My dear friends,
On 21st June’2015 first International Yoga day was celebrated world over. In New Delhi, Rajpath historically became Yogpath; 35,000 people doing Yoga for 35-minutes in unison! Yoga besides several benefits is known as stress reliever. In today’s world, societies, communities and even individuals are predisposed to stress.
While appearing for your final examination and during your placement interviews, you might have been somewhat stressed facing anxiety. Once you join your jobs, you face another kind of stress. Let us be prepared for it with a welcoming mind. Stress is inevitable, we should learn how to handle it. Let us see what kinds of stress we face in life?
# 1 Time related Stress
Foremost reason for day-to-day stress is time related. Whether it is reporting time, meeting time, time line for a business proposal, date of examination; it all creates stress. The solution lies in registering preponed time-lines and calendars in your mind. If someone says the meeting time is 10 am it should register as 9.45 am. If you are told that your examination is starting from 25th March it should register as 24th March. It is little difficult to practice but once you train your mind, you will win the world.
If you ask me to hold a glass of water for 5-minutes, I may do it but if you ask me to hold it for 5-hours, I may collapse. Similarly, if we have to carry a small stress for few minutes, it would not be an issue but if we have to carry it through for hours together, we may breakdown. It is not just the load that matters but also the time span. That is why it is said “Don’t carry office to home”.
Suppose you get a nasty letter or a mail from your boss or your important client. Unless you give a befitting reply it weighs heavy on your mind. Unless you blast out, you remain stressed. But if you do that, your relations are bound to spoil. What is the solution then? The solution is that you type out a befitting reply immediately with all your reactions, but don’t mail it (for 3-days). Your reply on 3rd day would be befitting as well as polite.
# 2 Job related Stress
In your job you will face several kinds of stress situations. You may not have been given appropriate responsibility. You may not have been rated justifiably. Someone is playing politics against you. What are the remedies? First of all look at these issues 5 or 10 years hence. They would appear trivial. At present, without any fear or without losing temper seek justice. And always believe that “No job is small or big, it is the way in which you do, makes it small or big”.
# 3 Center of Gravity of Stress
Once a villager entered a train and occupied a seat but kept carrying a trunk on his head. Someone asked “why don’t you keep it aside?” He answered innocently “it is my load, I have to carry it on my head. Poor man didn’t know he could shift the CG of the load from his head during the journey. Same way many of us carry loads. In our times, I used to see people worrying continuously “My daughter is of marriageable age, I have to find a suitable match” Instead they could have made a list of 10-trusted friends and sought their help OR sat down on newspaper or internet to explore, thus shifting CG of the continuing load at least for some time.
# 4 Prioritization and Homework
If you work on “First come First” basis i.e. “First paper First”, “First telephone First” or “First visitor First”, your priorities are being dictated by others. End of the day, you get stressed because you missed out the most important task of the day.
A 4-Quadrant segregation of your jobs makes your life easy and stress-reduced. They are: 1. Urgent and Important, 2. Urgent but not important (Boss wants it today though it is not significant), 3. Important but not urgent (Your computer has crashed and is required to be fixed, but you are surrounded by your clients) and 4. Not important and not urgent. Quadrant 1 & 4 are straight forward, while all the judgement and acumen are required in handling Quadrant 2 & 3.
Another solution is prior home-work. You all know that I write a monthly letter to all of you on some theme punctuating it on 1st of every month. Until a few months ago, I used to get stressed a bit from 25th of the previous month thinking what should be appropriate theme, what examples should I use etc. etc. I decided to do some extra home-work and prepare a couple of letters in advance AND now I remain in peace on 1st of every month.
# 5 Stress Related Diseases
There are “n” number of diseases originating from stress starting from diabetes to pelvic pain syndromes. I recently saw a book “A headache in the Pelvis” by Dr David Wise and Dr Anderson of Stanford University. They have wonderfully done the root cause analysis. If you watch out a dog or a monkey in panic, you will find that he bends his tail inside his legs causing compression of pelvic muscles. During pleasure or at rest he vibrates his tail relieving all the stress from his pelvic muscles as well as his back bone. In fact most of the animals do this.
Man unfortunately lost his tail during evolution, but his inner structure and muscles are same. In panic or tension or anxiety his muscles compress and chronic constriction creates reduced blood flow, pain triggers and an inhospitable environment for the nerves and blood vessels. If Homo sapiens had tails to release their compression during leisure and relieve their back bones containing 1-billion neurons (nerve cells that carry impulses), there would be no suffering from neuralgic pains to millions and millions.
# 6 Yoga & Pranayama
Yoga is helpful in relieving the stress from the body as well as mind. Yogic exercises like “Butterfly” help you to relieve some of your pelvic stress. Deep breathing exercises such as “Anulom-Vilom” are useful in cleansing our system. It is inhaling from left nostril as deep as you can and then exhaling from the right nostril taking twice the time and vice versa. Do it at least 10-times/cycles in the morning. We never use our lungs fully.
It is like this. If I offer you a glass of water to drink, you consume some of it, and tomorrow when we meet I mix some more water and again offer you to drink. I never clear the glass completely. This is how we breathe always leaving some contaminated residual air inside. Only through deep breathing, we can clean and purify our own self and feel fresh. A 35-minute package of exercises, asana, pranayama and meditation in the morning can change our life!
May you all lead a stress-managed and healthy life to its full potential !!! May God bless you.
Satyamev Jayate !!!
Best wishes and Regards,
BE(Hons), M.Tech., Ph.D., CBI-Scholar, D.Engg. (Calif.), FNAE, Hon.D.WRE (USA)
Chairman Emeritus, Great Lakes, Gurgaon, NCR, New Delhi, INDIA
Former Director General (NPTI & CPRI / REL), Ex. Director (REC) / Executive Director (IREDA)
No job is small or big, the way in which you do, makes it small or big (c)
Great Lakes Institute of Management 