Category: Stress Management

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Dealing with Environmental Stress at the Computer

100 % Natural

Dealing with Environmental Stress at the Computer

An increasing number of people are quitting the office job and discovering the
joys of being your own boss in your own time in your own home with your own
lunch breaks. Whether these people are entrepreneurs building an e-commerce Web
the site, investors pitting their financial acumen against various short-term
trading and day-trading opportunities, freelancers doing what they love to do
and getting paid for it, or enterprising individuals playing the role of the
middleman in online auction sites such as eBay, the growth in the number of
stay-at-home workers are staggering. But with high numbers comes high
competition. With high competition comes high risks for losses. And with high
risks for losses comes from high levels of stress.

Working from home is not as carefree as it may at first appear. Numerous
individuals have walked out of the office environment, bravely charting new
territory in the realm of the pajama people, only to find themselves back in
the office within a matter of months. There is always going to be a certain
amount of pressure when it comes to taking charge of your own financial destiny and severing your ties to the 9-to-5 rat race. The good news is that there are many steps you can take to avert common pressure cookers.

Eye Vision System

Let us start with the basics, the things many readers will have already been
exposed to in that admittedly boring occupational-health-and-safety (OH&S)
modules that form the foundation of many company inductions these days.

After all, a tension-filled body results in a tension-filled mind, and you would be
getting off to a terrible start by neglecting the comfort requirements of your
body. Do not worry — you will not be forking out money for an ergonomic
keyboard or for one of those bizarre kneeling-posture chairs. Our advice will
be moderate and easy on the wallet.

Many guides on office ergonomics are riddled with impractical lists of overly
precise lengths and angles. One would pretty much need a ruler, protractor,
and plumb line for making the recommended adjustments. We will take a far more pragmatic approach. Common sense is the order of the day. For instance, it would not take you long to discover that a computer mouse situated near and on the same level as the keyboard is more comfortable to use than one that is not. Likewise, sitting deep into a chair with your back well supported and your feet flat on the floor is less taxing on your body that is spending long periods in a crooked position. The basic guideline to follow is to listen to your body.

Some people tolerate high levels of ambient noise, whereas other people are
vexed by a pin drop. Maintaining a noise level that is suitable for you aids
your concentration and calms your mood. Oil or replace noisy computer case and CPU fans. If you are unfortunate enough to be living in a neighborhood that is undergoing building work or that has one too many barking dogs, consider purchasing a set of soundproof headphones. On the other hand, some people simply cannot work in complete silence and find that playing background music or turning on the television helps a lot, conventional study advice be damned!

Environmental factors

Temperature and humidity are also up to you. Unlike working in an office,
nobody is going to give you funny looks if you sit around in your underwear on
a hot summer day. It may be worth noting that low humidity leads to dry eyes
and eyestrain, though.

Having plenty of air ventilation is most certainly not a matter of personal
preference. A simple demonstration of the importance of a well-ventilated room or office would be to sleep one night in a bedroom that has all doors and
windows closed, with fresh air coming through only narrow gaps here and there.
You will surely learn your lesson when you wake the following morning feeling
drowsy. Note, however, that having air currents moving past or into your eyes
can result in eyestrain.

For a touch of variety, consider burning a stick of incense or a scented
candle. Play some classical music or New Age music such as Enya if you are
really keen on creating an environment that is conducive to stress-free work.

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Dealing with Basic Stress at the Computer

Stress management

Dealing with Basic Stress at the Computer

Asthenopia, better known as eyestrain, is a huge problem for the computer
user. There is a cause-and-effect relationship between eyestrain and
undesirable symptoms including fatigue, headache, and neck pain — all
stress-inducing conditions.

You are not Bruce Wayne. You should not be conducting your day-to-day
operations in a room that resembles a bat cave. Having the right amount and the right kind of lighting is of paramount importance. Eliminating glare and other sources of eyestrain will pay dividends in terms of work productivity. The eyes play an important role in matters of stress. When you are tired or feeling
irritable, it is usually your eyes that give this away.

Healthy Eye Vision System

Your bedroom or home office should contain enough light to enable you to work effectively. Too much light is as bad as too little light. Whether your primary source of light is natural light or artificial light is immaterial — after
all, you may prefer working the owl shift. However, for artificial light, you
may find that fluorescent lights are better on your eyes than are incandescent
bulbs and last longer to boot.

