What is stress?
Stress is a state of mental or emotional, or physical strain or tension. It results from adverse or demanding circumstances. It can come from any event or thought that makes us feel frustrated, angry, nervous or overwhelmed, or overburdened.
Stress is a reaction, our body’s reaction to a challenge or demand. However, stress can be positive. Sudden stress that helps us avoid danger or meet a deadline is positive stress. If stress lasts for a long time, it harms our mental health, physical health, and ultimately, performance.
However, how stressful one’s life is will depend on the four attributes of that person. These are
- Faith or belief – some faith or belief can cause stress in life, or others can help avoid stress.
- Skills – lack of skills can cause stress. Because it may lead to misunderstanding or poor performance. As a result, we can be stressed out. We also need skills to manage stress coming from other attributes.
- Attitude- competitive or negative attitude can make life stressful.
- Lifestyle – Unhealthy eating habits, sleeping habits, and entertainment and relaxation can cause stress.
Like other physical or mental aspects, Stress is a normal feeling. Based on the duration, there are two main types of stress:
- Acute stress: Sudden event causes stress for a short period and goes away quickly. Usually, an accident or unexpected incident causes such stress. Such stresses are usually positive. If we had to slam on the brakes while driving a car, have a fight or argument with our partner, or ski down a steep slope, acute stress happens. However, such stress helps us manage dangerous situations. It can also occur when we do new or exciting things in life or experiments in the laboratory. We all have acute stress almost daily.
- Chronic stress: Stress that goes on for weeks or months is considered chronic stress. We might have chronic stress if we have money problems, an unhappy marriage, trouble at work or repeated failure in experiments, or rejection of papers. People can become so used to chronic stress that they may not realize it is a problem. If we don’t have the skills to manage stress, it may lead to health problems and poor performance.
How do we respond to stress?
Hormones help us to respond to stress. Our body release hormones in response to stress. As a result, our brain becomes more alert, muscles tense, and pulse increases. In the short term, these responses are good. They prompt us to handle the event/ incident/accident/ situation causing stress. We take action and handle the moments.
Stress becomes harmful if it lasts long and becomes chronic. Chronic stress is harmful both physically and mentally. If we are going through chronic stress, our body stays alert, even though there is no immediate danger.
If not managed or addressed, stresses become chronic; then Over time, the following health issues might develop health:
- Raised blood pressure
- Heart disease
- Diabetes
- Overeating and obesity
- Anxiety and depression
- Skin problems acne or eczema
- Sexual problems
- Menstrual problems
Chronic stress can make preexisting health issues, such as heart disease and diabetes worse.
How do we understand that going through chronic stress?
Often people don’t understand that they are going through chronic stress. However, stress can cause many types of physical and emotional symptoms. From the frequent presence of two or more of these symptoms, chronic stress may be doubted:
- Forgetfulness
- Headaches, now and then
- Lack of energy or focus
- Sexual problems
- Stiff jaw or neck
- Tiredness
- Difficulty in sleeping or sleeping too much
- Upset stomach, diarrhea without infection or apparent reason.
- Frequent urination
- Use of alcohol or drugs to relax
- Weight loss or gain
Source of stress for Academics and Researchers
- Overwhelming work pressure,
- Long working hours
- Discrimination, and
- Widespread bullying and
- Harassment
- Lack of job security
contribute to “shocking” stress levels and mental health problems among scientists.
Other sources of stress are the pressure from competition with time and colleagues to
- Secure grants
- Spit out publications
- Cut corners(economize) in laboratory experiments or research projects and personal or family life.
These were revealed from an online survey open to all researchers, which was answered by around4,300 people across career stages and disciplines and from 87 countries.
As academics and researchers are highly stressed professionals, they must learn stress management and thus improve life, living, and performance.
A) Stress Prevention
1. Faith or belief: Faith or belief can prevent stress. For those who believe in destiny or fate, it might help them prevent stress. For example, even after putting best effort, one might not get a grant or job. Those who believe in fate or destiny can easily accept this failure or rejection and feel no pressure. On the other hand, for those who don’t believe in fate or destiny, such failure or rejection might cause stress for quite some time.
