making it even worse. The things we give up doing for ourselves are the very things that will help reduce the stress in our lives.
Too much stress can cause us to close our minds to new possibilities and to react too quickly with irritability and anger to what would otherwise seem reasonable requests. Left unchecked stress can hurt our careers, our families and friendships. Anger such as this is a cue that something is wrong. Stress at this level can be linked to depression and is a feeling of overwhelming sadness, anxiety, hopelessness and with a greatly reduced ability to cope with day to day demands. Depression can also lead us to behave in ways that cause stressful events to occur.
Now that we have explored recognizing stress and can see the day to day activities that explode with stress we can move on to managing stress and achieving balance in you work and personal life. Step by step you will see the light at the end of the tunnel and it won't be a train coming towards you it will be a way out.
http://familyfinancialrescue.blogspot.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laval_Denny
http://EzineArticles.com/?Top-Ways-to-Achieve-Balance-in-Your-Work-and-Personal-Life-Part-II&id=1684337
