Everyone has felt stressed at one time or another. However, apart from experiencing its effects, very little is actually known about stress.
For example, we tend to think that when it is psychological in nature it is not contagious. The term contagious is usually associated with other diseases, however, stress can be almost as contagious as germs. This shouldn't surprise us as depression is contagious too.
Surely some times you will have happened to find yourself in an environment in which
you felt uncomfortable because you could feel a lot of tension in the air.
Perhaps as soon as you entered this environment you felt excited and full of ideas,
but probably after a while, you started to feel tired, tense, irritable,
with a heavy mind.Well, this is one way to convey stress. AND
very difficult to work eight hours in an environment where everyone screams, they are
nervous and hostile, without being influenced by at least some of these emotions
negative. An environment in which there are many stressed people, naturally transmits
stress. In fact, it is no coincidence that large companies like Google or Apple do
care to create healthy and relaxing work environments. They know very well that
a stressful work environment not only destroys creativity, but
slowly paralyzes even all the people who are there, and sooner or later,
this will have disastrous consequences on productivity. Of course, stress is transmitted not only by environments
in which everyone is stressed, but also from person to person. To understand
this process we just have to think about those people we all know and
which make us, how to say, always feel apprehensive. I mean, that
people who are always anxious, irritable, negative and frustrated. Those people
that always make us feel inadequate because we know, whatever
let's say, our words are likely to be misunderstood. These
people constantly live in a state of tension, stress and frustration and project
continuously these emotions on others. Executives and people who have some
authorities are another category of people who tend to convey stress.
They do this by assigning tasks that are practically impossible to carry out,
either because these require us to exceed our capabilities or because the
the time we have at our disposal is very limited. The worst is
that these people not only delegate activities to us but also manage to
let go of all the stress associated with them.
All is not lost
Of course, the fact that stress can be felt, that there are people who
exhaust all our resources or that there are particular environments
stressful, does not necessarily mean that we should be stressed.
For example, if everyone in the house has the flu, we will be much more exposed to it
we get sick too, but that does not mean that it will happen. If we take some
precautionary measures and we have a strong immune system, there are good
probability of getting out unscathed. The same is true with stress.There are several ways to deal with particularly stressful people or situations:- Create a relaxing work environment that becomes an outlet for the stress that permeates
the atmosphere. Place plants and flowers in strategic points, listen to relaxing music on headphones, eliminate all distractions… In short, do whatever makes us feel calm and relaxed.
- Learn to say "no". There are tasks that cannot be completed because they have deadlines or
characteristics that make them impossible. In this case, it is better to renegotiate
the characteristics of these activities to make them less stressful.
- Learn to manage stressed people and not give in to their game. We should not respond with irritation because this only creates more stress. If we behave with kindness and
patience, we will see how the attitude of our interlocutor will change.
- Engage in activities such as walking outdoors, spend time with friends, watch a
good movie or reading a relaxing book, engaging in a hobby, practicing yoga ...
These activities will help you get rid of the stress accumulated during the
day.
