Adapt, survive and thrive - how to deal with stress working from home

You are not alone. Feeling anxious, nervous, overwhelmed or stressed during the pandemic is normal, and you are not the only one. We have to make our mental health a priority, to be able to survive and most importantly thrive.

Either you are a university student, teacher, or part of a firm, we have all been impacted by endless amounts of workload, or simply haven't been able to turn off work thoughts during our free time. Right now, our mind is probably running a million miles a minutes, with our social media feeds and google search coronavirus related, and frankly, the last thing you feel like doing is to show up to work or university. Plus, you boss and/or teacher still expects you to get things done with attitude, motivation and ambition.

How do you keep mentally "showing up" to work?

Push back against perfectionism

Perfectionism is often what causes us to feel overwhelmed and anxious. With all this time at home doing university homework or work-relate projects, perfectionist complicates even the simplest tasks, putting even more pressure and stress.

1. Accept the law of diminishing returns of your effort: remember that even if you continue to work and do an all-nighters (btw: bad idea....), at a certain point more work doesn't equal better work. When you feel like you've hit a wall, don't try to push it harder, rather move on do a different project

2. Know when good is "good enough": try it. work in intervals of 40 to 60 minutes and at end of each interval, look at what you have accomplished

3. Imagine the worst that can happen if you aren't perfect: you submit a piece of work and get it back with a few red marks , or you present to your boss, and start to blush and stammer. Your teacher will not give the highest grade and your boss will probably reject your proposal.... so what? This doesn't make you worse. You have faced a challenged and failed, however you've managed to build strength and learn for a next opportunity

4. No one is perfect: we can't do everything perfectly... (read this sentence twice)

Turn off work thoughts during your free time: the enemy "rumination"

Guy Whinch, a psychologist, author and speaker, shares helpful advice on how we can all improve our quality of life and our work-life balance by changing the way we think. Rumination means to "chew over". This, predictably, leads to stress. And most interesting, we usually experience work-related stress outside of work, instead of at work.

How to fight with your ruminations?

• Set a clear and strict schedule. Although social media and technology in general can feel like a distraction, turn off your email notifications from let's say 9pm to 6am

• Create a strict barrier between your home and your home space: set a specific work area in your house and you can only work from there

• "Work" clothes and "home" clothes: when you're working change into "work" clothes. Once you're day has finished, change into "home" clothes

• Convert a ruminative thought into a productive one: "I have so much work to do" to "where in my schedule can I fit the tasks that are troubling me". Pose it as a problem to be solved

Mental health plan

Develop a mental health plan with coping strategies that work for you. I, for example, whenever I feel anxious and overwhelmed, I turn to workouts. I know everyone says this, but exercising can do SO much to your brain, it's impressing.

• Humor: everybody loves to laugh and it is actually one of the most efficient emotional coping strategies for stress. Disconnect with work and call your friend on FaceTime. Zone out and release the tension, get you mind off of troubles

• Reaching out: know who to talk to. If you are facing challenges at university or at work, get in touch with counseling services at university, or the HR team at work. Make use of these resources to take care of yourself. Student counseling services are committed to supporting students mental health and well-being during this uncertain pandemic

• Use cognitive-behavioral skills: how you think affects how you feel and behave. If you have a negative thought (e.g. I am going to fail this exam), and change it to a positive (e.g. I am going to focus on one Unit each day and achieve the maximum of my abilities)

Create a schedule that works for you and stick with it

Keep your schedule consistent during week days. Be persistent in term of classes, meal and bed time. Create an effective schedule that will help you feel better and more satisfied.

• Find a workout plan and stick with it: Explore virtual workouts (some of them are only 10 minutes) and stay consistent with it. You don't need to workout every day, find a routine that works for you

• Make time to do things that you like: take breaks to listen to music, sing, watch Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, whichever platform you prefer

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Here are 4 tips to focus on when you feel you are just surviving and not thriving. We are living in uncertain and scary times, with negative news bombarding us every day. Stay calm and happy is a challenge, but that doesn't mean we have to stay in bed all day feeling at your worse. Push yourself up to a certain point. It is completely normal to feel stressed, anxious, overwhelmed and concerned. Even the near future is uncertain and that creates doubts, stress. Understand your emotions, take care of them and try to balance them. ps: by overthinking, we often create problems that aren't even there XoXo Sofia's Choice