Stress Management Talk For STelcomms

Stress Management Talk For STelcomms

As if the world is not stressed enough with constant demands on our time and attention, we also have to contend with people. Pause and think and we will realize nine out of ten times, it’s not the circumstances that cause us undue stress, it’s the people.

If your boss favours your colleague over you, will it not be futile regardless of how hard you work as you know you can never unseat the blue-eyed boy or girl? If your parent favours a certain gender over the other, will it not be saddened for you to learn that you are not the apple of the eye?

Life is never fair, just like how we stretch out our five fingers and realize they can never be of equal length.

Very often, it’s the feeling that we create within us. Many of us worry too much and sweat the really small stuff. Just like all the other perfectionists, we get ourselves ready, aim, then fire. But it is precisely this mindset that we have long been taught that is causing us stress.

Life in this new millennium is not about ready, aim, fire. Rather, it is about ready, fire, aim. Lest you scratch your head and ponder aloud, let me explain.

In our bid to get everything right, while waiting for the right winds to blow in our direction, we fail to notice that some minor shifts in the original situation. That is aiming and aiming. If in the worse situation, our best laid plans go astray, we will still be aiming and aiming. Then when will we ever have the chance to fire?

Conversely, if we get ourselves ready and fire when our confidence is high enough, we can always readjust the firing direction and aim again thereafter. But that fire shot would have done enough damage to the enemy and knocked him off his pedestal.

I don’t ready, aim, fire as that’s old school. Rather, I ready, fire, aim. Many of us hesitate to take action because we are forever in the aiming stage. And that’s causing us unnecessary stress.

Interestingly, one participant asked me today after the stress management talk at STelcomms (a subsidiary of ST Electronics) if I felt stressed. Well, everyone feels stressed. It’s about how one manages it. Doing different workshops and talks and being able to switch efficiently from one to another involves a delft sense of balance and creativity. So too after learning from my minders that no photographs were allowed in the room. And we could only watch with astonished looks when the HR staff herself went clicking away…What could we do except to smile to ourselves and console ourselves that we have plenty others in the photo vault. And at least we managed to take one before we were told not to…:p

Stressed? What stress?

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