Do not let stress come between you and a successful, rewarding career.

Many people experience stress in their jobs. It might be temporarily because of a project deadline, or because of seasonal fluctuations in your workload. You might also experience long-term stress due to the nature of your role, a difficult boss or co-worker, or because of office politics. Job stress has many negative consequences. If you leave it unmanaged, it can affect your health, productivity, well-being, and career.

You maintain your professionalism, composure, and workplace relationships by managing your stress levels, and learning to survive and thrive in a stressful role.

In this article, we look at ways of identifying job stress and explore strategies that you can use to manage a stressful job successfully.

How to Identify Your Current Stress Levels

There may be physical symptoms and psychological effects to serve as warning signs that you are experiencing high levels of workplace stress. 

Psychologically, you may be irritable, depressed, and experience prolonged difficulty concentrating. If continuous stress starts to cause burnout, you may also find that you lose interest in your work and other activities. You may also become socially withdrawn.

A manageable level of pressure can help you to perform at your best. However, if pressure increases to a point where you no longer feel in control, the result is stress. Unlike pressure, stress is never positive.

How to Manage a Stressful Job

The following sections look at several ways to manage stress in your role.

Identify Causes

Before managing stress, you first have to know what causes it.

Work is often one of the main causes of stress in people's lives. Research has identified heavy workload as one of the major causes of stress. Other causes of workplace stress can be grouped according to four main underlying causes identified below:

Time stress develops from a fast-paced working environment with unrealistic deadlines. As a result, productivity, relationships, and well-being suffer.

Anticipatory stress is stress about the future. It may be due to a specific event, such as a scheduled presentation. Or, it might be a more general fear about the future. Many people suffer anticipatory stress about their employment security, for example.

Situational stress is caused by situations over which you have no control. These may be acute incidents, such as a sudden failure of a supply line, or longer-term issues, such as lack of autonomy or purpose at work. Unreasonably heavy workload also comes under this category

Encounter stress derives from interaction with other people. Poor management, bullying, and dealing with angry or difficult people can all be sources of encounter stress.

Once you have identified the factors that contribute to your stress, you can take appropriate steps to manage them.

Find Meaning in Your Job

What do you love most about your job? What gives your work meaning and purpose?

These questions might sound simple, but they are pertinent. If you know what gives your work meaning, you are more likely to develop intrinsic motivation.

This motivation comes from knowing that what you do has value in its own right. It can help you to manage the stress that goes along with the work you do, and to build resilience when you're feeling down.

Assess Your Skills and Resources

Look at the work that you do: What are your biggest frustrations? Where are you most inefficient in? Where are your bottlenecks?

These situations often point to a lack of tools, resources, skills development, or help – all of which can contribute to workplace stress. You need to keep your skill set under continual review, particularly if your organization is developing new ways of working.

You also need the right equipment and know how to use it. Make a list of what you need. Let your boss know what you are lacking, and explain how these items will improve your productivity and effectiveness. If your boss cannot provide the resources you need, think about how you might negotiate for them with others or acquire them on your own.

Exercise Regularly

Regular exercise is one of the best ways to manage a stressful job. Daily exercise helps you to cope with stress. It can also help to boost your memory, creativity, IQ, and productivity.

You can fit exercise into your schedule in many ways: wake up slightly earlier and exercise before work, or take a walk on your lunch break. 

Take frequent breaks to move around and let your mind rest. Try taking several five- or 10-minute walks during the day. It might not sound like much, but this exercise and fresh air will give you time to rest and recharge.

Think Positively

Your attitude plays a role in your stress, no matter your job. 

You can choose to approach tasks, responsibilities, and people with a negative attitude, or you can do so with a positive mindset. Although the amount of work is the same, the impact on your health and well-being is profound.

Whenever you catch yourself slipping into a negative frame of mind, make an effort to challenge your conceptions and to think positively instead. Challenge your negative thoughts with rational, fact-based thinking. 

Manage Your Time

If struggling with a heavy workload or project deadlines, you can lower your stress levels and improve productivity by managing your time more effectively.

Distractions in the office can be a major source of stress. These distractions can come from well-meaning colleagues, constant phone calls or emails, or general office noise. Distractions can be minimized by turning off your phone or putting on an earphone to drown out people’s conversations. 

Manage Your Priorities

Conflicting priorities can also be stressful, especially when you feel like you are constantly handling urgent tasks. Learn to focus on what is important, not just urgent. 

It's also important to work out what activities can have the biggest impact. Identify such tasks, and see if you can safely delegate others. 

If working on a project that seems overwhelming, break it into smaller steps. This allows you to accomplish one thing at a time instead of taking everything on at once.

Find Ways to Stay Calm

Stress can often cause you to stop breathing for several seconds, even though you may not realize it. When feeling stressed, practice deep breathing exercises. Deep, slow breathing floods your body with oxygen, slowing your heart rate, relaxing your muscles, and helping you to focus.

Find Passion for Your Job Again

When Mihret first started with her organization, she loved her job. She went into work every day filled with purpose and passion, and she was excited about the difference she could make in her new role.

