Why you need to de-stress

Is this how you feel when you leave work, or do you take the stress with you?

Stress is not uncommon in a job, but failing to deal with it effectively can have a serious impact on your life.

I recently quit my position as an administrator for Entrecard, citing stress as the main reason. It was an unpaid role and I volunteered many hours of my time to deal with support queries. However, it was a highly busy job and some of the queries were extremely difficult to deal with.

At the start, I found myself helping out in a number of areas. I frequently offered to take on more work and did everything I could to make a difference. People appreciated the help. All was good.

However, as time progressed, I realised that other things were not getting done. Writing music, coding Injader, updating my blogs, these were all things that I enjoyed doing and somehow I just wasn’t finding the time to do them. Then I noticed that the Entrecard position was getting harder to do.

Between my day job and my volunteer work for Entrecard, I had very little time for anything else. Before, I would work on my own projects from time to time, which helped me to de-stress. At the time I didn’t realise that this was my way of de-stressing. It was only when I didn’t have time for my own projects anymore that things started to go bad.

Without warning, things suddenly got very tough for me. I was massively stressed out, unhappy, and I was making mistakes. The stress levels were simply too much for me to deal with, I lost focus of my goals, and a lot of things ground to a halt. This blog was one of those things, my music was another.

I knew that something had to give. So, I resigned my position at Entrecard, refocused my blogging priorities, and set up a new blog - Top Ten Blog Tips. I finally closed the doors on my blog at benbarden.com, and started to get my life back.

There are a few things I have learned from this experience.

1. Your life should have a realistic balance between work goals and personal goals. Not everyone enjoys their job, but even if you enjoy every minute of it, don’t overdo it. Otherwise, it’ll soon lose its shine.
2. You can’t de-stress if you take on too much. Watch out for the warning signs and consider making some changes if your life hits a serious downturn. Make time for your own activities no matter how demanding your work needs may be.
3. If things get to be too much, resist the urge to make a rash decision to get a “quick fix”. It may give you some relief, but it may not be the best way to approach the situation and it’s far more disruptive if you have to make two changes in quick succession than just the one. Wait until you can review the situation with a clear head, and make a decision then.

Sometimes we only seem to learn from our mistakes, but don’t ignore the warning signs. Thankfully, I did take action fairly early on. The main thing to remember is that you need to maintain a sensible balance to ensure things don’t get out of control.

That’s my view - how do you de-stress?