Konstantin Koss Stress in the workplace is one of the top topics when it comes tostress-management because oddly enough most stress occurs in theworkplace environment. To understand that we first have to understand...

The Primal Roots Of Stress The animal in us humans has a basic paranoia build in. Have you evertried to pet an unknown cat and it ran away? It's basic self-protectingparanoia. And as evolved we humans want to see ourselves, we still runon the same basic "operating system".

Stress is the basic fight or flight reaction that gets triggered when we see ourselves in danger.

This is key!

Different Kinds Of Stress You have surely heard of the concept of different kinds of stressbefore. We generally differentiate between: constructive stress(eustress) and destructive stress (distress). Constructive stress isvery healthy in the workplace since it gives you a drive towardssuccess, keeps you excited, and can lead to a creative state of flow.

The primal reaction reaction to danger is what is referred to asdistress. The human biology doesn't care anymore about getting any kindof work done, it just wants to fight or flight.

That's when you keep thinking about what a prick your co-worker/boss is and can't concentrate on your work anymore.

Out Of The Stress-Consciousness I honestly don't want to give you the same advice that you geteverywhere else concerning stress-management: Take a vacation, spendtime with your family, work out, volunteer for charity work, gettogether with your friend and eat healthy.

Poof, all your problems will be gone. Next client please. (...as if ...)

Sure, that advice has its place and you will feel much better after agood workout, for example. But let's not kid ourselves, the next day itwill be the same old story and the same stress appears again.

Fact is: You will never get out of being stressed by other people orcircumstances in your workplace as long as you percieve them as being adanger.

Even if this is unconscious.

The perception of danger is the turning point of eustress (productivity) crossing over into distress.

Making The Unconscious Conscious Now is the time for some good self-honesty.

1. Remember the last time you got into some seriously uncomfortable stress in the workplace

2. Do what you would do naturally and review the major troubles you have in that situation

3. Now let's shift your focus from the situation or person (well, wheredid I know from that it was outside of yourself ...) to yourself. Whichof your beliefs play into this trouble?

4. What are you afraid of? If you don't know, just guess. What couldyou maybe afraid of? Make a list of possibilities without judging. It'snot necessary. When the situation occurs next time you will be able topoint more and more in the direction of which of your guesses was themost accurate.

5. Really picture in your mind what the worst possible outcome of the situation may be.

6. What would you do given the circumstance that the worst casescenario really happened? Could you deal with that in any way?

7. What is the most probable outcome of the situation?

Our goal is to get more and more of our common sense into ouranimalistic fear-reactions. For example, when the stress arises frommeeting a deadline or you will loose your job, this can be a very scarysituation to be in.

The only way to get out of being paralyzed by the stress ahead is infact to get less outcome-dependent. This seems to be one of the bigironies of life, since independence from the outcome usually producesbetter outcomes.

Don't just skim the above steps and go "Yeah, yeah. Done that". Takeyour time and really do this analysis. It will get you further in thelong run than any vacation-workout-volunteering-quickfix.

To combine productivity and relaxation, simply avoid destructive stressin the workplace -- which might prove to be a much harder task than itsounds. Eustress is the flow you are looking for to happily beproductive at work.