Occupational Stress Relief

Occupational Stress Relief is not yoga but techniques used by yogis in meditation are useful for those who are in the circular route of becoming stressed daily due to interaction with others during employment.

While in meditation the idea is to get rid of the causes of stress. In occupational stress relief, the mission is the effectively manage the daily dose of anxiety which comes from the employment. There is some elimination involved but most of the stress cannot be eliminated and the part which can be is replaced instantly with floods of new circumstances which one has to manage, supervise or just plain tolerate.

To be clear, in yogic meditation, the person realizes the stress sources and distances himself/herself from these. This causes an immediate reduction and put the person at a distance from the harmful emotions and mental shuffling. For instance if someone is in a valley, and if there is flood, that will be stressed about the possibility of drowning. But if as soon as the threat is realized the person immediately heads to high ground, the threat will remain but it will not affect that particular climber.

A yogi is like a person who climbed to a high altitude where it is near impossible for there to be the threat of flood. Others who cannot ascend because they were hired to manage dams must remain as the waters rise. The most such a worker can do is to manage his/her stress.

The yogi can say that he is getting out of here but the worker even though he knows that the rising waters are a danger, must remain on low ground to checking this or that, filling records of the water level and so on. He must manage the stress not eliminate it.

There are two parts to this management. There is the time period before the day’s employment and the time after the day’s employment. The one to focus on is the one after the day’s employment.

Most people who have stressful jobs run away from the employment at the end of the day. However as they run some of the energy from the employment runs with them, which means that they do not escape from that energy. This produces a stress. To get a let-up on this, to get an easement, the person may do something recreational to divert the mind from rehashing the stress incidences. This provides some relief but only superficially. As the person becomes preoccupied with the recreational activity, the stress producing energy becomes like a sulky child who is neglected by his parents. That child harbors resentments which in time will catch up with the parents in the form of antisocial acts and rebellious attitude.

The habit of running away from the stress by doing something recreational does absolutely nothing to remove stress. This does not mean that recreational is not good. It is good but it does not directly target the stress.

Say for instance you are wounded. Then a physician gives you a medication which causes the pain to go away, that in no way deals with the wound. It does help to remove the painful feelings but that is about it. The wound and its treatment were put on hold for the time being.

Hence to deal with stress directly after work is important if you have the time and if you are strong enough to make yourself institute an after-work stress confrontation policy.

What should that be?

Mentally or otherwise detail the stress causes. Slam dunk those which are easy to eliminate because they were dealt with effectively during the day at work. In other words look those over in the mind and stamp them as completed assignments. If these arise again, then again mentally stamp them with a red marker as completed assignment and keep dong that anytime they arise.

Some stress causes may arise again and again because the energy they comprise carry a repetitive power. Hence you have no choice but to keep stamping them anytime they arise.

Once you deal with the completed issues. Go to the issues which may be completed with a day or week. Stamp these as being put on hold. If any of these arise, stamp or repeat-stamp those as items to completed in the future.

Some other stress-causes cannot be solved by you. They were brought to your attention by a colleague or by an offended person. Still you know that you are not in a position to deal with them and it does not matter if you could solve them or not, because they must be handled by someone else. When any of these arise in the mind, stamp them as out-of-my-jurisdiction. Stop the mind from investing energy in hashing over these. This action will cut emotional and mental funding for these incidences, thus conserving psychological energy.

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If one deals with a stress energy after the day’s work is completed, that will reduce the stress energy which is felt before the next day begins. However there is something one can do to monitor stress before going to work.

That would require some quiet time before leaving home for work. One should schedule fifteen or thirty minutes to have quiet time to inspect the mind environment and the emotional concerns before leaving for work. First inspect the mind to find domestic issues and other non-work related matters.

The mind condition before going to the main employment should be the best mental mood. This is due to being rested where the mind has a reserve of energy and is not depleted as it was after the previous day’s work.

The normal early morning procedure is to stay in bed to get every ounce of rest. Then rise, do body cleaning and dressing, quickly tend to domestic issues, hop in the car and drive to work.

This routine may be changed if one were to do at least fifteen minutes of quiet time. This time could be extracted from the resting time, so that if one sets an alarm for 5am, instead of snoozing for another 15 minutes, one rises but sits up in bed or goes to a comfortable couch, and indulges in some introspection quietly. This is really healthy for the mind