Stress Management

I've always been someone who gets silently stressed out.  I guess I was taught that stress is something you handle yourself and don't inflict on others.  Like every self-help book and blog will tell you, everyone manifests stress differently.  This is especially apparent in the workplace.

While I could go into the details of how my coworkers have handled stress over the years, it's irrelevant.  The one common theme is that people seem to think the more stressed you are, the more important the work that you're doing.  Since when does it mean you do your work better if it seems more impossible to do?  I was always under the assumption that if you're really good at your job, it's probably pretty easy for you to do.  Sure, it can be time consuming and things get chaotic at times, but why does that have to lead to extreme stress?

Personally, I deal with my stress by going out and doing non-stressful things.  I don't know many other people who handle it this way, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.  I end up exhausted, regretful and usually with a lot less money in the bank.  But, it does usually make for a good time.

I hate to sound like the ultimate millennial, but I recently found myself in a yoga class that really has taught me how to deal with stress -- by breathing through it.  Thanks to ClassPass, I discovered kundalini yoga where you work on relieving stress through breath and relaxing the mind through stretching the body.  I've always been one to sigh to let out whatever emotions I might be having in that moment (people used to ask me if I was OK a lot in school), but this harnesses it in a way I haven't found before.

I often find myself telling stressed out people to "relax" which is always met with anger, but perhaps I should start telling them to "breathe" because you can't argue with that!