Glare is the big gorilla in the room when it comes to causes of eyestrain. Be
sure to eliminate sources of direct glare, which is light shining directly into
your eyes, along with sources of indirect glare, which is light reflecting off
a computer screen. Some monitors have an anti-glare coating as a design feature, whereas for other monitors, an anti-glare screen may come in handy, provided that screen readability is not sacrificed in the process. Configuring your computer to use a light-colored desktop wallpaper can often quickly remedy the amount of glare.

A close relative of glare is any form of high contrast. This includes
everything from the foreground and background colors of the digital documents you read to the color combinations of your furniture. Yet lack of color variations can be a source of eyestrain too. Often there is very little you can do to remedy high contrast or low color variation, though if you do find yourself pulling out the paint kit, consider using light pastel colors for your walls since occupational psychologists believe these colors have a calming effect.

Eye Vision Stress

Few things in the office are more irritating than flickering light bulbs or
computer monitors. Replace all such light bulbs immediately, and have your
flickering or dim monitor serviced or replaced — though with flickering
monitors, sometimes simply increasing the refresh rate is enough to stop the
flickering. Have a tech-head friend or relative adjust your brightness and
contrast settings appropriately since there are not any good rules of thumb
that cover all monitors out there. While you are at it, consider setting your
monitor resolution to 800×600, which is believed to be the best setting for the eyes.

What you are reading should be legible without undue exertion. Small fonts,
exotic typefaces, and poorly scanned documents are some of the many hassles that plague the computer user. It is often possible to use an OCR program on poorly scanned documents to extract text and transform it into something more readable.

It is common sense that facing a monitor directly is the way to go. Rather than
pull out a ruler to measure twenty inches between your screen and your eyes,
just sit as far away from the monitor as possible, with an arm length or so
being the minimum. Opinions vary on whether your eyes should be in line with
the top of the screen, slightly below the top, or slightly above the top. Do
what feels right for you, though most experts (but not all) seem to agree that
looking above the horizontal is more tiring to the eyes than looking below the
horizontal.

Do not tire out your eyes by focusing on any one thing too long. Take an eye
break approximately every twenty minutes for a couple of minutes, and include some looking into the distance. You may find that cupping your palms over your closed eyes for a few moments is very soothing. On the other hand, while you are working, do not arrange your material such that you are continually switching focus between a near and a far object since this too can tire out your eyes. Get a document holder that can be positioned next to your monitor.

Finally, low humidity leads to dry eyes and, in turn, eyestrain. So do air
currents.

Look after your eyes and they will keep you in the light — literally.

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What Philosophers Tell Us About Stress

Stress explained

What Philosophers Tell Us About Stress

Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, is reported to have said,

“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of those things.”

We would do well to remember this piece of sage wisdom when confronting the seemingly stressful realities of everyday life. How often do your views distort your circumstances and introduce needless stress into your life?

Circumstances may indeed be fixed and out of your control, but your views are
yours for the changing. Sometimes simply taking a different perspective in
thought can cause an immediate relief in feeling. An ample illustration of this
fact can be seen in how two similar events can produce two vastly different
reactions.

Take, for instance, an event familiar to us all: driving around
downtown and encountering one red traffic light after another. Even on those
occasions when you are not in a hurry to be anywhere in particular, is it not
true that such an insignificant chain of events can infuriate you to the point
where you are cursing the gods and bemoaning your fate? And yet at other times you drive around in a relaxed daze, impervious to the onslaught of red. Indeed, who does not enjoy sitting around on the couch doing sweet nothing? Revealing is the fact that a car is pretty much a mobile couch!

Epictetus divided the nature of reality into two categories: things we can
control and things we cannot control. The former he termed prohairetic things; the latter he termed aprohairetic things. Examples of prohairetic things
include your thoughts, your values, your beliefs, your morals, your opinions,
your desires, and your emotions.

Examples of aprohairetic things include food served cold, late parcel deliveries, slow trains, long lines, noisy lawnmowers, and red lights. Although you might not be able to achieve the Stoic goal of complete detachment from aprohairetic reality (after all, being mugged in a dark alley is not simply an inconvenient occurrence!), if you are honest with yourself, you will no doubt appreciate how much you tend to overreact to the most inconsequential of happenings, thereby introducing stress into what could otherwise be a blissful existence — at least until the next bill arrives.

