Stress

How many of us have heard someone say that they are “stressed out” or even said it yourself? Stress is an unavoidable part of life. You may be wondering “what is a stressor?’ Mc Shane and Von Glinow defined a stressor as any environmental condition that places a physical or emotional demand on the person (Glinow, 2013). With that being said I am sure that you can come up with an extensive list of stressors that you encounter on a day to day basis whether they are at work or at home. It is easy for one to think that work and home life can remain separate but often time one will carry over to the other. Life is full of good stress and bad stress. Both can have an effect on us physically and psychologically. The most important thing that we can learn is how to cope and deal with stress in a manner that is not harmful to our health.

Stressors in the workplace come from physical and emotion demands of the workplace. When I was in the military we often had to meet high physical and emotional demands. When we were stateside and had to deal with the day to day functions of the office and it was overwhelming. I worked in what was called a Brigade Combat Team. This Brigade Combat Team took the place of offices that were designed to handle soldier actions and consolidated it to one office. Although this may have seemed like a good idea on paper, it brought an entire new level of stress to the office. We basically had to handle to finances for an entire Brigade (an element of 3,000 troops) with two people. The first thing was that we still had to follow Defense Finance and Accounting regulations, although we were operating with two individuals when the regulation mandated three. You may be wondering to yourself why this would be a stressor. Well it is simple. The soldier was responsible for running the paperwork back and forth from the brigade to the main finance office had to drive his own vehicle, therefore costing the soldier who was already under enough financial...