6 Steps for Reducing Economic Anxiety in Your Office: How to Reduce Absenteeism

“You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it
” Albert Einstein

According to the American Psychological Association 75% of Americans experience symptoms related to stress in a given month, 77% experience physical symptoms, and 73% experience psychological symptoms.

About half of Americans (48%) feel that their stress has increased over the past five years and 75% of those surveyed say Money and work are the leading causes of stress.

One million people were asked how they feel about what is going on with the economy in a recent CNN survey. The consensus? People are mad! Our economic woes are off the charts-soaring stress levels and angry feelings find many of our staff members walking around like time bombs. The human body can only adapt to so much stress before something blows, and racking your brain to find a solution rarely works.

Here’s Six Whole Body Tips to teach your staff to reduce economic stress or help them with any other challenge they may be facing.

1) Stop Over thinking! Letting your mind take you through a house of horrors can make you more anxious and push you into blind action that turns scary fiction into fact.

2) Scan your Body. Detect and release tension in your body from head to toe. Take a few moments throughout the day to check in and notice what your body is telling you. Are you breathing rapidly, tensing your body, or gripping the phone, steering wheel, or computer mouse like there is no tomorrow?

3) Breathe Consciously. Instantly calm your anxiety and gain focus through conscious breathing. Taking five full deep breaths-in through your nose and out through your mouth-will slow your breathing and instantly reduce anxiety. Deep breathing also helps you disengage from fearful, catastrophic thinking.

4) Move Your Body. Exercise of any form will circulate energy throughout your whole body and give you a break from obsessive mental activity while releasing built up tension.

5) Communicate. Tell someone what you are feeling. Get your concerns off your chest and ask for support from a manager, friends, family or a professional coach or counselor. Holding your fears inside builds anxiety to proportions that can make you sick, depressed or immobilized. In this case, silence in NOT golden.

6. Get Innovative. Think out of the box. Make a list of proactive steps you can take to improve your life and broaden your skills.

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