How taking up a hobby can reduce workplace stress?

Over the last decade, the workplace evolved into a fast-paced and competitive environment that urban professionals just love and hate at the same time. People work to live, but with the current setup of the world, where money is king, materialism is in and technology runs everything, stress is inevitable. More so with work-related stress. We are all in a rat-race to do more, earn more, have more and experience more.

From here, our question stems. How do we battle work-related stress?

There are short-term fixes when it comes to overcoming stress, a weekend getaway, an extravagant night out, a binge-eat session; these band-aid solutions may be effective at first, but do it over and over again… you’ll get used to it that it doesn’t quite take the stress off anymore, worse, it might take its toll, on your budget.

To reduce work-related stress, it is highly recommended to find a hobby. Now, there are some hobbies that might cost a lot to maintain, but there are also those that you can do with things that you already have, at the comfort of your home, with maybe a little help from trusty ‘ole Google. Some of these hobbies include gardening, crafting, games, cooking, volunteering, or fitness classes. There are limitless choices, based on your interests and preferences.

Now, how exactly do these hobbies combat stress?

Stress is often caused by things that overwhelm us. In the workplace setting, it could be a routine task, a tough project or a difficult boss. We get overwhelmed because these things seem or actually are beyond our control. That’s where hobbies come in. With hobbies, whether you start out as a total newbie or you’ve been doing it before, a sense of growth and achievement each time you progress within the realm of your hobby is felt and better appreciated because you do not work with pressure, or expectations. You do hobbies at your own pace, and if you don’t feel like doing it anymore, no one will hound you for it.

Hobbies also keeps your mind off of the pressure you experience in the workplace, and may serve as a temporary comfort.

Hobbies, even if not as physically challenging, keeps us healthy, as it makes us feel good – and a happy body is a healthy body.

Time passes quickly while doing a hobby you are particularly interested in, and if you’re really enjoying it, you even lose track of the time. Remember: Time wasted doing something that you love and makes you happy is actually time gained.

Hashtag Work Hashtag Shock

Ending the night second guessing Charles Darwin and Niccolo Machiavelli. 

Survival of the fittest? End justifies the means?

The universe has a perverse sense of humor and screwing up creatures randomly in sporadic periods of time may be the only way to achieve balance. Things don't just happen for a reason. Things are not predetermined. No one is special. Let's all suck it up. This only is one of the plethora of instances when we feel puny and powerless. But guess what, the good thing is, we are capable of analysing and learning and deciding. And at the end of the day, everything is still up to us.

#News #Work #Shock #SocialDarwinism #Machiavellian #Humanist

Last night I heard news of retrenchment in the company I work for, 25 people ended up without jobs. Effective immediately. Allegedly some performance based, some due to redundancy, some due to cost. I don't understand really, here I am on a leave of absence and somehow I am still secured of a job I can go back to in a month's time, but some people are not. I don't know what really drove this, only the higher ups will really know--Big Brother and cohorts. While the company I work for drives for transparency as much as possible, we all know that in reality, there's only really so much that we can know straightforward; the rest will need major research to be discovered or it will gently unfold in front of our very eyes before we even realize it. People will hide things from you to protect you, or because they need you and they can't lose you, or because it's the only way they'll survive, they'll swim at the expense of you sinking -- without letting you into the real score.

If it was up to me, I'd want dinosaurs to be around. It maybe unsafe but it is fun in a nerve-racking sort of way.

But they're gone and humankind came up of ways to achieve the same "unsafe but it is fun in a nerve-racking sort of way" sensation through cliff diving, sky diving, bungee jumping, among others.

It  really sucks that some of the people who ended up losing their jobs are the ones that I've grown close to, even worse, especially those who I know really NEED the job more than anything. The ones who didn't have an option and just decided to stay because their survival depends on it. I wanted these people to still be able to enjoy the security of job and income, but there really is nothing to be done right now but just hold our heads high and try again. Do what it takes to release emotions, the tension; know that there are people around you who are empathizing. Get mad, cry, question everything in your lives, move on, shrug it off. It might not be an easy feat, but it is part of the human experience; and know that you're not alone -- people suffer and fight battles everyday.

It is sad, that there is no way we can attain balance without having some people being worse off, getting the shorter end of the stick. Pareto in application. There is a balance, though not always rooted on equality and this can lead to the inevitable Marxist grand narrative. But in the end it just makes you feel powerless, people are dispensable; for the big players, we're mere means to an end. We're gonna be living for a much longer time with things like this happening, screwing up our lives one after another. We'll work our asses off with promises of a good great life. We sacrifice because there could be something better waiting for us at the other side. Until the final time when the universe decides that were more of a liability more than anything and we should just cease to exist, and there are no rewards -- just void.

