Pressure VS Stress
What is affecting your life?
Is it pressure or is it stress?
What you can be sure of is that you are not alone?
Pressure is a deadline, complicated problem, tight work life schedules, and anything else that pushes you to excel beyond your normal results.
Stress on the other hand is worrying about everything that is putting pressure on you.
When you have a job that you love, you don’t think about the stress. You are a powerhouse who is able to perform and accomplish your tasks better than anyone else.
When you have a job you hate and that’s like 75% of you, then what you are being asked to do is hitting your body in such a way that worry, anxiety, and fear are elevated and will begin to break down your body’s ability to work normally.
So the solution is getting a job you love!
So easy!
You have heard it over and over again by gurus who say their world corrected themselves when they did this one little trick.
Yeah. The trick there is how your money disappeared.
I was very lucky to have a talent for writing both database script and prose at age 13 and the pressure I put on myself is far beyond what any boss or leader could put on me. I love the act of accomplishing my tasks as much as the great pay that is given in exchange. I was doing this for free long before I was contracted to do so.
Despite my love for the job and the pressure to succeed, I have little stress. Oh there have been contractors who have brought me in on the day they launched an application because they were encountering severe problems. The managers are sweating their own jobs and letting you know they need to find the problem and the solution yesterday.
For those of you with jobs you hate, you have valid, imagined, or both types of pressures just getting your mind ready on Sunday afternoon, Monday morning, or every morning of the week.
It’s easy for someone to tell you to change jobs than it is for you to do it. I understand that you don’t think you have a lot of options. So what are you going to do?
Studies show time and time again that some of the most horrible things that happen to your body are related to how much stress you have in your life. You take what bothers you and you compound it day after day like the starter in a sourdough bread. That seed in your mind, a very real item to you, takes over your body and spreads to every cell. In time one of your cells breaks down into cancers, disease, etc.
So what needs to change for you to feel calm and balanced at that job you hate so much if you cannot drop what you are doing and start somewhere new?
This isn’t easy because I am sitting here thinking about solutions and I only have one that worked for me in the early days when my contracts were not perfect. When I was starting out I would take work that would have half to three quarters of what I loved and half to a quarter of what I hated.
To get past the annoyance of a micromanaging boss or unrealistic deadline pressure was to tell myself, “I don’t give a f@ck.”
See I realized the customer wasn’t giving me the stress headaches and stomach & neck pains, the boss or leader was. I told myself I am here to serve the clients; internal, external or both. I wasn’t here to serve my boss and it was the truth.
There were times that telling myself that without mentioning to anyone in leadership got me through complicated relationships with bosses who were so worried about getting a deficient efficiency report but in the cases where I had to sit the boss and project manager down and explain that I work best when I am focused on one side of the operation and that side should be the customer.
The managers, for my part, said this was constructive and allowed me to focus. On one contract alone, the manager explained his pressures in the university politics and ask me to focus on his needs. He was kind enough to show me there was no way I would get in trouble for not giving the client what they needed and he was right. He wanted any issues to roll up to him. Since I was a contractor, I didn’t mind and found that my “I don’t give a f@ck,” attitude worked.
It’s about direction. I have heard people say they are being pulled in two directions and it’s true. The best organizations know the direction and encourage their employees to head that way. It’s easier on the brain to focus and accomplish.
Now you shouldn’t announce you don’t give a f@ck out loud but it’s okay if you whisper it because you do care about doing great work.
This piece isn’t for people who just want to be lazy or have such mundane tasks they don’t care who it serves.
If the stress in your job is from how overworked your brain is, you may want to take a part time job mopping floors. No joke. Two hours of mopping gives your brain a rest. People go to the gym but unless your body can heal as fast as your mind, you are going to break down faster.
If the stress in your job is due to how mindless it is, specialization in a skill is another means to finding meaning in your work and tasks. I took to writing databases and writing articles so easily that I did it for causes and for free to get more experience. My scripts ran and my articles were purchased and there I went.
There has to be something you did so naturally as a youth even if it was researching the best video games or fashion from your phone. If you have a natural talent like that you just need to be able to summarize and communicate your findings.
Well this is my daily rant because I don’t like seeing so many of you disappointed in your work and I am trying to help.
I don’t take myself seriously but I sure take you and my clients seriously.
Yeah I know I repeated a word but I don’t give a…!
