How to deal with stress

Dealing with your own stress

Owner-managers and self-employed people need to learn to identify the signs of their own stress and take steps to tackle it.

Signs that you might be experiencing stress yourself could include:

• poor judgement and indecisiveness
• finding it difficult to concentrate
• avoiding difficult situations
• feeling irritable, aggressive or depressed, losing your sense of humour
• physical symptoms such as breathlessness, headaches, chest pains, nausea, sleeplessness, high blood pressure and constant tiredness

Stress can be magnified if you work alone. Because you have no one to confide in, you can easily get things out of proportion.

This can be a particular problem for owner-managers who don't have the support of a management team. Employees expect the managing director to know what to do in a given situation, when in fact you may need help yourself.

In addition, business owners often have significant capital invested in the business, putting added pressure on key decisions.

One way of dealing with this is to network with people running businesses of a similar size to talk through each other's problems.

You might even bring in a mentor to help you cope with the pressures of running your business.

If you are suffering from stress, you should try to:

• identify and tackle the underlying causes
• practice relaxation techniques
• improve your diet and cut back where appropriate on smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption
• take regular exercise
• avoid regularly working long hours if at all possible
• make sure you take holidays

You can learn about managing your own stress levels on the Mind website. You can also read about coping with stress on the Mental Health Foundation website.

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• Why tackling stress in your business is important
• Common causes of stress at work
• Assess whether stress is a problem for your business
• Identify signs of stress in employees
• Tackle the causes of workplace stress
• External causes of stress
• Stress-management training and counselling
• Dealing with your own stress
• Here's how we tackle stress to create a healthier working environment

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