How Work Problems Can Reduce Your Stress?

Life is stressful, and we humans try to do our best, bearing more than we can, and trying to hide our stress in many ways, but the stress still shows on us. We may always feel stressed in every situation, and this is due to our physiological nature: fight or flight. We have built a society around ourselves that rejects our evolutionary machinery. We are always in a constant state of feeling a little stressed, and then, when things get worse, our stress levels skyrocket. It is possible to reduce this mild stress by meditation, appreciation, community, and public awareness.

But in this article, we’re going to talk about the stress that doesn’t let you sleep at night, and wakes you up at 2am, disoriented, thinking you forgot to do something, only to realize that it’s not one thing, but your entire life situation that’s bothering you.

In essence, it’s the kind of stress that emerges anytime we make a life-changing decision, or when we don’t make a decision when we know we should. For adventurous people, this kind of stress can be a daily occurrence. Just how we can reduce low stress by practicing mindfulness meditation, there should be a way we can combat this kind of high stress, but how?

There are the three steps:

1. Try to solve the problem:

When we feel very stressed, it is usually due to a specific problem that has major effects on our lives. The first step to reducing stress is identifying this problem. It is surprising how much time people go without trying to determine what causes their stress, and what does not. How can we find a solution to a problem that we do not know we are facing?

High stress is an inevitable consequence of a life that is heading towards an unknown outcome that can end up in a great failure. Our anxious minds imagine every possible predicament in the future, causing us to worry about the course of our lives. Therefore, in order to outdo ourselves, we need to identify this stress, and then work to avoid it. Starting a profitable investment is exhausting, and starting any business is exhausting.

But since I started with companies with a variety of cash flows, I’m going to stick to what I know. Risking in running a full-time business usually leads to a lower income, which sometimes reaches zero. 

Although the income did not fall to zero, if we had a client or two from the start, it went down pretty low, and we worried about it. Then, as I mentioned before, the business took a lot longer than we expected to start making money and getting clients’ attention, but we’re still in the process of getting clients’ attention, and we’ll most likely always be.

That means my income was taking longer to rise to the level I was earning previously, which was very stressful, and made me wonder if the company was ever going to work, and think that I might have to leave San Francisco to a city with more affordable living costs.

It also forced me to reconsider my passion for business. I didn’t want to be the guy who couldn’t pay rent when all my friends were paying for houses, but deep down I knew the traditional job lifestyle wasn’t for me. I tried and didn’t like it.

Certainly, I could have stopped complaining and joined the ranks of the company, returning to the routine lifestyle. What was I to do? I ran into a real problem, as I risked running out of money before my business became successful. This problem caused me a lot of stress, however, I knew that the acute problem that was causing me great stress was my solvency.

2. Start from the end:

When you face a stressful problem, it is usually something you worry about in the future. Will I be broke? If this is the case, it is also best to clearly define your goal as well as your problem. It is often the pursuit of the same goals that brings up the problem in the first place. Therefore, it is important to know whether you are heading towards your goal or not.

If you are heading towards your goal, it may be possible to avoid the problem. Be honest with yourself for your own sake. Do not stop your pursuit only because of an obstacle in your way. However, this does not change how necessary it is to define your goal. Define your ideal life, and what it looks like. What will make your life successful, in your opinion? The answer is your goals, and that’s when the problems start.

The first problem is being brave to actually pursue your goals and write your own script. This is easy. Let’s assume that we have passed this struggle. On the journey to achieve your goal, you will definitely encounter problems that were not visible at first. What are those problems?

You have to define them. Start thinking of them as situations or puzzles to be solved. Some of them will be simple and easily avoidable, while others will be complex and are reasons for failure.

For me, simple problems were things like not knowing how to make a sales call, or missing co-workers, and these problems have simple solutions. All I had to do was rent a joint working space, make more sales calls in a short while paying a little attention, and that’s it.

But the complex problems were much more difficult, like: How will my company succeed? How can I afford to live in San Francisco? These are potentially life-changing problems, but problems – regardless of size, by definition – have solutions. All you have to do is find this solution.

The shrinking of my savings:

If we take my example again, I was worried that my financial savings would shrink before our company was able to cover them, and the situation consisted of two problems: First, how can I increase my savings to give myself more time? And second, what steps do I need to take to build a successful company? 

The first problem was easier to solve than expected, as I write paid financial articles for Investopedia, and if I treat it like a side job, I can increase my income well. When I couldn’t focus on it for hours, my first goal was to run a successful company. The side job, along with my savings, investments, and retirement, gave me room for one year, assuming I worked on my company as a full-time business, and that also assuming that my company was not making profit. I was actually preparing for the worst.

But due to believing in myself, I knew that one year was a very careful period, which made sense as a financier because of my experience in commerce. I was able to solve the first problem, as I had a year to solve the second problem, which would automatically solve the first. How can we build a profitable company? By that, I started from the end point.

3. Understand complex results:

I discovered very early on that what I was doing to build my company was producing the required results, the only problem was that the sales cycle was taking longer than expected, but as long as the sales cycle was less than a year, which it was, and I could contract with more than one client, which I could, I would probably have a successful business, and also unlimited financial returns before the money ran out.

That means I had to keep making those sales calls, keep taking the rejection, keep learning, try to get better sales calls, contract with clients, and then deliver value. Do I admit I didn't fix the problem in that time? Yes, I think so. I set a deadline and a road map, but not an immediate solution. But did it reduce my stress and make me feel in control? It definitely reduced my stress.

When you're under extreme stress, figure out the problem, identify the limitations, and work your way up. What you can do today will give you a quick start tomorrow, which will make you more successful on day three, and so on until you achieve your goal.