Don’t burn out: Guide to letting go of stress

By Emilio Lorenzo and Emily Tasca

Emilio Lorenzo is the assistant director of career advisement in NSU’s Office of Career Development. Emilio understands the importance of helping students reach their career goals and works with all students, including undergraduate, graduate and professional level students, to achieve their professional goals.

Emily Tasca is a member of the career advisement team in NSU’s Office of Career Development. She works with current students and alumni at the undergraduate, graduate and professional levels.

Have you ever felt like you have too much on your plate, and you’re unsure of how to balance responsibilities? This is probably a very common description of your undergraduate schedule. Whether social or academic, responsibilities can add up and sometimes feel overwhelming. It is how we respond to and manage stress that determines how well we will persevere through life’s unpredictable obstacles.

Just as it is difficult to stop a pot of boiling water once it’s spilling over, it is difficult to manage your own stress if you only react after it’s reached a point beyond your control. Here are some ways that you can keep your stress to a minimum and feel well-balanced overall.

Organize your life

Just like Rey and Luke Skywalker helped to balance the force in Star Wars, effective time management and organizational skills can help you find a balance in your life. A good first step is to evaluate your short- and long-term goals. Gaining a clearer picture as to where you want to go will help you anticipate challenges and overcome obstacles along the way.

Creating a daily and weekly schedule can help you stay on track with achieving initiatives you set for yourself. Laying everything out at the beginning of each week allows you to evaluate where you may have free time or where you have conflicting or overlapping responsibilities. Keep in mind “Murphy’s Law”: anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Having a plan in place to deal with daily challenges or unexpected events will increase your confidence to meet such challenges head on.

Find a support network

Even with the best strategies in place, stress can be overwhelming, which is why having a network of individuals, whether they’re mentors, friends or confidants, who can help to alleviate the pressures of everyday life. Having someone to talk to can help you pinpoint the root cause of your stress and provide feedback on strategies to work through and find a balance.

If you don’t have a mentor, or aren’t sure of who could be in your support network besides family, you could join a club, organization or even a study group. These outlets can be an ideal support network, because, for example, if you are a biology major with a long-term goal of entering medical school, being a part of the pre-med club surrounds you with others who have similar goals and likely similar challenges. When you surround yourself with others who are going through the same or similar life experiences and obstacles, you will feel more at ease knowing you are not alone and have the right plan in place.

Manage your tendencies

In addition to finding a support network, understanding and managing your own tendencies can be very effective in not only minimizing stress but also making day-to-day activities more seamless. We all have our areas in which we can improve. For example, if you are the type of person who lets stress build up or procrastinates on projects, identifying these trends in your life is the first step to develop strategies to progress toward being well-rounded.

Good strategies to deal with these challenges might be working on projects early on, creating daily and weekly lists for yourself or finding additional outlets, such as exercise or hobbies, which can help you distract yourself from the areas that are contributing to your stress.

Stress can come in many different forms, and, at times, we are our own worst enemy when it comes to multiplying or enhancing that stressful feeling. If you are a worrier, or a person who has difficulty separating your work and personal life, there are steps you can take to intentionally deal with such anxiety.

This is where making lists for yourself can be extremely useful because, many times, this anxiety stems from unknown places or your own mind going through “what if?” scenarios. Being able to write out what is really causing your stress or possible steps you need to take is the simplest way to entirely eliminate it. Just like someone going into a dark forest would probably be more at ease if he or she actually knew what lies inside the forest, you, as an individual, must shed light on these unknown areas that are causing you stress.

Overall, challenges are a part of our everyday lives, but having strategies in place to manage them can be the shrink ray for your stress. Getting organized, finding a support network and identifying and learning to cope with your tendencies are key ways to minimize the tension, pressure and anxiety that come along with our busy lives.

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