Stress (part 1)

In many countries heart disease kills a lot of women and even more men. There are five causes of heart disease: bad diet, heart disease in the family, not enough exercise, smoking, stress.

The most important cause, however, is stress. But what is stress?

Stress is everywhere in our daily life. The main causes of stress are death, marriage, money, moving house, taking exams and changing jobs. We often feel stress when something is wrong in our life, but we cannot change it. Some people have to do what they don’t like doing every day! This is a stressful situation.

Stress on the job costs American companies as much as $ 150 billion a year in lower productivity, employee sick leave, and higher medical costs. Stress is a prevalent and costly problem in today's workplace. Three quarters of the office workers today say they suffer from stress at work. About one-third of workers report high levels of stress. One-quarter of employees view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives. Three-quarters of employees believe the worker has more on-the-job stress than a generation ago. Evidence also suggests that stress is the major cause of turnover in organizations.

The Kenexa Research Institute released a global survey of almost 30,000 workers which showed that females suffered more workplace stress than their male counterparts. According to the survey, women's stress level were 10% higher for those in supervisory positions, 8% higher stress in service and production jobs than men, and 6% higher in middle and upper management than men in the same position.

Stress (part 2)

Recently, psychologists and doctors have begun to study the problem more closely. They have discovered that the most stressful professions are those that involve danger and extreme pressure and those that carry a lot of responsibility without much control. According to the research the most stressful jobs in the USA in 2012 were: enlisted soldier, firefighter, airline pilot, police officer, event coordinator, public relations executive, corporate executive, photojournalist, taxi driver. In 2008 a city high school teacher headed the list and in 2001 and 1999 the first place was given to the American President. The signs of stress range from nervousness, anger and frequent illness to forgetfulness and even mental problems.

Some people begin to eat less and other people are always hungry. If you feel stressed, you get tired very quickly and you don’t enjoy life anymore. There are people who bite nails, eat a lot of sweets or use alcohol or drugs when they are under stress. Of course, it is not the right way to relieve stress.

Doing yoga or relaxation exercises are common ways of relieving stress. But doctors now say that there are simpler ways. They advise people should laugh and smile more often. When you laugh and smile your body relaxes.

Good stress may seem to you a very strange expression. People usually think that stress is always bad for you, but there is a proverb – “Bad luck often brings good luck”. Stress can be a good thing too. It can help you do your best. it can also help you end a difficult situation and change your life.

Slow down, you move too fast

Philomena Tan knows all about stress. By her early 30s, she was a successful, highly paid market research consultant, who sometimes worked till 10 p.m. “We had a lot of meetings and deadlines; we had to win projects, so I was writing proposals, making presentations, supervising staff,” she says.

For a long while, she loved her job and there were perks - lots of travel, for instance - but it was never what she had planned to do with her life. Like so many others, she just got involved in a career that had started accidentally.

Tan had studied psychology, and she was also good with statistics and computers, so Tan made steady progress up the corporate ladder. But the turning point came the year she spent the entire week of her husband’s birthday in Brisbane running market research groups while he was home alone in Melbourne.

It made her examine her life and think about what she was really contributing to society. Tan planned her escape carefully. She saved money and returned to study. The research she did for a doctorate in psychology not only added to her qualifications as a psychologist and psychotherapist, but gave her the raw material for her book, Leaving the Rat Race to Get a Life, a handbook for anyone seriously considering changing the pace of their lives.

These days, Yan is in private practice in her local community, does yoga and chooses her own hours. She rarely works more than four days a week and, because she sees clients in the evening, she keeps her afternoon free to catch up with reading, meet with her friends or research her next book. She is happy. “When you are working up to 70 hours a week, you don’t have time for this”, she says.