44.5 kg

I've been getting a lot of "Pumapayat ka" comments lately. I don't know if I should be happy about it since I'm not trying to lose weight at all. I'm not in any form of diet; I eat 5-6 times a day. Even my husband will attest to it, I eat more than he does, especially when it comes to the 2 evil carbo-sources: rice and fries. Yet I manage to stay below the 100 lbs mark because all those stuff I put in, is no match with all the stress I have. Considering my relatively simple and laid-back lifestyle compared to the other people around me, I get stressed a lot - reason why I swear by clean living, spend my weekends just at home resting and never have been a fan of the party scene.

The Friday before last Friday, I woke up really, really dizzy and nauseated I had to take a night off and use my sick leave. I went to the doctor the next day and explained everything that happened, the nurse took my vital signs. Normal temperature, low blood pressure (80/60). The doctor gave me prescription for Serc, deducing the incident to have been caused by vertigo; and requested that I undergo blood test, ECG and 2D-Echo. After starvation (the blood test requires I fast for 8 hours) and much pain (the 2D-Echo hurt my breasts so bad), lab results show Sinus Bradycardia (ECG) and normal heart (atrium, ventricle, etc) with small main pulmonary artery. In other words, no major illness. The doctor said that it was purely stress-related and that I should just take multivitamins, Centrum in particular.

So maybe the 2 month Management Training I had - twice a week, 4 hours pre-shift; management mentoring, the daily deadlines and neverending urgents from the bosses, business sideline, running a household, bills, groceries, blogging and reading books took its toll finally.

There. I'm stressed. Best way to lose weight. Works for me.

Secret to Happiness and Success

I am one of those people who doesn't believe that caffeine and energy drinks can fuel the body for a very looong day. Neither do I believe that yosi can calm down nerves. But then again, that's just me. I used to down caffeine, energy drinks and yosi in back in college. Only to find myself almost paralyzed near The Powerplant-Rockwell one school evening, cannot move my limbs, lips and vomiting on the gutter.

So my body tends to overreact to caffeine, nicotine, among others. Caffeine makes my heart palpitate in the beat of the drums of war. Nicotine somehow causes my body to numb up. Mix that up with a serving of a toxic day's worth of work (schoolwork then), very little sleep and my moderate claustrophobia, and a re-run of the Rockwell episode might be in the making.

And so, with the graveyard shift supporting my otherwise frugal existence in the past 2 years or so, meet my friend in the past 5-6 months(?).

Melatonin.

This is Melatonin. It helps me induce sleep fast and makes me sleep deep, just like I used to when I was sleeping at night. I take the 1mg GNC capsules currently, but I had first dibs on the 3mg Lifetime capsules (I found out that the 3mg Lifetime capsules make me want to sleep for 10 hours everyday, a bit too much). Sleeping with the sun up can get really tiresome, especially since I can't sleep with the lights on, then add the tropical climate, ohmy. I realized that I can only perform at optimum level when I have at least 7 hours of sleep, any less than that and I get cranky, moody and inefficient. Plus when I sleep this long, I don't need vitamins anymore, or a shrink, cuz I seem to be incredibly balanced. Mellow, steady type of efficient, I am not fond of jumpy, crazy efficiency, that tends to be erratic.

And since smoking never really did good to me, I replaced it with McDonald's French Fries. But just like any vice, it seemed to have a downside. The doctor said my sodium intake is high and I need to hydrate much to wash out all the salt from my fries and be bouncy healthy happy. But I'd take that instead of lung cancer. I really hate being hungry, I eat every 2 -3 hours, 3 full meals and 2-3 small serving snacks per day. I think my usual daily calorie intake is around 1200 calories, except of french fries days. (And to all the people who will react and tell me that food in McDonal's is junk just becaue you watched some YouTube video or Supersize Me, oh please! You won't stop me. And I bet Krabby Patties taste just like Big Macs!) And so here's me pigging out on the evil fries *nomnom*.

Yosifries <3

Two (Large) Down!

And the lesson of this post is: People tend to rationalize their vices by saying that these things make them feel good, or fuel them. They abuse their bodies then turn to energy drinks, coffee and cigs to cope up with the stress and all. When I think we all just need to eat and sleep on time. I don't do crazy diet plans, binge eat and play with my weight as if it's yoyo anymore. I make sure I get sufficient eat and sleep everyday. EVERYDAY. And look at me, I'm a happy camper! This ends the self-help portion of my blog.

But what works for me might not work for you. Whatever floats your boat, baby! Just my opinion.