21 Benefits of Reducing your Stress
Stress is a very invasive problem. It can affect many areas of our lives when allowed to get out of hand. In another article, I talk about how useful stress can be. However, if stress is let to run away uncontrolled, it becomes a killer. Everyone seems to know about the health risks such as heart attack and stroke but very few understand the other areas of business and life that can be ruined by stress.
Read through the list below to discover some of the different areas that can be dramatically effected in your business and life when you fail take control of the stress.
- Presentation and communication skills - Everyone has watched a presentation by someone not comfortable on stage. Don't let this happen to you again!
- Meetings - Without thorough preparation, careful planning and effective strategies, meetings can be not just a waste of time and resources, but add strain to an already overworked and burdened team. Taking control of your own stress can save hours per week and reduce headaches and boredom caused by poor and wasteful meetings.
- Decaying corporate culture - The company culture will slowly and steadily degrade when under stress. Unless a culture is designed where stress enhances performance, not crushes it.
- Sales - As any sales person will be able to tell you, the more you need the sale, the less likely it will happen. Learn how to change your state while under stress that will enable you to sell more.
- Less effective teams - Most teams under stress disintegrate. They then become less productive and more disorganized. nder stress teams should work better and more efficiently, not less.
- Difficulty in changing your behaviour - Those old habits that are holding your back or causing you more stress are more difficult to change as you hold onto the trivial comforts of familiarity.
- Response to pressure situations drops - When we are under high pressure more stress can cause our emotions to burst like a broken water main. That could mean inappropriate frustration, violent anger or more. You need to learn ways that get the results you want and remove the pressure, not flounder in the stress.
- Client and customer relationships - Stress is like a virus. If you are stressed, everyone you speak to will pick up on it. Our clients and customers will be scared away if we stress them out.
- Decreased leadership effectiveness - Decisions are made slower and slower, usually incorrectly all leading to add to the pressure.
- Decreased value and worth to the organization - Not being able to finish your work on time or on budget adds to your stress, and adds to the difficulty in achieving your goals.
- Decreased learning speed - When you need to learn something new, being able to forget about what’s happening in the office will allow you to focus completely on the task at hand.
- Motivation - Being able to bound out of bed in the morning, ready for the day after a good nights sleep is the furthest thing from your mind when all you want to do is sleep for a week. Be excited about the changes you can make in your work, rather than depressed when you take control of your stress.
- Decreased confidence - If you are constantly hammered into the ground your confidence suffers. Learn the skills that can allow yourself to build the confidence in your own skills and abilities.
- Decreased responsibility - You may not suffer physically due to stress, but you may loose your job, be transferred or demoted. You have spent years developing your career, don't allow a temporary problem destroy your hard work. Learn how to work so you are comfortable with getting more responsibility because you have the confidence.
- Have less time - You only have a set amount of time in your life. A lot of time is lost while under stress. Discover how you can spend more of your precious time with family, friends or just on yourself.
- Not able to leave work at work - Causing all other areas of your life to suffer and not allow you to relax and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
- Degrades your perceptions - Under high stress we all get tunnel vision. For leaders and decision makers this means we run the risk of making bad decisions which can ruin a business. Make sure this does not happen to you.
- Decrease in your competitiveness - If you are in business often you need to compete for the contract, customer or project. Under stress, we often take the easy way out hoping to alleviate some of the stress. There are specific skills that can increase and improve your performance, and reduce your stress when in this situation.
- Be crushed by fear – A lot of stress is fear of what might happen. Understanding this, and gaining skills to smash that fear, can catapult our business into the future.
- Business excellence - Make sure the way you are doing things is the way that gets you the results you want. Often people keep doing what they have always done, and stress out wondering why they have not gotten different results.
- Repel those around you - Stress is a virus and if you don't have the skills to vaccinate yourself, you will cause everyone around you to run! Conversely, if you have vaccinated yourself you will attract others who want that 'breath of fresh air.'
Each of these areas can be fixed or avoided quickly and easily. You can read about how stress is not in your job description and about my own stress story. Contact Toach Now to discuss what issues affect you and your business and how we can help.