2. Attitudes: Positive, negative, and neutral attitudes have already been discussed in the understanding of leadership. Here we discuss how attitude can prevent getting stressed.
a) Positive attitude: Having a positive attitude helps us prevent stress. Whatever bad or dire a situation or incident can be, there is some positive side. If we have the habit or attitude to look at this positive side or opportunity, whatever small it might be, it prevents being stressed from the bad situations or events or happenings. If we don’t have a positive attitude, we have to work hard to get it. When something appears, bad happens to us; we easily find the harmful or damaging side of the incident. We have to force ourselves to find some opportunity from the bad happening and focus on it. Initially, this might be difficult, but a few forced trials might bring a positive attitude in us. A neutral attitude, in other words, indifference sometimes, might prevent stress build up.
b)Forgiving attitude: People around us do wrong to us, be it family members, colleagues, or others. If we cannot forgive their wrongdoings, it causes stress in us. So forgiving attitude is important for stress management.
c)Eliminating competitive attitude – If someone has a competitive attitude and considers everyone around him as a competitor, he will certainly feel stressed from the conscious or subconscious competition with colleagues, friends, neighbors, and everyone. This competitive attitude certainly creates stress. Eliminating a competitive attitude will eliminate stress.
d) Win-win thinking – Win-lose thinking or fear of lose-win thinking causes stress. But we can think win-win, that is, another party nor I will be a loser, such thinking, such attitude can prevent stress. Such thinking prevents stress in a few ways. Such thinking improves the relationship with people around us, and good relationships with people prevent stress. Such thinking makes conflict resolution easy. Such thinking also prevents future conflict that might arise from win-loss thinking.
e)Accepting limitations – As humans, we have limitations. Accepting those limitations prevent stress. For example, we cannot change the past; we cannot change many other things. Many things are beyond our control. If we accept these realities easily, then we can prevent stress.
3. Skills: For stress prevention, we need different skills. The better skills one has, the better one can do work or get it done by others. This can prevent stress. Every skill can help us to prevent stress development. Here we describe a few very important skills:
a)Saying no – Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. This is the most important thing that needs to be done to prevent stress. We usually become overloaded with commitments and work as we fail to say no when we are ordered or offered to do something or approached to make commitments. We have to prevent saying YES instantly.
When we get any offer, we should take the time to accept it. Instead of saying yes instantly, we have to ask for time to make a decision. If we feel that we don’t want to be involved, then we have to find a valid reason or even an excuse to say no. We can say I would love to do that work, join you at that time, but I have prescheduled work, or I am not available at that time.
This simple strategy to say NO when you don’t want or feel to say Yes can prevent stress building. There is a book, “Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No,” written by Herbert Fensterheim. It can help to acquire this skill.
b) Communication skills
Stress can develop from misunderstanding. Misunderstanding happens when communication skill is weak, and communication is poor. The essence of communication is “first to understand and then to be understood.”. To understand others better, we have to listen well. So we need effective listening skills.
Then comes to be understood. For this, we have to have the ability to convey our message so that people around us understand us well. For this, messages have to have 7 Cs: clear, concise, concrete, correct, coherent, complete, and courteous.
c) Delegation skill – If we have the mindset and skills for delegation, we will not be overwhelmed by many works. It is a bad habit doing all the work self. If we don’t delegate work to the responsible person or cannot delegate properly, we will be stressed. The better one in delegating work to others, the less workload he has, thus less stress. If we don’t know how to delegate work to the right person at the right time with the right terms and conditions, then the work will not be completed timely and properly, and it will cause stress. But if we have the skill of delegation, on the one hand, we can reduce our workload; on the other hand, we can prevent stress from happening from bad delegation.
B) Stress Dispersion –
Sometimes we can avoid stress development. For example, we feel stressed when we see many works to do within a short period. In such a case, dispersing stress can be a good strategy. In other words, preparing a to-do list with a timetable can help the dispersion of stress. A To-Do list without a timeframe might overwhelm us with stress. If we have a list of 12 tasks for a day, we might feel huge pressure that we have to do so much work today. But if we have a timetable that works, one will be done at 7 am, that work two will be done at 8 AM, and ten will be done at 5 PM, then we will feel pressure only for that work that is just ahead of us, now or next hour. We will not feel pressure at 11 Am for the work at 5 PM or all other work now. On the other hand, we can also focus on the work at hand. This also improves the quality of work.
If we have stress from many tasks on a single day, week or month, then making a plan or timetable to do the work, we can disperse the pressure or stress.
If we don’t have a timetable, then we will feel the concentrated pressure every moment or every day. Making a time-specific written plan is essential in dispersing stress
C) Stress Release
This applies to small or acute, or light stress. We should not neglect such stress and allow it to accumulate it. Rather we should release such stress as soon as possible. One example is frequently used for stress. That is a glass of water. It is not stressful to hold on to a glass of water. But if one holds a glass of water for five minutes, it becomes stressful, 10 minutes more stressful, 30 minutes very stressful, and 60 minutes highly stressful. A person might fall on the floor if forced to hold on to a glass of water for 24 hours.’
