Should You Quit?
We spend more than half our awaken day at work, so it should come as no surprise that our work can impact our health. Simply put, depending on how you feel about our work, it can either give you a sense of accomplishment with great work life balance or excessive stress. Excessive continuous stress is one of the leading causes for both mental and physical health issues.
How Your Work Affects Your Health and Well-being
Let’s look at a couple examples to really explain how your work is impacting you. Imagine that you are currently working at a company who is going through some difficult times. Management has decided to let go of a few people and hire some new managers. Instead of replacing all the people they let go they decided to double your workload. On top of that your new manager is more demanding and set the expectation that your performance needs to be better than before otherwise the company may need to do more cuts. How do you think you would feel in this situation? If you have ever dreaded going to your job, I am sure you can relate.
Now let’s look at the opposite situation. Imagine that you just started going to work for a new company. The projects you work on are interesting, and the people you work with are amazing. Yes, some days or weeks can be stressful, but this is usually short lived. On top of that you constantly feel recognized for your work and have been told on several occasions that you would be perfect for a promotion.
Let’s contrast this with the previous example. How differently do you feel? Which environment would you want to work in? I bet it’s the second one and its for one reason, the second company makes you feel good while the first one doesn’t. Even as I write about the first example, I could feel my body getting more anxiety, so just imagine living it everyday. If this is how you feel now, we might have some suggestions that can help.
How do I know if it’s the job or just me?
We are going to write an entire article on this this question but here is the short answer. Spend the next week and start documenting your internal dialog in a journal. This is very important because you need to pay attention to what you are thinking. Look for trends. If you notice that you keep focusing on past events instead of letting go, or if you are imagining things that haven’t happened as if they happened, then likely your mindset needs to change.
Sometimes what can happen is that we let our minds go on auto pilot. Have you ever imagined an argument with a co-worker that didn’t even happen? Or have you ever made assumptions about what others are thinking about you? Depending on your mindset, you could be focusing more on the negatives instead of the positives. How can you expect to feel positive about your work when you are focusing on negatives? What we focus on becomes our reality.
Now, with this exercise you may find that people at your work are truly not inline with who you want to be. Maybe you start off positive but after continuous dialogs with co-workers you become more negative. This would be a strong sign that there is a problem with the work environment.
What do the experts have too say?
A study published on Emerald.com shows that after “controlling for a broad selection of personal and work attributes, working conditions are associated with more work-related health problems – both physical and mental”. The study also found that we may not all be impacted equally. They pointed to some evidence showing the differences between how men and women were impacted.
Another article by Betterhealth found that “Work-related problems can affect our physical, emotional and mental health. Common issues include job dissatisfaction, workplace injury, stress, discrimination and bullying, violence, accidental death and retirement”. - Betterhealth
Your environment affects your health!
So how can you reduce stress at work?
Change the Environment That You Work In
Depending on the type of work you have, you may be able to change the environment. If you work around a desk this could mean listening to up-tempo music, or ambient noise such as relaxing waves. Get some motivational desk artwork the reminds you why your grinding. If you work at any other type of job, look for opportunities to distress. This could be finding other positive coworkers which can help to shift your mindset, taking 5 minutes to practice deep breathing, or going for a 5 min walk.
Meditate Before You Go to Work
The benefits of mediation are well documented. In short, meditation has been shown to increase serotonin which leads to more joy. It can also help to slow the aging process, some claim that it can even reverse some aging. And, it can help to reduce stress. When you meditate before work you will feel the benefits hours after you complete the meditation. While you will still have problems and stress at work, the way you few this stress will change. Essentially, your mindset will change and instead of focusing on the negatives you will begin to focus on the positives.
Find a New Job
This of course is the easiest to recommend and hardest to execute. Yes, of course if the job is causing you excessive stress you should leave. It’s hard to leave because at times it can be hard to find a job. There is also the fear of the unknown. Finding a new job and eventually working at a new company often leads to so much uncertainty that we often choose to stick with what we know vs what we don’t. But it has been my personal experience that once you have the right mindset, the new job and company will always be better. If we are to get something we don’t have, we must do something we have never done.
Now there is one big caveat here. Mindset is everything. If the cause of the issues at work was related to your mindset, then finding a new job will not help. You must first change your mindset before you can find a new job. Otherwise, you will bring your old mindset to your new job and see no change. That’s why this is the 3rd option. The first two are designed to help change your mindset so that when you try to Find a New Job, you will truly get what you are asking for.
Changing your mindset about your work can help to improve your health
As we have discussed, work can have a major impact on our health. However, its not just the work, but how we feel about our work. By simply shifting your mindset about work you can start to shift your health. Now, there are times when the right answer is that you need to change you job or company. But before you do that you first need to have the right mindset otherwise you will bring your old mindset to the new workplace.
If you want to get more tips as to how you can improve your mindset, subscribe to our newsletter too be the first to be notified for all our new articles.