Dealing with Mental Stress in Professional Life

Any stress or anxiety can be grouped under two broad categories. The first one is mental stress and other is physical stress. They are interlinked in both directions. It is said that peaceful mind leads to healthy body. However equally and might be more important is fact that only stress free physical condition can help brain to function. Physical stress should not however be confused with fatigue. In case body goes under physical stress like exercise or in broader terms we say ‘physical exertion’, the mind works much more efficiently. In fact physical exertion has been considered as a way to get rid of your thoughts (stressed problematic thoughts) for a long time.

While analyzing the living pattern of people 50 years ago one can see a lot of physical movement. This actually kept their brains in better shape with depression and anxiety at low levels in spite of harsh living conditions. 

Mental stress in a professional life is due to three main reasons, lack of ability, lack of passion and procrastination. The first two have been defined in previous blogs also i.e. lack of ability or lack of passion for the work you do. In both cases you’ll be under mental stress. The way out could be to increase your ability or develop the passion for work you do. 

Ability increase would need time and financial resources. You will need to invest time and money to improve your ability. You can start with small steps like learning from someone doing the very same work better than you, studying and learning to improve and later may go for some professional courses to improve your ability.

Increasing the passion for work is much more difficult, and there is only one tool for that. It is to do very same things in a different way, the way which is interesting and enjoyable for you. Again the process should be slow and gradual. No short cut or immediate fix is possible. Passion can also be increased for work you do by adding your favorite chunks to it. 

The third important reason for mental stress is procrastination. In simple words it is lack of ability to start working on a certain task. Procrastination is sometimes taken as equivalent to day dreaming. However day dreaming till a certain limit can be considered healthy while procrastination is never an healthy approach. 

What leads to procrastination? It is either lack of interest in a certain job (lack of passion?), fear that one is not able to do it (inability?) or simply postponing it for later stages. The first two reasons are same as explained earlier in this blog. The last reason i.e. postponing to a later stage has again a very simple solution. When you have a task, divide it in to smaller chunks and   start finishing them... never start doing them... start finishing them.You’ll see that when each small chunk is finished your mental stress level will drop down.

In next blogs I may share simple formula to get rid of physical fatigue which is also very crucial for professional success.