Pressure may come from many sources. What we are talking about today is work pressure.
From the perspective of the definition of Stress, the most widely accepted at present is: Stress is a person’s feeling that “demands exceed the personal and social resources he can use” (stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that “demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize, by Richard S Lazarus).
In layman’s terms, you feel that you are out of control.
If we express this definition with a formula, it can be recorded as pressure = (expectation-ability) * emotional adjustment coefficient.
It can be seen from this that if you want to reduce stress, you must either lower your expectations or improve your abilities. If neither of these can be changed, then you can only adjust your emotions and adopt the spiritual victory method.
Therefore, we have to talk about how to reduce work pressure from the three dimensions of lowering expectations, improving ability, and emotional regulation.
1. Lower Expectations
There are three aspects to reducing expectations, including expectations for results, expectations for yourself, and expectations for others.
1.1 Expectations of results-don’t be too demanding on results.
For example, if you want to make an important report to the big boss tomorrow, if you have great hopes for the results, for example, you hope that through this report, the big boss will be impressed with you, get a promotion and salary increase at the end of the year, and become a company Key talents.
Then it is very likely that this huge desire for results will form a huge pressure on you, but it will cause you to be too nervous to perform as expected.
Just like a person with insomnia, the more you tell yourself to sleep well, the more you can’t fall asleep. If you give up this idea and let it go, you might sleep well.
1.2 Expectations of oneself-accept one’s own nature.
Tell yourself “Don’t be nervous”, and you won’t be nervous, tell yourself “Don’t be afraid”, and you won’t immediately relax. It’s human nature to be nervous when something happens.
So, don’t expect too much to be able to go against your nature and accept the fact that you are nervous, but it will make you less nervous.
Na Ying said that every time she went on stage, she was so nervous that she wanted to go to the bathroom, and she would forget the words. When the music played, her brain went blank. However, this did not affect her from becoming an outstanding singer.
When Jobs first gave a TV interview in the 1970s, he was so nervous that he vomited while sitting in a chair, and asked the staff where the bathroom was. This did not prevent him from having so many great speeches in the future.
1.3 Expectations of others-don’t expect everyone to like you.
In the face of the opposite sex you like, you will feel nervous. Everyone has this experience. The reason is that because you like the other person, you expect him to like you too. This expectation will make you cautious in your words and deeds and become very restrained.
In fact, it’s not just about feelings, but also about work.
A friend of mine who is a sales executive once said: “When you do sales, you should not spend a lot of effort to please customers. People are related to fate. In a group of customers, some of them are very close to you, and some are not with you. Whether it’s good or not, there is still a part that can’t be touched. Knowing how to identify these customers and not wasting the limited time on the latter is the key to a good sale.”
2. Improve the Ability
Regarding ability, the source of stress is different, and the method is also different. According to the theory put forward by Dr. Karl Albrecht, there are four types of pressure: time pressure, anticipatory pressure, situational pressure, and social pressure.
2.1 Dealing with time pressure
You are extremely worried about time, afraid that important things will not be done in time, or even give up because of this.
I have done a very tight schedule. Almost many reports only have one week for research, writing, and revision. In such a stressful situation, every day before the deadline, I would be very nervous, even desperate, and spent a lot of effort on psychological construction, and for a long time I could not write a page of ppt.
In life, we often have many people who are under relatively high pressure in life. For such people, facing such a large life pressure, how should we reduce it? In fact, daily exercise for fitness is a more suitable thing.
Many people will suffer from insomnia the day before when they need to get up early the next day, which is actually a kind of time pressure.
My own experience on time management is: Don’t just focus on time itself. The skills that focus on doing more in a certain period of time are not time management skills, but skills that increase productivity.
However, in addition to improving productivity, time management also includes how to filter tasks, how to delegate, how to think and plan, and so on. Otherwise, you seem to have done a lot of things, but all of them are useless, which is the biggest waste of time.
I know, everyone must be very tired seeing this. So, let’s have a different way of interaction this time.
According to the 8 dimensions of time management, I designed a questionnaire to assess the level of time management. It only takes 3 minutes to see how well your current time management ability is. After the evaluation is completed, the corresponding result and explanation will be returned to you. (The evaluation address is released at the end of the article)
2.2 Coping with Expected Pressure
You are very worried about the future, and you always feel that something will go wrong.
