6 anti-stress guidelines for managers

In today’s tough, dynamic, resource-tight and uncertain economy, a company (or organization) needs strong managers to lead its staff toward accomplishing business goals.

But managers are not only leaders. They are problem solvers, coordinators, communicators, cheerleaders, and planners as well. And managers don’t come in one-size-fits-all shapes or forms. Managers fulfill many roles and have many different responsibilities at each level of management within an organization.

When you take into full consideration the full array of duties, roles and responsibilities in leading and managing their units, departments, organizations, etc., one thing becomes clear: business managers and professionals have difficult jobs.

But how can a business manager and/or a professional handle this stressful environment? The “guidelines” set forth in this short article are based on various consulting experiences and sources and may be used when necessary to stimulate us mentally and morally, as a business manager or professional, and then resolve the situation troubling us, with specific actions and activities. Let’s take a look!

Guideline 1: Make the necessary changes with harmony and balance

• Put happiness in its right perspective in your life.

• If you must change in order to become happy, do it with a calm attitude and patience and by respecting your limits.

• You must remember to balance happiness to other things in life.

• Look inside you and you shall find harmony.

Guideline 2: Make silence your useful tool

• Put silence in your life.

• Be silent for at least 15 minutes every day.

• Use silence to envision happiness and success.

• Breathe slowly and get rid of all your negative thoughts.

• Disregard physical pain and functions of the body.

• Allow only pleasant, happy and harmonious thoughts to fill your mind.

Guideline 3: Preserve your-self

• It is absolutely necessary to take care of your-self in order to be happy.

• This does not mean to buy expensive goods, clothes, go on a consumer-spending journey, and generally buy a lot of things of no value to you.

• It means to eat healthy foods, rest daily, pray and exercise both body and mind.

• It means to respect your limits and to take care to fulfill your dreams.

Guideline 4: Love Nature

• Get up close and personal with the natural world.

• Ramble through forests, mountains, seas, and fields.

• Get an intensive, hands-on learning experience.

• Spend a day honing your identification skills for fauna and flora and discuss ecology, natural history, and plant lore, and the meanings of species’ common and scientific names with experts and members of ecology groups.

• Involve others in planting and watering plants and trees.

• Feed birds and provide them with small nests and water pedestals, full of water.
  

Guideline 5: Pray (meditate) daily

• The power of praying and meditation is tremendous.

• Praying guards you against angry and irresponsible acts.

• It lowers your egoism and self-centeredness.

• It clears you from bad and jealous thoughts and acts.

• It demolishes injustice.

• It makes you more respectable and pious.

• It frees you to think more clearly and wisely.

• It opens your soul to hope and compassion.

• It enables your heart and psyche to seek friendliness and love.

Guideline 6: How to handle failure

• If I feel depressed: I will sing.

• If I feel sad: I will tell a joke to myself to laugh, and I will read something cheerful and optimistic.

• If I feel uncertain about something: I will act in a more positive and powerful way.

• If I feel poor in material possessions: I will remind myself of the mental and spiritual goods I have.

• If I feel inferior: I will think something wonderful that I have done before.

• If I feel insignificant: I remember how precious I am to my own people and to my colleagues.

• If I feel too confident: I will remember my failures.

• If I feel too great: I will remember the moments of my shame.

• If I feel too proud: I will remember the times I was weak.

• If I am without a useful job to do: I will find something creative to complete.

• If I’m not disciplined in my thoughts and my actions: I will reduce my activities and put priorities.

• If I feel that people are abandoning me: I will find ways to act with love, friendship and optimism.

Guideline 7: How to handle difficult people

• 1. Take a short walk outside of the location where the conflict has taken place.

• 2. Make silence your useful tool.

• 3. Use silence to envision happiness and success.

• 4. Breathe slowly and get rid of all your negative thoughts.

• 5. Allow only pleasant, happy and harmonious thoughts to fill your mind.

• 6. Think out a solution as regards the difficult person and situation.

• 7. Work out a mutually-agreed solution with the person(s) involved.

Author’s Credit

John Kyriazoglou (jkyriazoglou@hotmail.com) is an International IT and Management Consultant who is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Internal Controls Magazine. Here you can take a look at some of Kyriazoglou’s pieces: Business Management Controls Blog. He is also the author of several books – among others the eBook “IT-Business Alignment” which can be downloaded for free on bookboon.com.

You can download the free eBook “IT-Business Alignment” right here.