In our busy working lives, it’s often easy for stress to become a constant presence in our lives. Be it from a project, a colleague or dealing with clients, stress can make the simplest of tasks seem like some of the most difficult to accomplish. As a result, high levels of stress can actually have a massive impact on your personal well-being, wreak havoc on your emotions and severely affect your physical health.

To ensure that you’re able to work effectively, think clearly and interact with your co-workers without the looming presence of stress, it’s important to think about effective management of your stress.

Unfortunately, there is no one-size fits all approach to stress management. To ensure you find the right balance or solution that works for you, it’s important to experiment with different approaches.

Here are some tips that can help you find what you need to work out how to manage your stress best:

1. Identify the true sources of stress in your life – while it may seem your stress is as a result of tight work deadlines, consider looking deeper into the causes, such as habits, attitude or excuses. Consider starting a stress journal to identify regular stressors in your life and how you deal with them.
2. Avoid, Alter, Adapt & Accept – If your stress occurs on a regular and predictable basis, it’s best to change the situation or change your reaction. Ways that this can be done is by avoiding unnecessary stress, altering the situation to deal with the stress, adapting to the stressor or accepting the things that can’t be changed that caused the stress.
3. Physical activitiy is a huge stress reliever – as much as many of us probably don’t want to go for that walk, doing so release endorphins that can help mitigate the effects of stress.
4. Connect to others with face-to-face interactions, as being able to do so counteracts the body’s defensive fight-or-flight response that high stress can trigger. Building and maintaining a close network of friends can help improve your resiliency to life’s stressors.
5. Manage your time better, as poor time management can cause a lot of stress for you that is unnecessary. Prioritise tasks, know your limits, break projects into manageable portions and delegate responsibility as required to help mitigate the outcome of a potentially stressful situation.

If you are comfortable, speaking with your employer about potential stress factors that could be impacting your work is recommended. They can potentially aid you in creating a better strategy to manage your stress at work, address the issue or assist in decreasing the stressors.

Seeking professional help or guidance to address your mental health is also a good idea. They have the resources to assist you in addressing this issue effectively.