Vemedo Jkezo
Asst. Prof., Dept. Of Education, St. Joseph’s College Jakhama
Management is the buzzword in today’s parlance of corporate world. The degree of your efficiency in your corporate life depends on your managerial skills that you exhibit and expressed into practical reality. However, for many people, the management of stress has become a pressing need, as it affects the quality of life and also in our relationship with the family members and in the work place. With the demand of work, social life, and the commitment for family needs one finds difficult to balance and the result is high degree of stressful life. It is our birthright to be legitimately happy, and live a life of fulfilment and accomplishment. As many of us I am afraid, we are not able to live a high degree of fulfilled life. Half of our energy is spent on grumbling and nagging for not being able to cope up with certain degree of stress.
It is a fact that we have to live with a certain degree of stress and the more we are able to cope up with it, the more we become efficient and productive and live a fulfilled life. Of late, stress has become a concernand is becoming a major one therefore, this article presents in a limited way, how to deal with it and how we can cope up and manage our life to a great extend live with ease and yet be more productive and fruitful.
Most of the time, we live with lot of stress and yet we are not sure of ourselves that we are in it. Stress result when our body over reacts to events. It leads us to become anxious, tired, irritated, developing headache, neck pain, loosing appetite, and even insomnia. These are sheer symptoms of living a stressful life. So stress as we discus is a ‘state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulted from adverse or demanding circumstances’. Most of the stress comes from our inability to prioritize and organize work and delegate things. We become a victim of our own misplaced generosity. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, for are underlings,’ opines, Shakespeare in his, Julius Caesar. We can effectively manage stress by identifying the source of stress and systematically work on it personally. As the stress management is an inside job.
The first principle in dealing with the stress is setting your goal and defining your priority in the arena of your work in which you are battling. You cannot serve too many masters. You serve one at a time and show your allegiance to which that matters you most. Once you set your priority and goal, you can accordingly address then on the basis of urgency and priority. You cannot be the saviour of everybody, and therefore, learn to say no and be assertive enough to tell who you are. ‘Assertiveness is the art of confidently and comfortably expressing our wants and needs without hurting others or being hurt,’ asserts, Ignacimuthu SJ. Quoting again, ‘it is self enhancing; it generates positive feelings towards oneself and others and it leads to smooth interpersonal relationships.’ Setting our time on the basis of our priority of work can ease of lot of unnecessary tensions. When we learn how to prioritise our goals of work, we can manufacture time and work accordingly. That is why those who know how to prioritise their work, they are always having a sense of mission and are legitimately happy, and own up everything without a blame game.
The second principle of handling stress is developing certain regularity of habits however; we need to go beyond when situation demands. Having a certain regularity of life is always necessary to balance our life powerfully and fruitfully. Thus going to bed on time is necessary for developing a regularity of life. As rest is the ‘in thing’ of life, it acts as a fulcrum in which everything rests upon.
The third principle or techniques of managing stress is identifying your needs and wants. Everything that comes on way does not necessarily improve the quality of our life. It may bring us on par with the fashion world but often lead us into emptiness of heart. It takes a lot of self denial to stick on to our own needs. Living according to our need based, can bring lot of ease into our inner life. We need not conform to the pressing moments unless our conscience proves otherwise. Doing what is best for ourselves is the seed of sensitivity to oneself and this will go a long way, in finding one’s domain of life.
Apart from the above mentioned techniques here are two methods which I have found very effective in dealing with stress management. Maintaining a journal is very useful, as this is involves self talk which releases your tension. In your real life, you are not able to confront to a person positively and assert who you are, but in your journal, you can be yourself and express your feelings freely. This is very therapeutic and it will help you to bring out all your tensions that you are facing. However, this method is advised when you have no trustworthy person to speak about or share with a competent counsellor, about your issues. Maintaining a journal is very personal, and at this level of intra-relation, you are who you are. Once you have experience a relieve, you can burn or destroy it
Meditation is another powerful and very effective way of dealing with our stress. Ultimately the stress is not from outside but from within and it is our inability to address and befriend it. Since antiquity, people spent lot of time on meditation and find solution to life’s problem. But what is meditation? It is a practice where an individual operates or trains the mind to fix to content or an object and thereby becoming mindful of what he or she is engaging. It involves an internal effort to self regulate the mind in some way. This could be done by simply concentrating on the breathing, listening to soft music or looking at a burning candle and thereby, leading our soul into stillness. Once we have acquired certain degree of stillness it will lead us into self awareness. This self awareness is the key to self knowledge which in turn help us to identify the source of our own problems and give us an insight as to how to handle ourselves. This is the most fruitful way of dealing and managing with our stress. When we meditate every day, we become more conscious of ourselves and leading to self awareness and to peace and tranquillity. Thus tension becomes an inside reality which you can readjust your sail to fit in, to the wind of journey in order to travel with the rest of humanity.
