Stress

[W.I.F.T.S.]

I always thought that I'm very vulnerable to stress and so I shouldn't do any jobs which might be stressful, because I'd suffer. Which is why I went for a job stacking tins of beans rather than anything more demanding. The flaw in my thinking is that, even though my job isn't mentally demanding, it's very physically hard and there is an awful lot of stress because every job that I do is timed to the second and my performance is constantly monitored- something that never occured to me for years, when I was so ill that I felt like a zombie.

The other flaw in my thinking is that I don't have an automatic response to stress and I'm stuck with it for life- stress management is a skill. Some people are better at it than others and can cope with more stress. I'm only just coming to realise this and, by proactively relaxing and working on being more assertive I can combat a lot of the stress in my life.

Ships in harbour are safe..but that's not what ships were built for.

[mad_hatter]

I'm currently looking for a new job. I don't want to go for a lower paid job because I'm trying to save to buy a house. But I am scared to take a higher paid job because more money = more responsibilities = more stress for me! Argh, what do I do?!

I would love a job that doesn't involve tight deadlines and getting lots of work to do all at once like my current job involves. However, I have no idea what kind of work I wanna do...[Ugh] Something not boring, stressful, something fun with nice work colleagues...I dont think this job exists!

I've just looked on the job centre website for a new job, and felt sick and panicky. I'm so scared that I wont be able to cope in a new job...

Any advice, tips, or if others can relate - please post back!

Thank you!

[W.I.F.T.S.]

I know exactly how you feel. I despise my job and hate going there everyday. I wonder how other people cope, work mates who will probably spend years there. I guess they just switch off and get on with it.

For an unskilled job it is reasonably well paid (although I still don't feel like I have enough to live on) and there is normally plenty of opportunity for over time. If I left and went to another unskilled job I would probably lose about £70 pw.

Ever since I was little I knew that I didn't want to end up doing a warehouse job. I worked really hard at school and College to get my qualifications, so that I could hopefully pull myself up a few rungs to prevent me from having to do that.

After Uni I went to work in television and I did enjoy it, the work was varied, I learned loads and I got to travel a bit. But, I couldn't establish myself and make a living out of it. In the end I decided to try something else, thinking that I had my degree and A levels to fall back on. Nothing seemed to come off for me and I fell into a job stacking tins of beans.

I think it's virtually impossible to find a job that doesn't have stress, it's more a matter of learning better ways of handling stress and of relaxing.

It's not surprising that I'm depressed though really. I think any of my friends would feel down too if they were doing the same job week out, week in, being pushed harder all the time and wages going down instead of up, and being spoken to like a piece of rubbish.

When I took the job I thought it would do me because I won't have any stress. But, now I realise that it's not only responsibilty that brings stress.

If I didn't have my mrs to think of I probably would have quit ages ago.

On the bright side, I am finding things to do away from my work, I'm volunteering as a social coordinator for my local gym and I'm helping the mayor with a fundraising project. It is very exhausting, because I feel like I'm working on three jobs, but I'm hoping that it will lead to getting a job that is more up my street.

I'm actually thinking of getting into football coaching, but it might take me 6 months or a year to get my qualifications and I don't really want to spend that long at my current employer if I can help it. But, atleast I have ideas of things to do. I was most depressed when I had no idea.

What are your interests?

Ships in harbour are safe..but that's not what ships were built for.

[mad_hatter]

Hi, thanks for your reply :)

I think your right about every job being stressful. I think it would be easier to deal with if we actually both liked our jobs though!

Its great that you are finding things to do away from work, volunteering is a really rewarding thing to do, and I hope it leads to a new career for you. If you don't want to stay in your current job, perhaps you could try to get a part-time job in the field you want to go into. That way you can get relevent experience and also have the time to do your football coaching qualification.

I wish I knew what career path I want to follow, but i have no idea, so you are lucky in that respect!

[Dave]

I've been suffering from stress in my job too. Thought about changing but it seems like there's stress everywhere. It seems like going self-employed is about the best option if you can. Otherwise try and find a vocation that you are genuinely interested in and which has some variety. Here's me giving advice, I still don't know what to do myself. LOL.

[W.I.F.T.S.]

I've thought hard about being self-employed, but I've tried a couple of mini enterprises and they haven't really done much and I imagine that the stress of earning enough money to keep your family afloat each month is worse than working in a crap job. I used to do door to door sales when I lived in London and, even with the most positive attitude, it's such a hard thing to do because you get faced with so many negative people.

I have a website to do with my volunteering work and in the first month I had 250 visitors, in the second month 300, and in the third month 350, so that's pretty encouraging. I'm hoping that I can keep building it up. There are over 4000 members of the gym, so if I can get even half of those on it that would be amazing. I'm then hoping that, because I have links and banners on each of the pages, that people will start buying stuff and I can make a little income their through commission.

There are people where I work who have their own business on the side. That has always appealed to me, because I work annualised hours and I can 'bank' hours to have off and work them back at a later date. I can also buy those hours back. My plan has been to do something that interests me on the side and use the wages from that to buy back the hours that I've banked. That way I have the security of a full time job and also the variety that I need too. The difficulty has always been finding something to do on the side.

back to the point of stress. Yes, every job has stress, life is stressful. I really do think that stress management is the key- learning to relax, learning to have a positive attitude and learning to keep difficulties in perspective. I seriously want to do a stress management course and some yoga (especially as I can get it free).... I need to stop holding back and just go for it.

With regards to career direction. I spent two years doing A levels, another three years at Uni doing Media, and four years at a very low level in the television industry. When I came out of that I was knackered because, of all the degrees that you can get, media is probably seen as the most useless and my cv had more holes in it than swiss cheese. I tried sales/ marketing, I tried market research, but I was anxious to get into something that paid well and had prospects quickly. I finished with that 4 years ago and I've been stacking tins of beans for most of the time since.

It's only recently that I've discovered that football coaching isn't too difficult to get into (by the sounds of it) and I've thought that it could be something that might interest me. The way that I'm hoping things will pan out is that I'm covering bases of things that I'm interested in at the moment- event organising, sport and leisure, web design, marketing... and I'm meeting loads of new people and getting my confidence up. Eventually, I'd love to do a bit of all of them professionally... football coaching two or three times a week, one day organising things, another day selling things....

The problem that I have is seeing things actually pan out in my head. I'm more likely to picture things all fizzling out and starting again from scratch, rather than things coming to fruition. It's good really that I've stuck to the things that I'm doing at the moment for so long, because before this I flitted about a lot. I'd be concerned if I worked for myself in one business that I'd lose hope or discipline with it (even if it was going well) and not work as hard as I should.

Anyway, I would advise you to seek stress- management and to think about what your hobbies and interests are: do you like sport? music? gardening? Once you know what you want to do there are always voluntary opportunities and that break in the routine can be a good stress-reliever in itself.

Keep me posted.

Ships in harbour are safe..but that's not what ships were built for.