In part 2 of our well-being series we are going to look at stress.

What is stress?

• When pressure becomes overwhelming stress occurs
• The body experiences the fight or flight response
• This means that stress is not good for you and is an unhealthy state of body or mind or both

What are some of the physical symptoms you may notice when experiencing high levels of stress?

• Eyes – your pupils dilate
• Lungs – your breathing becomes quicker and deeper
• Bowel – your food movement slows down
• Blood vessels – your blood pressure increases as major vessels dilate
• Muscles – your muscles become more tense and trembling can occur
• Stomach – your output of digestive enzymes decreases
• Heart – your heart rate increases and beats harder and faster
• Skin – you blood vessels constrict which can cause chills or sweating
• Saliva – your flow of saliva decreases and can cause a dry mouth

How to recognise stress
‘The Pressure Performance Curve’ model allows you to assess the level of performance v’s the level of pressure or stress you might be facing to help you to recognise if there are any changes you need to make in order to improve wellbeing within yourself or your team. It is broken down into the following 5 zones:

Low pressure zone
Leads to boredom which can cause stress. Often if you are working in this zone, you have low pressure and also low performance.

Comfort zone
As the name suggests, this is the area where most people spend their lives. This is classed as 1 out of the 2 ideal working zones, this zone has low to moderate pressure with medium to high performance.

Stretch zone
You know you are under pressure, face the challenge, grow, develop and increase with confidence and self-esteem. This zone is also known as the learning zone. This is the 2nd of the 2 ideal working zones, where you have moderate to high pressure with high performance.

Strain zone
In this zone, you can become overstretched and working for long periods exhausts your ability to cope. But strain can be managed. It can be good to work within the strain zone sometimes, but it is important not to stay here. If you are working in this zone, you have high pressure and moderate performance.

Panic zone
You are unable to take any more, and you run the risk of serious illness. The person’s distressed state when working in this zone is often obvious to others. The panic zone is also known as the zone of delusion, where you have very high pressure causing very low performance.

This week’s well-being top tip… Ask Yourself an Important Question
Asking the right questions can have a massive impact on what you do and how you do it. There are a variety of daily questions you can ask yourself related to work or life, such as:

• What should I be focusing on?
• What can I do better than yesterday?
• What can I delegate more of?
• What can increase my output by X10?

Benefits of this activity:

• Asking yourself important questions is essential to your happiness, your growth and for a healthy mind. It will encourage you to ask why and self-reflect which are really beneficial ways to help recognise stress.

Let us know if you try this tip and what benefits it had on you!

If you would like to discuss the above, or about how we can collaborate, please let us know. To get in touch, email [email protected] or call us on 03305 552233.

As a specialist, family-run recruitment business, we provide a proactive and consultative approach to recruitment within Social Care. We help organisations to target issues such as continuity of staffing, reducing spend where you have a high volume of agency usage and supporting those who have specific talent requirements or are in hard to fill locations. We can help with any immediate staffing requirements or longer-term recruitment projects to ultimately save you time and money on agency spend.

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