Threat Management - Stress From Work
Virtually everyone suffers from it. Since you have to have the job, since you need the money, you have to put up with your job and all the manure it piles on you. Here's some thoughts on how to deal with this stress and why it's important to look at the entire subject in a different way than some kind of usual advice on how you shouldn't let it bother you, you should be nice, you shouldn't get mad and just fill in some more meaningless and emasculating platitudes to obliterate any chance that the advice will actually help. I am not giving that kind of advice.
There are at least two basic origins causing stress from a job (and many more, but two will work here). The better of these: the people you work with are good, the supervisor/boss/management is fine, but the actual job itself is just plain tough. It's physically (or mentally, which is also a form of the physical) demanding and at a level that is wearing you out. The physical stress can make you old quickly. You know the cause of the stress and it can be solved but it takes a decision where neither choice will look very appealing. You can quit. Usually, not a choice, though I did this once with nothing in my future. I decided that working on an oil drilling rig was just more dirt, oil, cold and mud than I was going to deal with. It worked out, but just quitting is always risky. It is an option.
The other choice is you can get tougher. This hadn't occurred to me some years ago. I was unloading parts from a machine, so I spent the day lifting and carrying 80 pounds of parts about 30 feet to the assemblers in a manufacturing plant. Eighty pounds, three times a minute, ten hours a day. I was worn out. I finally went to a chiropractor to see if she could help with the pain in my back. Her advice was to work out and get stronger. I thought this was just stupid since I "worked out" all day, but I had access to some weights and started lifting on weekends, so I could at least say I tried it. And, it did help. After a couple months, 80 pounds felt a lot lighter at work. You can build yourself past the level where "it hurts" and end up with a positive result.
And now the worst cause of stress: the job is bad and management is worse. You're being told what to do by incompetent, egotistical people who really don't deserve to clean your boots. Since you probably can't quit, you can either further stress yourself by attempting to be nice and friendly to those idiots - not an option as far as I am concerned - or you can mentally distance yourself from the entire situation. This can be done. It takes mental fortitude and a very strong sense of self. You can't let the job or profession be any part of your self-identity. Take the entire job out of the real you. If not, the stress will keep consuming you and you won't be able to fully realize who you really are. Self-realization is a goal very much worth achieving, whatever is happening at work is not even worth considering.
Don't let clowns take control of you. Those in management, they are just sheep who think they have some importance in the herd because they get to stand on the backs of other sheep. Remember, though, that when they are standing on top of other sheep, they have their noses buried next to the scrotum of more sheep above them. Do you really want to be part of that?
When you reach "wolf" stature, you'll make all of the sheep nervous, even the ones who think they can tell you what to do. All they can really do is suggest - it's always your choice whether to listen or not. They will just know this, they will sense it. It will make you calm and relaxed. From your viewpoint, the entire situation ends up both funny and stupid. The terrified sheep trying to act like it can tell a wolf what to do. What ends up happening is the sheep start being nice to you, because you will scare them more than anything else in their weak, impotent lives as you are neither of those and the sheep know it.
Don't continue to be a sheep.
There are at least two basic origins causing stress from a job (and many more, but two will work here). The better of these: the people you work with are good, the supervisor/boss/management is fine, but the actual job itself is just plain tough. It's physically (or mentally, which is also a form of the physical) demanding and at a level that is wearing you out. The physical stress can make you old quickly. You know the cause of the stress and it can be solved but it takes a decision where neither choice will look very appealing. You can quit. Usually, not a choice, though I did this once with nothing in my future. I decided that working on an oil drilling rig was just more dirt, oil, cold and mud than I was going to deal with. It worked out, but just quitting is always risky. It is an option.
The other choice is you can get tougher. This hadn't occurred to me some years ago. I was unloading parts from a machine, so I spent the day lifting and carrying 80 pounds of parts about 30 feet to the assemblers in a manufacturing plant. Eighty pounds, three times a minute, ten hours a day. I was worn out. I finally went to a chiropractor to see if she could help with the pain in my back. Her advice was to work out and get stronger. I thought this was just stupid since I "worked out" all day, but I had access to some weights and started lifting on weekends, so I could at least say I tried it. And, it did help. After a couple months, 80 pounds felt a lot lighter at work. You can build yourself past the level where "it hurts" and end up with a positive result.
And now the worst cause of stress: the job is bad and management is worse. You're being told what to do by incompetent, egotistical people who really don't deserve to clean your boots. Since you probably can't quit, you can either further stress yourself by attempting to be nice and friendly to those idiots - not an option as far as I am concerned - or you can mentally distance yourself from the entire situation. This can be done. It takes mental fortitude and a very strong sense of self. You can't let the job or profession be any part of your self-identity. Take the entire job out of the real you. If not, the stress will keep consuming you and you won't be able to fully realize who you really are. Self-realization is a goal very much worth achieving, whatever is happening at work is not even worth considering.
Don't let clowns take control of you. Those in management, they are just sheep who think they have some importance in the herd because they get to stand on the backs of other sheep. Remember, though, that when they are standing on top of other sheep, they have their noses buried next to the scrotum of more sheep above them. Do you really want to be part of that?
When you reach "wolf" stature, you'll make all of the sheep nervous, even the ones who think they can tell you what to do. All they can really do is suggest - it's always your choice whether to listen or not. They will just know this, they will sense it. It will make you calm and relaxed. From your viewpoint, the entire situation ends up both funny and stupid. The terrified sheep trying to act like it can tell a wolf what to do. What ends up happening is the sheep start being nice to you, because you will scare them more than anything else in their weak, impotent lives as you are neither of those and the sheep know it.
Don't continue to be a sheep.
You left out one thing: the sheep will hate you for not being a sheep.
Great writing, reverend.
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Yep, they already hate me. Of course, I am heartbroken over that. Well, I will be heartbroken over it in a bit. Think I'll have a drink first.
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