Three years later, however, it's hard to recognize her. Now, Mihret dreads going to work. She feels as if her work is meaningless, she's always stressed, and she calls in sick frequently.

These are classic symptoms of burnout. If you've experienced this yourself, you must know how to recover from it, before you experience lasting damage to your sense of well-being and your career.

In this article, we'll look at what burnout is and how you can recover from it.

Is it Burnout?

Burnout is a state of physical and emotional exhaustion. It can occur when you experience long-term stress in your job, or when you have worked in a physically or emotionally draining role for a long time. You can also experience burnout when your efforts at work have failed to produce the results that you expected, and you feel deeply disillusioned as a result.

You might be experiencing burnout if you:

· Feel that every day at work is a bad day.

· Feel exhausted much of the time.

· Feel no joy or interest in your work or even feel depressed by it.

· Feel overwhelmed by your responsibilities.

· Engage in escapist behaviors, such as excessive drinking.

· Have less patience with others than you used to.

· Feel hopeless about your life or work.

· Experience physical symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath, sleeplessness, or heart palpitations. (Make sure that you see a physician about these!

Studies show that people who experience burnout early in their career often find it easier to recover than people who go through it later in life. However, you must know how to recover effectively, whatever stage you're at in your career.

Recovering From Burnout

Burnout doesn't go away on its own; instead, it will get worse unless you address the underlying issues causing it. If you ignore burnout, it will only cause you further harm down the line, so you must begin recovery as soon as possible.

Recovery from burnout is a slow journey; not a quick dash to some imaginary finish line. Time and space are needed to recuperate, so don't rush through this process.

The recovery strategies that we've outlined below are all useful in different situations. Some of these strategies will work for you, while others won't, so find a balance of techniques and best practices that feels right to you. If you believe that something isn't working, don't be afraid to try something new.

The Reasons

You first need to identify why you've experienced burnout. In some situations, this will be obvious. Other times, it will take time and introspection to uncover this.

First, look at any resentment that you feel towards your work. Often, feelings of resentment point to something important that is missing.

Here's a good example: Tadiwos manages a team halfway around the world, so his workday often starts at 6 a.m. He doesn't mind this because he likes his team and his job. But he feels resentful when his boss forgets that he works so early and repeatedly asks him to stay late. His work demands that he misses the deserved time with his family.

In this example, burnout didn't occur because Tadiwos disliked his job; in fact, he loved what he did. He experienced burnout because he hated missing out on family time in the evenings.

Take time to think about any negative feelings that you have about your role, and get to the root of the problem. Once you've identified the cause of your burnout, write down at least one way that you can manage or eliminate that source of stress or unhappiness.

Another useful method for identifying underlying causes of burnout is to keep a stress diary. Each day, write down what causes you stress and record why the event stressed you. Stress diaries can be illuminating, so long as you keep up with them for a reasonable period.

Once you discover the root causes of your burnout, look at what you can do to resolve it. The resolution might be to delegate some of your responsibilities to others, add more autonomy to your job, work from home one day a week, or even to change roles.

Get back to the Basics

If you've experienced burnout, your body may need attention. It's necessary to think about the basics of good health and well-being.

Start by getting plenty of exercise. Countless studies have shown that physical workout offers many physical and mental benefits. Regular exercise not only helps reduce stress. It also boosts your mood, improves your overall health, and enhances your quality of life.

Next, make sure that you're getting enough sleep, eating well, and drinking plenty of water throughout the day. These might sound obvious, but busy professionals often ignore their most basic needs. Instead, they take care of others and their responsibilities far more than they take care of themselves. Neglecting self-care can contribute to burnout. 

Take a Vacation or Leave of Absence

One excellent way to start your recovery is to take a real vacation. Time away from work gives you the distance you need to relax and de-stress.

Of course, the stress and problems that you're experiencing at work may still be waiting for you when you get back. However, taking time off is essential for getting the rest you need and coming up with long-term solutions to burnout.

Reassess Your Goals

Next, take time to reassess your personal goals. Burnout can occur when your work is out of alignment with your values or when it's not contributing to your long-term goals. You can also experience frustration and burnout if you have no idea what your goals are.

Start by identifying your values and thinking about what gives you meaning in your work. Then use this to craft a personal mission statement. This self-analysis will allow you a deeper understanding of what you find most important. It will also show you which elements, if any, are missing from your life or work.

Next, look at how you can tie your values and mission to your current role, which could mean crafting your job to fit your values or even just changing the way you look at your job.

Be Positive

Burnout can cause you to slip into a cycle of negative thinking. This negative thinking often worsens over time. You can combat this by learning how to think positively. 

When you're in recovery from burnout, it can be a challenge to develop the habit of positive thinking. So, it's best to start small. Try thinking of something positive before you get out of bed each morning. Or think back to one great thing that you did at work or home at the end of the day.

Celebrate even small accomplishments. These celebrations can help you rediscover joy and meaning in your work again.

You can also bring more positivity into your life by practicing random acts of kindness at work. A relational part of our human nature is to help others. Being kind to others not only helps spread positivity in the workplace, but it also feels great.