Similarly, some tasks are as light as a glass of water and not that urgent or important. Still, they create some stress in our subconscious minds. For example, you have to send a PDF file to someone or answer an email or send an email to someone. It is not urgent and can be sent any time of the week. If we decide to send it at the end of the week, that slight stress will be there for a long time and impact our health. If we have several such slight stresses, then the impact will be manyfold on our health and thus on performance. But we can release each of such stress by investing one or two minutes or five. We can build habits of such stress release either in the morning or night before sleep. Daily 15-30 min, 3-4 days a week depending on a requirement, can be allocated for such stress release by doing activities that can be done within 5 minutes without much research or thinking or work.
Completing work before the deadline:
Another way of stress release can be completing work before the deadline, as early as possible. If we leave any work to be done at the last moment, hidden stress works on us. But if we work and finish the work earlier, stress is released, and we feel relaxed. Submitting a report or manuscript, grant application, or finishing an experiment as soon as possible, not waiting for the last moment or day of the deadline, is a great way to release stress.
D) Distressing
a)Hobbies – Taking breaks and indulging in hobbies can help in distressing. You know your hobby- gardening, hiking/traveling/ acting/writing or whatever it is, can help distressing.
b)Physical activities– regular physical activity, at least 30 minutes daily exercise, five days a week helps a lot.
c)Breathing exercise – We start breathing when we are in the uterus of our mother and do it spontaneously. Hence we hardly think about learning effective breathing techniques. Many breathing techniques can help you relax and sleep well. Particularly mention-worthy is 4-7-8 breathing techniques. Many leadership books have mentioned the importance of breathing and this breathing technique. Briefly, there are three steps in this technique: 1. Breath in through your nose for 4 seconds, 2. Hold the breath for 7 seconds and then 3. Breath out through mouth slowly over 8 seconds. You can practice it any time, in any posture, sitting, standing, or lying on the bed, before sleep for deep sleep, or just after waking up from sleep. One check list whether you are doing it properly or not is to check whether your stomach is expanding when you are breathing in.
This breathing exercise can help us have a deep sleep and thus relieve us from stress. It can be done any time if we are stressed being under pressure of work, giving long lectures in the class room or debating and discussing.
d)Prayer or meditation
Based on your religious belief, joining regular prayer or meditation helps stress management.
e) Complete detachment from work– Take a complete break from research or work once a week. If not possible, then once a quarter or once a month. On this day, close all ways that might connect with work.
E) Healthy Lifestyle –
Lifestyle affects our life from all sides. If someone has a healthy lifestyle, it prevents stress and helps manage unavoidable stress.
a)Healthy Eating: Start the day with the right breakfast to keep energy up from the day’s begging. Maintain that energy and mind clear with balanced, nutritious meals throughout the day. Well-nourished bodies are better prepared to cope with stress, so be mindful of what you eat. A well-nourished body also prevents infectious and non-infectious disease and save money, reducing stress from suffering from diseases and spending money.
b)Minimize caffeine and sugar: High caffeine and sugar provide temporary relief but, in the long run, bring stress from diseases and sleeplessness. By reducing the amount of coffee, soft drinks, chocolate, and sugar snacks in your diet, you’ll feel more relaxed, and you’ll sleep better.
c)Drinking habit: Don’t drink alcohol, smoke, or take drugs. Self-medicating with alcohol or drugs may provide an easy and temporary escape from stress, but the relief is only temporary.
e)Discipline: Disciplined life can help prevent stress. Sleeping and waking up from sleep at a particular time are essential for a disciplined life. We all know that Early to bed and early to rise to make men healthy, wealthy, and wise. And healthy, wealthy, and wise men will certainly be less stressed.
f)Controlled use of Social media
Excessive Social media engagement causes stress, physical and mental stress. So social
media use must be controlled. Improving social media use skills might help to control social media use and simultaneously make desired network and impact.
g) Passive Income- Income and expenditure control
Academics and Researchers are not rich people. Lack of enough money for personal and family life causes hidden stress. If our financial intelligence is not good enough to run us months well with our income, then taking professional help from personal financial consultants might help us manage our expenditure. Lack of job security also causes stress. Having a passive income can bring some relief, such as royalty from the book(s), and earning from hobbies.
References
- https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003211.htm#:~:text=Stress%20is%20a%20feeling%20of,danger%20or%20meet%20a%20deadline.
- Don’t Say yes when you want to say NO, – Herbert Fensterheim
- Stress, anxiety, harassment: huge survey reveals pressures of scientists’ working lives https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00101-9