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My experience managing work stress and balancing responsibilities
I walked into the office today knowing that I had a hard day ahead of me. My coworker was going on vacation, and there was a lot of work coming in for me. It felt like I was being pulled in different directions to complete different tasks for different people. Work stress is definitely real, as I realized at this moment. On the other hand, I was greeted by my coworkers who were also students. We had grown closer over the work-term; spent lunch breaks together and would even go to dinner and events together after the workday. Balancing work-life and personal life is worth shedding light on because it is important to take work seriously, build a rapport with your coworkers but still maintain your personal life, especially your “me time.”
As young adults, we are slowing finding that maintaining a balance in our lives is important. I find that balancing work-life and personal life is difficult because when I take time to spend with my coworkers, time to fullfill my responsibilities for clubs on campus, and then time to spend with my close friends, I barely have time for myself, to cook dinner, watch television and do the things I like to do. I really do not want to be in the cycle of waking up, going to work, eating dinner, and going to sleep and repeat! I’m too young for that! It is definitely a juggling act.
The first rule is to leave work at work. By this I mean leave the stresses, issues, responsibilities placed on you by your career, at the doors of your workplace. Separate the spheres of your life. Work stays at work. We are only human, and like many of you, sometimes I tend to take out my stress on the people around me. But, work stress can be channeled into effort to complete the tasks at hand and turned into a positive thing. For example, the stressful week I described above did not take a toll on me because as soon as I got beyond the gray walls of the workplace and into the fresh air, I forgot about my work-life and the next morning I felt more positive about completing the tasks at hand. Mentally, it may be hard to separate the spheres, but it is healthier to do this and good to learn this skill from young. Second is to schedule your time. Maybe a couple times a week you will dedicate to school responsibilities and once every two weeks you may go out with your coworkers. The rest of the time I put aside for myself and my loved ones. Third is to put aside “me time.” After a long day at work, the only thing I actually want to do, is eat dinner, and watch television or movies in bed. I also de-stress by reading magazines, chatting with friends, going for walks, listening to music. I make sure I put aside this time for myself, even if it is only one hour just to do things I enjoy. It really is a de-stressor and helps to put a mental distance between myself and work.
I find that as we take on more tasks and have more responsibilities, we forget about scheduling our time and putting time away for ourselves. I always hear stories about work getting in the way of personal life, for example, I have a friend who takes out her stress on her boyfriend unintentionally, and it causes a strain on the relationship; movies and television shows depict fathers and mothers who bring work home or work from home and do not spend enough time with their children and their partners because they do not separate the work-sphere from the home-sphere or work-life from personal-life. But this separation is vital to living a balanced and happy life. The stressful week I described above only lasted for a week, and I got through it. Stressful moments in life always pass, and from them we gain the ability to handle even harder situations that may come our way in the future.
Images:
http://science-professor.blogspot.ca/2012/05/picture-it-work-life-balance.html