“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”
– Sydney J. Harris

I work in a bustling, high-pressure environment. As a Sales engineer I could be called on to do, well, pretty much anything at the last minute – and particularly at the end of quarters when there are big pushes to try and hit various targets you never know quite what you’ll be doing day to day. Will I be on site with a customer this week? Will I be doing 6 product demonstrations in a single day or one long 3-hour remote troubleshooting session?

It could be anything.

It makes my job exciting and I love the prospect of having to be on my metaphorical toes, but for me and those around me it can be exhausting. Yes it’s exciting, but never getting what I like to call “work down time” i.e. time you can use to learn something knew, tinker with a problem you’ve been thinking about for a while, can become detrimental to your mental state as the pressure starts to build.

This problem isn’t restricted to a sales environment – it can occur anywhere there is a high pressure workload, deadlines or unpredictability.

Stress is a hormonal response from the body. Adrenaline and cortisol (and others) force your body into this “ready” state where you’re constantly ready to fight or flee and it is a state that should be reserved for occasions we require it. To be in a high pressure, high stress job where you constantly feel worn out, over worked and anxious for what the day holds in store can be not only problematic for your workload as you try in vain to keep up with everything (and potentially let standards slip) but it can also have big ramifications for your health, including (but not limited to):

• Less and/or worse quality sleep
• High blood pressure
• Heart problems
• Skin irritation
• Anxiety
• Headaches / Migraines

It’s obvious when you’re giving in to stress because you start making excuses. When we’re most stressed that’s when we find ourselves identifying ways to put off tackling the thing that is causing us the issue(s) or normalizing and rationalizing the problem. We’ve all been students at one point, putting off working for deadlines “well, I can pretty much get it done next week I’m sure” and even now as adults we start figuring out how much time we can sacrifice around it “well if I come in at 5am and just crack on with it, because no one else will be in the office…“. This is just another way for stressful activities to play on your mind and eat into our personal time and even our sleep. But that stuff is muy importante and actually, you don’t have to put yourself through that; many people consider stress to be a normal part of the job they lead like prison guards, astronauts and doctors. The key is to use stress to your advantage, be focused on the job at hand, but don’t let it overwhelm you, whatever it is you do.

Stress has always been something I’ve had difficulties overcoming and it wasn’t until 2019 when my wife and I ran an Action For Happiness “Exploring What Matters” course (check here for any courses running near you – they’re super cool!) that I realized I didn’t have to be a slave to stress.

There are so many coping techniques for stress but I wanted to just share 1 with you today (and maybe others in the future), but this is a technique I discovered in that Exploring What Matters course that you can put into action right now.

It has long been proven that meditation can have incredible health benefits for those who practice it, but the common feedback I hear on it is “but I don’t have time to meditate in the middle of the day! I have a job to do!” – whilst this may be true, meditation doesn’t just have to be sitting in a quiet room, cross-legged saying “hummmmmm” whilst sniffing incense for an hour until you find inner peace.

The video below will walk you through taking just a moment in the middle of your day to re-focus, to help you deal with stress. Sometimes we carry stress with us from call to call or meeting to meeting and all it can take is for us to deal with that build up to prevent it from affecting us and our work. I loved the course because it made me look at stress for what it was – not a big ball of mess that I had to carry everywhere with me and could do nothing about – rather, something I could choose not to feel if i didn’t want to.

I hope this video helps you as much as it’s helped me.

One thing I will say in closing though, and that is if you find stress is a big part of your daily life and it makes you agitated, anxious and weary, meditation might not be enough to help you get through. Stress can be like a big heavy ball you constantly feel is hanging from your neck, pulling you down and restricting your airways. However, things can change and you can change them. Speak to your boss, your friends and family, even a therapist about what is stressing you out; they may hold the key to help you unlock the root of the stress and therein lies the way to releasing it.

You are not alone, ever.