The simple fact is that stress does not exist in the events around you. Stress
is a product of your own mind. If stress existed in events themselves, then
everyone would react to so-called stressful events with the same level of
stress. Yet surely you know from your own experience that different people have
different stress thresholds, different stress fuses, as it were. Some people
grin their way through a tornado, whereas other people grate their way through
a lottery win (“What am I supposed to do with all this money? What if I do not
manage it properly? Why did this happen to me?”!) Perhaps the headline found in one national newspaper speaks volumes:

WOMAN ‘UNEXCITED’ BY $16M LOTTERY WIN.

Epictetus taught that the individual who succeeds in firmly establishing the
distinctions between the prohairetic and the aprohairetic will live a life
unencumbered by the stress-inducing tendencies of the untamed human mind. Such an individual will reach the state known as ataraxia, or a serene state of mind. Another quote from the master stress-blesser: “I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?”

Epictetus was not the only Stoic philosopher who understood the self-created
nature of stress. Marcus Aurelius, another philosopher writing in the Stoic
tradition, said, “Outward things cannot touch the soul, not in the least
degree; nor have they admission to the soul, nor can they turn or move the
soul; but the soul turns and moves itself alone.”

Or perhaps more relevant to our own times, particularly with the rising gas
prices of the day: I must dump my lead foot on the brake and stop at yet
another red light. Does anything hinder me from gloating over the few cents
I have saved with my increased fuel economy? My spouse has cheated on me. Does anything hinder me from pulling out the prenup and winning custody of the PlayStation?

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Online Search for Stress Relief

How to resolve stress

What the Net Offers for Stress Relief


“Hi, my name is Bob, and I am an alcoholic.” “Hi, my name is Jill, and I take
ownership of my eating problem.” If those two sentences pretty much
characterize the images that flash through your mind when you consider reaching out to a support group for whatever it is that is causing you stress and anxiety, you can now take a moment to relax. The Internet has made the
so-called anonymous support group of the past a largely irrelevant creature
facing a rapidly nearing extinction.

One Click Away From What?

No matter what is troubling you and keeping you from enjoying your life to the
full, help is literally a few clicks of the mouse away. The Internet is rife
with virtual support groups created to support those individuals who are
suffering anything from loneliness and shyness to urinary incontinence and
hemorrhoids. A quick Web search will most probably give you hundreds of results for forums, newsgroups, and online communities that have something to do with your condition or troubles. And unlike offline support groups, the support groups you will find online offer a great deal of anonymity. (We say a great deal of anonymity rather than complete anonymity since as any Net savvy person will tell you, the Internet and anonymity are not exactly the best of friends just yet. You may like to keep that in mind as you spill your guts online.)

Free Lunch

There are also Web sites where you can receive free advice from medical doctors and other qualified professionals. What someone in person would normally charge you an arm and a leg to receive, you can get for absolutely nothing online. As always, though, be careful with any advice you receive from a stranger online, qualified or not. Despite the technological marvels of the Internet, it has yet to eliminate the need for a second opinion.

Lonely Heart Stress

If loneliness is causing you stress and anxiety, there are numerous
social-networking Web sites that allow you to find and interact with people who live in your local area. This is a great way to meet people who share your
interest in that one hobby of yours that no one else you know seems to enjoy.
You can also use the Internet to pursue new hobbies and pursuits that pique your curiosity. Chances are you have already used an instant-messaging program to chat with your buddies in real time. Instant messaging is a quick and easy way to meet new people, especially with the instant-messaging clients that have an integrated people-search feature.

Always wanted to attend art classes?

Find a few video tutorials online that will guide you through the fundamental techniques. That way, you can tell right away whether landscape painting, profile drawing, or whatever else it is that has caught your interest will really be the thing for you. Always wanted to sign up for a boot camp but are afraid of what you would be getting yourself into? Check out videos online that show what takes place at a typical boot camp.

A Pet to the Stress Rescue

Been considering buying a dog to keep you company but are unsure which breed of dog would be right for you? If you are good with your Internet
searches, you can probably find a huge collage of different dog breeds or a
video compilation that rapidly flashes through your available options.

So keep in mind that you need not suffer from stress and anxiety all alone.
There are plenty of people out there just like you. Do not be afraid to reach
out to others, whether online or offline. Although this article is now beginning to sound like a government-sponsored television commercial, the help you seek is always yours for the taking.

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