This kind of pressure is related to many factors. For example, you lack sufficient self-confidence and always feel that you can’t do it well. For another example, you are a pessimistic person and always feel that there will be many obstacles.
There is a saying in psychology called “overthinking”.
There is a real case. An opera star is about to perform a performance, but when she is about to sing a complicated aria, she suddenly feels strong self-doubt and can’t help thinking about her mistakes, but she actually sang this part Many times, it never went wrong.
Since that time of self-doubt, she would be very anxious every time she performed. She kept telling herself: don’t do this, don’t do that, breathe too tightly, and lower the upper jaw… Until the end, she had to give up opera.
When a person is very worried about future performance, he overthinks and starts to check work that could have been done automatically.
Moreover, the worst part of this situation is that it is often a downward spiral, one failure after another, and the pressure is increasing.
If you have this feeling before doing something, a more useful way is to meditate. There are the following ways:
Pay attention to breathing- if you are in an office, you can find an empty room, close the door, turn off the light, sit in a chair, relax your body, close your eyes, and take a deep breath.
Focus your attention on your breath and feel the air in and out. Paying attention to breathing can help your body and mind relax. Generally, you can stick to it for 5 to 10 minutes.
Muscle relaxation- sitting on a chair, relax your muscles, starting from the feet and gradually moving up, at the same time, focus your attention on the muscles that are relaxing.
There are many ways to relax muscles on the Internet. I am not a professional, so I won’t say more! Of course, while relaxing the muscles, you still need to breathe slowly and deeply.
Focus on your eyes- Sit upright in a chair, take a slow and deep breath, and focus your eyes on the object in front of you for about 5 minutes.
Breath counting- if you can’t find a room at the time, you can try to breathe slowly and deeply, and then count your breaths.
Yes, it’s what you do when you can’t sleep. This is a way to make you more calm. Counting to 10 times and not thinking about any problems is enough.
2.3 Coping with situational pressure
Situational pressure often arises in emergencies, when you suddenly encounter a dangerous or conflicting thing, which you did not expect at all.
Imagine that during a team meeting, there are disagreements from different parties, and the quarrel is too much. So your boss suddenly calls you up and says he wants to listen to your ideas.
At this time, your brain may be blank, your forehead is full of sweat, and your heartbeat is quickening. In this state, you can’t think about any constructive points. Therefore, you are probably hesitating at that time and did not say any useful information, but after the meeting, you think of many highlights that can be said, and then regret it. Endless.
Generally speaking, introverted people tend to think deeply before speaking carefully, so in this case, they will feel more pressure, while extroverted people tend to say what they think. At this time, it is more relieved.
However, in addition to the personality cannot be changed, there is no way:
The main reason why you can’t tell us any useful information is because your thoughts are messy. You may have a lot of point-like ideas, but you don’t know where to start.
In fact, at this time, what you need is a tool to help you think about information structure.
2.4 Coping with social pressure
Improve empathy
It is difficult for people with autism to communicate with the outside world. This is the most extreme example of social disorders.
So, what is the psychological mechanism of autism?
Psychologically speaking, autism has no problem in generating emotions. Their problem is that they cannot recognize or simulate other people’s emotions.
They cannot understand why others are angry, why they are sad, and why they are excited.
It can be seen that we want to get along with others better, and understanding the emotions of others is the most critical. This ability is also called empathy.
Know your own bottom line
When you need to interact with many people, you will feel pressure. You may not like them or worry that they will not like you. You don’t know how they will react to what you say.
Therefore, getting along with people is a waste of energy. Many people who work with people may not like to interact with people in private, because they are already under a lot of social pressure at work.
However, the extent to which each person spends energy in getting along with others is different. Introverts, by nature do not like to deal with people, not that they can’t, just that they don’t like it.
I am an introvert myself, so I will definitely have one day a week. I stay quiet by myself or only stay with the people I know the most. I know this is my bottom line, otherwise, it will be difficult for me to be next Deal with so many people every day of the workweek.
Therefore, knowing whether you are an extrovert or an introvert, knowing the bottom line of getting along with others, but not forcing yourself, is also a way to reduce social pressure.
3. Regulate Emotions
When the gap between expectations and capabilities cannot be changed, how you treat it becomes the most critical issue.