Dr. Mort Orman here, and today I am starting a new three-part series on stress and your life.
This series will focus on several different aspects of the question: What is stress really costing you?
Are You Fully Aware?
When we are stressed, we are usually well aware of this. We also know that stress can have negative consequences in our lives.
But do we fully appreciate the wide range and multiple costs we end up paying (short term and long term) when we experience stress on a regular basis?
Most of the time, we don’t like to think about all these costs. There is something about us that has us either deny or discount the true costs we are paying.
That’s why I decided to launch this series, and today I’m going to focus on some of the Career and Financial Costs that stress often extracts from us.
Today, I want to focus on three main categories of Career Costs:
- Advancement
- Productivity
- Fulfillment
And two categories of Financial Costs:
- Lost Income Opportunities
- Wasted Money Spent On Ineffective Coping Strategies
While these are not the only categories of Career And Financial Costs, they are still worthy of singling out.
Advancement
What is stress costing you in terms of future promotions and other types of advancements in your job, career or profession?
How might stress be holding you back from “being all you can be” or from accomplishing all you can accomplish?
And even if you are already successful in your career, could stress be holding you back from rising even higher, from branching out in new directions, from feeling more fulfilled, or from avoiding paying other prices (health, happiness, family life) for achieving your success?
These are questions we often don’t think about or confront very deeply.
But if you are experiencing lots of stress, this is likely to affect your working relationships with others, and it is also likely to color the way others think about you when it comes to deciding upon promotions or giving you higher levels of responsibility to handle.
Productivity
It is widely known that stress can reduce your productivity as an individual and the collective productivity of all employees in your company or organization.
Recent studies have shown that stress costs U.S. businesses more than $300 billion annually, in lost productivity, absenteeism and other worker-related decreases in job performance.
Statistics like these are often viewed abstractly, as if they have little to do with us or with our own individual work-day lives.
But think about it for a moment. How much productivity do you usually lose each day from being overly distracted or from having to recover from some perceived slight, emotional reaction or other type of stress?
How much does stress affect your sleep and decrease your daily energy levels, enthusiasm and drive?
And how often does being rushed or feeling stressed cause you to make mistakes, where you then have to devote precious hours of time to repeating work you’ve already done or from repairing downstream problems that could have been avoided had the mistakes not occurred?
You see, when we really shine the spotlight on what stress is truly costing us, there are many more costs than we normally pay attention to.
Fulfillment
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, how does stress make you feel about going to work every day and putting in all those hours?
Do you bounce out of bed each morning felling refreshed, excited and happy about doing your work and meeting all your deadlines?
Are you having fun when you work? Are you enjoying working with other people and helping them get their jobs done as well?
Do you come home at the end of the day feeling excited and proud of what you have done during the past 8, 12 or 16 hours?
Unfortunately, studies have also shown that way too many Americans either hate or strongly dislike their jobs.
Many do not feel fulfilled by the work that they do, and stress is often listed as one of the main reasons why.
Financial Costs
How much is stress costing you in terms of lost new business opportunities?
How many times have you turned down new business ventures or expansions because you were too stressed already and didn’t want to add any new projects on your plate?
And how much income could you have made if you were feeling less stressed and able to move forward with new opportunities?
And how much would your income and benefits gone up if you had gotten that promotion which you lost because of stress?
When you think about stress in these financial terms, the dollars tend to add up very quickly.
Wasted Money Spent
And how about all the money you spend on ineffective coping strategies that only temporarily reduce your stress?
Have you bought any books, tapes or home study courses that didn’t end up helping you at all?
How much do you spend on alcohol, cigarettes, food, drugs or prescription medications to help ward off you symptoms of stress?
Once again, when we slow down enough to think about what stress is really costing us, the toll we are paying seems rather high.
What Can We Do About All These Costs?
While we may not have much control over all of the Career And Financial Costs mentioned above, we certainly are in position to avoid a large number of them.
First we have to be fully aware of the costs we are actually paying. Hence, the reason for this three-part series.
Then, we have to take stock of how well we deal with stress right now and ask ourselves: could we do better?
In my experience, the answer is almost always yes.
But whether you actually do get better at dealing with stress, and thereby mitigate these and other significant costs, will depend on how much time and effort you commit to this challenge, and whether you get the best advice for how to actually succeed.
To your health, happiness and success,
Dr. Mort Orman, M.D., International Speaker, Author And Founder Of The Stress Mastery Academy | http://DocOrman.com
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You'll also hear Dr. Orman talk to you directly about his excellent stress mastery introductory training program.
