With the evolution of work-life balance in the corporate world, the lives of employees were expected to become easier and less stressful. Companies now-a-days have come to realize that they can’t really flourish without keeping their employees happy and satisfied at work. But unfortunately, stress appears to be in no-mood of making an exit from our lives and has only escalated with the big complexities that we, as humans of twenty-first century, have introduced in our small world. Stress has become an inevitable part of our living, so much so that, a work e-mail at a family get-together is all it takes to make us feel anxious thereby spoiling the mood.

Self comparison with peers and cousins who apparently have a happier life intensifies the feeling and we end up arriving at a point where we can neither work without taking too much of stress, nor are we in a position to enjoy the valuable time with our family and friends. No matter how hard you try to create a divide between your work and personal life, they just seem to be glued together and end up intersecting at some point.

Although I’m nowhere near the amount of work experience that many of you might have had in the corporate world, I sure have learned that one can’t really give his/her 100% to the work or personal life without adequately managing the stress which doesn’t belong to either worlds. Stress exists within us and we can all do our bid to manage it, and thereby reducing it, as a small step towards self-care.

1. Let Your Smartphone Give You Some Space – However addictive a smartphone be, you can’t really distance yourself from the fact that having a smartphone is a necessity for how easy your life has become because of its existence. It’s one thing that comes handy when you find yourself stuck in extreme situations and it’s what literally holds you together.

It’s not at all practical to forego the smartphones. The least you can do is to allow yourself some space by refraining to check for work related mails while enjoying a lunch break at office. There are people who just lock their smartphones up in the lockers before leaving for the cafeteria to have a peaceful lunch time. Work mails and related messages are the last thing you need when out for a dinner with family and friends, so why not give yourself a break from the mailbox and office calls for a while. This way, you’ll return back to work the next day feeling refreshed.

2. Look For Like-Minded People At Work – What makes a workplace happy and livable are the people who you can talk your heart out to. I remember someone telling me that ‘You can’t have friends in colleagues’ but I do believe that having someone who shares the same thought process at a place you work in makes work more interesting and less stressful. This way, work can serve you a good 8-10 hours break from your personal problems as well. It isn’t easy to find like-minded people but we are all wanderers and everyone at work, like us, is juggling the elements of life.

3. Be Easy On Yourself – Corporate world is quite competitive in itself, which is good to some extent but there often comes a point when stress overtakes competition. We sometimes turn so harsh on ourselves that we don’t give a consideration to the fact that no ‘Annual Appraisal’ is worth stressing yourself out to depression. You work hard in order to please people you don’t like. You work overtime, sometimes by carrying along your office stress to home. You skip meals, morning walks and then choose to cut down on sleep time. There’s no harm in going easy and convincing yourself of the fact that money can do only so much when it comes to living a happy and stress-free life.

Choosing a happy life over work stress doesn’t make you unprofessional. It’s rather a way to remind yourself that there’s more to your life than work, that work is just a part of your life which has got no reason to spoil your party which is happening outside the workplace with people who are anything but your co-workers or superiors. A peaceful life is what you work for, so never allow that work to take away your peace. Let your work make you as happy as your family and friends do.