It is believed that we are prone to a stressful situation in at least one time in our adult lives. PRME Workshop on Thursday, 29 April 2018 held a talk about this on “How to Reduce Stress at Work”. In the talk, Dr. Henndy Ginting, Psi said that if we looked up in the Web of Science, research titles in relation to employees’ stress in the companies were counted as much as 90% of the total publications which were surveyed in the developing countries, and half of them were based on Asian countries.

According to Dr. Ginting, symptoms of stress can affect our physiology, psychology, and even our behavior. Those are including but not limited to: the increase in heartbeat and blood pressure, fatigue, confusion, headache, muscular tension, respiratory disturbance, excessive sweating, emotional outburst, boredom, a decline in intellectual capability and productivity, loss of concentration and creativity, feeling of helpless and failure, forgetful, work aversion and procrastination, too much/lack of eating, a decline in self-confidence, excessive behavior, and social relation disorder.

Stress does not transpire by itself. There are some conditions that can contribute to the emergence of stress, for example, when a corporation experiences a downsizing or a major change, or when an employee faces a large workload or long work hours in the company, as well as an imbalance between work/life. Not only that stress is triggered by certain conditions, but stress can also lead to other circumstances, e.g. job burnout, anxiety, depression, insomnia, hypertension, frequent illness, and exhaustion.

So, what can be done to manage stress? Dr. Ginting suggested that there are seven suitable steps that can be implemented in overcoming stress:

  1. Eat a balanced and nutritious diet starting with breakfast – the most important meal of the day
  2. Get a good night’s sleep – at least 7 hours
  3. Volunteer time and services
  4. Seek professional help – if really necessary
  5. Keep moving – exercise 30 minutes a day
  6. Express your feeling – realize that you are not alone
  7. Get to the root of it – remove the stressor or try new coping strategies

Apart from the steps, there are other means of dealing with stress. It has something to do with how we perceive it, our spiritual contexts, and how we handle our negative emotions. Different persons have their own different ways in coping with stress. Some may be doing voluntary activities, where the feeling of care for others gives them the highest value, or some other people may connect themselves with nature, where the acceptance as human beings are sensed the most, and some may conduct spiritual activities, where the experience of doing so is more transcendental.

“But whatever the method you decide to do, you will never completely remove stress from your life. The most important thing is that identifying and managing stressors can help maintaining a positive and healthy lifestyle,” Dr. Ginting concluded. This will ensure we will have the good health and well-being to achieve the decent work we dreamt of for a strong institution.