Stressed?

As a fitness professional, I deal with work related stress all of the time. My days are usually filled with both professional and personal stress that may manifest itself in many ways
(mentally, emotionally and physically), and so I work very hard and practice ways to reduce that stress; and recommend that my clients do the same.

There are many tell-tale signs that you might be suffering from the effects of stress, including:

• Muscle Tension

• Back Pain

• Gastrointestinal Discomfort

• Headaches

• Fatigue

• Feelings of Irritation and/or Frustration

But, there are also many ways you can reduce the effects of that stress:

• Exercise Regularly
  

• Eat a Healthy and Nutritious Diet

• Get Enough Rest

• Engage in Leisure Time Activities

• Practice Meditation and Relaxation Techniques

If not addressed, stress can have long-term effects on your overall health and well-being. And, may lead to chronic and debilitating conditions such as cardiovascular disease, stomach ulcers and chronic pain.

It's never to late to start to try to reduce and combat stress, and its effect on our daily lives, the people we work with, and the one's we love.

The following article talks about work-related stress and its effect on employee productivity.

Under New Management

The Tension Builds (It’s Almost Monday)

By KELLEY HOLLAND

Published: March 23, 2008
The New York Times

THE feeling is familiar: you are savoring the last of a leisurely Sunday lunch or a long walk in the park when you abruptly realize that your weekend will be over in a matter of hours. In an instant, you are deep in what John Updike called the “chronic sadness of late Sunday afternoon.” As you envision the to-do pile on your desk, the meetings on your calendar, and that trip to Topeka on Tuesday, your mood shifts again, your muscles tense and your head begins to ache.

You have a case of workplace-related stress. You also have plenty of company.

Poll results released last October by the American Psychological Association found that one-third of Americans are living with extreme stress, and that the most commonly cited source of stress — mentioned by 74 percent of respondents — was work. That was up from 59 percent the previous year.

Some people would not be alarmed by this. When David W. Ballard, the association’s assistant executive director for corporate relations and business strategy, talks to executives, “the concept that stress can be a bad thing is sometimes foreign to them,” he said. “They say stress is a good thing. It motivates them.”

But excessive stress is different, and extremely expensive for employers. Highly stressed employees are absent more often and are much more likely to leave their jobs. When at work, they tend to be significantly less productive — a phenomenon known as presenteeism, which can be even more expensive than frequent absences, Dr. Ballard said.

More than half the respondents to the survey said they had left a job or considered doing so because of stress, and 55 percent said that stress made them less productive at work.

With costs like that, you’d think that companies would devote considerable resources to fighting the problem. But a survey published last year by Watson Wyatt suggests that they aren’t. For example, some 48 percent of the employers in the survey said stress created by long hours and limited resources was affecting business performance, but only 5 percent said they were taking strong action to address those areas.

“Everybody knows it’s an issue, but no one wants to look at it and address it,” said Shelly Wolff, Watson Wyatt’s North American leader for health and productivity. Employers view excessive workplace stress as an enormously costly problem that no one quite knows how to fix, she said. “There’s a fear of opening up something you can’t control,” she said. “They feel it’s going to open Pandora’s box.”

One problem is that stress can be subjective. Some people may feel permanently tethered to the office by their cellphones and laptops, but for others those devices are liberating. One person’s dreaded business trip is another’s respite from pressures at home.

That means there is no one-size-fits-all way for employers to reduce office stress. But putting in place a variety of initiatives is still simpler and less expensive than dealing with extreme stress once it arrives.