It's probably not too far fetched to say that each of us suffers from some measure of stress every day. And it's also likely that most of us try to assimilate that stress and have no idea how it's affecting our lives, both business and personal.
Why do I bring this up? Because some of those stresses are so quiet and sneaky that we don't even notice they're undermining us. One of them recently cropped up in my life and it took too many weeks before I could see exactly what was eating my productivity. To be sure, part of me recognizes what needs to be changed and, in fact, welcomes that change. Underneath it all, though, another part of me was dealing with a nagging, but vague, stress.
There was no observable reason to feel anxious, yet I was experiencing days of an anxiety-type feeling in the pit of my stomach. The bills were paid, the cats were fed, but I couldn't shake that odd and all-to-common feeling. It didn't take too long before I was lucky enough to realize, before it grew ugly, that stress was
teasing me.
It was a stroke of good fortune that I recognized the problem so quickly. Otherwise, the tension could have worked itself into that fence that comes between us and what we really want to do. It's a harmful thing, this anxiety, often bringing with it procrastination, fears, and depression, and sometimes manifesting in distracted overwhelm. A definite productivity-kill.
We can't let the confustion and despair of anxiety take our control along with the rest of the best of us. Far better to keep our clear spaces clear so we can concentrate more on thriving than surviving.
Art Credit: Ohio State University
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That is so true. Those little individual stressors, while not huge, still drag us down just as much. Sometimes they are harder to deal with, because they are so small - we keep saying they aren't important, while the whole time they are killing our productivity and our enjoyment of life.
Posted by: Lyman Reed | July 27, 2007 10:04 AM | Permalink to Comment