Personal and professional tensions are intertwined these days, as many of us work from home. Workplace waves crash against the home front undercurrents, forming an emotional whirlpool inside us. Uncooperative co-workers, unwilling bosses, and ineffective subordinates. School-age remote-learning children, unemployed and underemployed young adult kids, anxious spouses, and freaked-out of their mind friends. Each feeds their tension to us, and make an individual contribution to elevating our overall stress level. We, in turn, do the same to others, and together raise the intensity of this global strain. These days, this communal stress is exploited by certain politicians and political groups to serve their particular agendas, compounding our worries as individuals and a group.
Stress is an everyday ingredient in our lives, now more so than ever before. The Coronavirus pandemic, the volatile political atmosphere, and the violent protests on the streets all contribute to our anxiety. They seep into our psyche from numerous outlets we are constantly tattered to. They cannot be escaped or ignored, and create a tension level in the back of our mind that some find hard to contend with.
Our constant access to technology and the absolute penetration it has into our lives, results in an unrelenting barrage of information, a lot of it counterproductive to us. It continually chips away at our concentration, demanding us to make endless small decisions, and causing our mind to race in numerous different directions. This constant process, which mixes professional and personal, public, and private parts of our lives is consuming, both emotionally and physically.
This cumulative pressure can overwhelm at times, pushing some to a corner of pain, despair, and loss of direction. It is important to recognize these inputs and placed them under control before our internal and external state reaches a spillover level. We need to be aware of these different stress generators, recognize and monitor them, and work effectively to control their influence on us. Allowing ourselves to get to the breaking point is risky, especially at this time, when our ability to act is so restricted by our limited mobility and independence.
To control this, consider taking the following actions:
- Sort through the news feeds and communication apps on your phone. Decide which of them is a true priority to you, and mute notifications of anything that is not. Select a specific time to tend to these channels, when reading them will have the least negative effect on your day and mood.
- Take a look at what you watch, read, or listen to. Assess the value of each channel, and purify your selection to include only reliable, truly informative, and valuable means that will help you to form an authentic view of your world
- Make an effort to keep the conversations you have in a positive manner. When you sense that an exchange is taking a direction that may affect you negatively, take steps to redirect it onto a better track. Communicate to the other person your desire for a polite, constructive conversation. Point out that there are different ways to say anything, and emphasize the need and the value of doing so for the sake of the topic and the overall outcome.
- Talk to your family members, friends, and colleagues, and relate to them your preference for positive, progressive communications. Explain your need for smart use of time and resources, and help them realize that by cooperating with your request they help you with your wishes, and at once benefit themselves from the same attributes.
Given its nature, this will be a hard change to execute alone. Unlike the Coronavirus, we do need to infect each other with positive prospects and use the group effort to get through this period. We are all in this together, and together we will prevail.