Bangalore-based HR professional, Preeyan, tells us how to handle work pressure, in the weekly column, exclusively in Different Truths.
Success does not come easy. And every successful professional will tell you that it is in the way they manage work pressure that raised them to be successful. We all witnessed Roger Federer create history a couple of weeks back. A 35-year-old, competing with people much younger to him and at their prime and yet falling short of the legend. And he has been proving this year-on-year competing in all major tournaments and coming up on top and staying in the top 10 ranking, this is because of his straightforward method of conditioning his mind, discipline, body, and strength. All this has seen him only improve and play the best game of his career this year though he turns 36 in August. This phenomenal legend is a true example of any professional, the way he handles pressure.
What is this pressure at work that we all talk about so much and even research on? To my mind, it is the fear of failure that creates this pressure. The ones who fail are the ones who did not manage this pressure building in the mind. At every corner we face this situation, we push ourselves with fear, this fear is good because it creates higher attention and focus but too much of it means that you are letting it outrun your strength and lead you to eventual failure.
We need to learn to channelise this fear to make it positive, and once we learn to do that we are in a position to manage our pressures. The key things that we need to keep in mind are our physical fitness, wisdom and our capability to think out of the box.
To start with physical fitness, this does not mean you have an athletic physical appearance, it means that you have a perfectly normal body with perfectly functioning organs. Take good care of yourself, pay attention to those small physical ailments bothering you so that it does not lead to a bigger concern. You need to do all it takes to keep your stamina up it can be any form of activities that are available to us. With a fear of being repetitive, I insist my readers consider your body as important as the most important thing in your life. Because if your body gives way, there is nothing more you will ever be able to do.
Wisdom, a word that is probably not understood right. To a layman, he thinks knowledge and experience 
mean that wisdom is developed. Wisdom is not what you know or understand, it’s about how and when you apply what you know and learned from experience. This will sound complex only for those who do not apply their mind to simple decisions. If you start to think of consequences of a decision you want to take, and then make an informed decision you will realise that you would have saved a lot. Many times in life, there will be situations when you will be forced to do something which you know will not work out right and you are forced to do that again, in such situations, either learn to say ‘no’ or do it in a different way and do not repeat what you did when you failed. Now that is being wise!
Wisdom is not about being careful all the time, taking no risks and not accepting challenges. These are some key things that will lead you to success. My suggestion is that you can take risks with things that you are capable of doing, you can challenge to do something better than what you have already accomplished. Those who do will always prepare for facing these and will have a backup plan to ensure that the task is accomplished. This time they spend on preparation is where their wisdom comes to play. Not always will a wise person succeed, but that person will never fail again doing the same thing.
Thinking out of the box, exploring options, open to try something new, open to learning something new, are all that makes us humans different from the rest of the beings in this world of ours. It is because some monkey thought out of the box that evolution made the modern man possible. We are capable of using every part of our brain to the optimum, to be able to make this possible. It is how you channel your thought and spend time that helps you with this. A wise person once told me that I should spend at least fifteen minutes a day thinking only about myself and fifteen minutes not thinking anything at all. When I asked why they said that it will help me in thinking out of the box and will help in problem-solving. I am still trying, and I realise now how difficult it is to follow that. It seems that in a day we can’t even spend half an hour ourselves. I do it whenever I can, if not anything else helps me relax. Now that’s what the whole discussion is about. This is where you start realising that little time for yourself in a day is very much required to ensure that we are able to soak in the pressure.
We feel this pressure at work because we see a problem as a problem and start to procrastinate on the issue, we are unable to visualise the solution with all the intrinsic details of the problem. My advice to such people is to take a break, just completely forget the problem. Step outside and look at the issue in a third person’s point of view and tell me what you see.
A healthy body, a healthy mind something we always learned as a proverb to follow. It is now you realise how true it is. Shape your mind to avoid stress and take wise decisions, you will not let the pressure get to your head.
Look at pressure as a good thing, you will easily overcome what has been an overbearing problem for you.
Take time for yourself and de-stress and have a lovely weekend.
Cheers!
©Preeyan Abraham
Photos from the Internet.
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