Is stress holding you back?
November 9th, 2010 by Claire Turnbull
Today, Wednesday 3rd November is National Stress Awareness day. Work-related stress, depression or anxiety accounted for an estimated 13.5 million lost working days in Britain in 2007/08. Just think what thats doing to the economy, nevermind our sanity!
Stress occurs when our perceived pressure exceeds our ability to cope. This is a huge problem nationally and is increasingly common in young professionals. Does any of the following sound familiar?:
- Im doing well and making a lot of money, but Ive no time to spend it. And why am I not happy?
- Im not sure I want to do this job for the rest of my career
- I dont want to work until 7 every night, but thats the company culture
- Help, Im 30 and I still dont know what I want to do with my life!
- I want to spend time with my family but still have a career
So what can we do? Well, one of the easiest ways is to take control. Heres the Circle of Influence exercise:
1)Draw a circle in the middle of a piece of paper. This is your circle of concern. Write down anything, large or small which is worrying you.
2)The next step is to draw a smaller circle inside the first. This is your circle of influence. Any of your concerns which you have control over should be transferred to this circle
3) You will be left with concerns in the outer circle, which you can do nothing about, such as Christmas looming. Stop letting these issues stress you.
4) Your circle of influence however, will be full of challenges you can do something about. Its now up to you to decide what action to take!