Life Stress - A Part of Life ?

Unmanaged life stress can also be harmful?

Life can be a bowl of cherries, if you know how to deal with the pips

positive attitude
Life can be a bowl of cherries, if you know how to deal with the pips

Let’s be honest. Life is stressful. Trying to balance all of the “stuff” that we have going on in our lives is tough for all of us.

Just living in the 21st century places a burden of life stress on us! There are global warming issues, recycling concerns, political unrest in all corners of the world, and that all-consuming question:

Will Dr. Yang from Greys Anatomy manage to find her “EDGE” again?

Whew! That’s a lot to juggle and you haven’t even added in the stress that results from your life.

Life stress arises from different areas of your life. Some are really serious and others are not so serious. After all, people stress about the strangest things, mostly those things which are out of their control.

Regardless of the sources of your life stress, raising your awareness of that stress goes a long way to improving your work life balance concerns.

Spotting the signs of stress is very difficult. Some people actually thrive on stress and may not wish to change. Others may crumble under the pressures of work and life.

101 Ways To Relax & Reduce Stress

Here are the six sources of stress (As outlined by the HSE).

The Six Sources of Stress or Stressors
  1. DEMANDS: Workload, work scheduling, physical environment etc.
  2. CONTROL:Decision, authority, and autonomy>
  3. SUPPORT: Organisational, colleagues, practical and emotional
    4. RELATIONSHIPS: Resolving conflict, teamwork, and bullying issues
  4. ROLE: Role ambiguity or conflict
  5. CHANGE: New ways of working, change strategies

Many of these stressors can manifest as anger and rage, especially within an office environment. Office rage is a result of stress, or of a failure to address stress as a real issue within the working environment.

Lessening Life Stress

Whilst stress and rage are becoming common place, help is available in many forms. Anger management, stress management, counselling, therapy, coaching and mentoring can all help you deal with life stress.

There are things you can do right now to overcome some of these work and life associated problems. The ability to reduce life stress is in your hands!

Understand the Causes of Stress.

Analyse the stress in your life and take the all important action steps.

Coping with Stress Discover strategies to help you beat stress and stressful situations.

Your Basic Human Needs

Stress can be attributed to imbalances in your basic human needs. Are your basic human needs being met? Are they being met in a healthy way through healthy human experiences?

The Human Givens Approach to Emotional Needs

Human Givens consist of the physical and emotional "needs" laid down in us by our genes - our genetic endowment - together with the "resources" nature gave us to help us get them met in the environment.

These needs and resources have evolved over millions of years to help you survive in whatever environment you find yourself in.

When they are met and your innate resources are used well, you will be mentally healthy.

sadly, if your needs are not being met in a balanced way and your resources are used in the wrong way, you are likely to feel anxious, angry, perhaps even depressed.

It is therefore crucial to your "Good Mental Health" that you become aware of your needs.

Whatever you do in life you do to meet one of the following innate Human Needs:

  • Security - Safe territory and the room to unfold well
  • The need for attention (to give and receive it)
  • The need for autonomy and control
  • Being emotionally connected to others - friendship, love, intimacy
  • Being part of a wider community
  • Having a sense of status within social groupings
  • A sense of competence and achievement (the answer to low "self esteem"
  • The need for privacy - to reflect on and consolidate experience
  • The need for meaning - that comes from being stretched, physically and mentally

That’s it. We all have these needs. They are NOT wants – these are absolute needs. And we all have different ways of getting these needs met.

Fortunately nature was kind to us all, and she gave us the necessary resources (or tools) to help us meet these needs

These resources are:-

  • The ability to develop complex long term memory.
  • The ability to build rapport, empathise and connect with others.
  • Imagination which can allow us to focus our attention away from our emotions in order to problem solve more objectively.
  • A conscious, rational mind that can check out our emotions, ask questions, analyse (the left hemisphere of your brain).
  • The ability to "know"- understand the world unconsciously through metaphorical pattern matching ( the right hemisphere of your brain).
  • An observing self - that part of us that can step back, be more objective and recognise itself as a unique center of awareness apart from intellect, emotion and conditioning.
  • A dreaming brain that preserves the integrity of our genetic inheritance every night by metaphorically defusing emotionally arousing introspections not acted out the previous day.

For further information regarding "Human Givens" please follow the links to the respective organisation web resources.

The Human Givens Institute.

Minefields College.

For a free, no obligation Emotional Needs Audit and to discover if you’re utilising your innate resources effectively in a healthy, balanced and stress-reducing way, please contact Three Cornerstones Coaching. This assessment is available to anyone, within the UK or around the world.

When contacting us, please quote “Human Needs” in your comments and we will send you the report within 48 hours – hopefully much sooner