Stressful Situation Example 2
;When I am in a stressful situation, I often stop to take a step back and allow myself some time to think, plan and prioritise. For example, if Ive got a lot of different University projects Im working on all at once, I become more efficient with my time. I break the big tasks up into separate, individual activities, working out which take the longest, which I can complete quite quickly, and which have the nearest deadlines. It then becomes more manageable and far less stressful.
Look After Yourself Physically
When you are physically fit and well, it is much easier to cope with stress.
When you become stressed, it is harder to motivate yourself to care about what you eat, or whether you exercise. However, not doing so can also make you more stressed. Get into good habits while your stress levels are fairly low, and you may find that they never go up again. These good habits include:
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Taking regular exercise
Stressful situations increase the level of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol in your body.
These are the fight or flight hormones that evolution has hard-wired into our brains and which are designed to protect us from immediate bodily harm when we are under threat.; However, stress in the modern age is rarely remedied by a fight or flight response. Physical exercise can be used as a surrogate to metabolise the excessive stress hormones and restore your body and mind to a calmer, more relaxed state.
Try to incorporate some physical activity into your daily routine on a regular basis, either before or after work, or at lunchtime. Regular physical activity will also improve the quality of your sleep.
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There is more about this in our pages What is Sleep? and How to Sleep – The Importance of Sleep.
You can assess your levels of daytime sleepiness with the Epworth Sleepiness Scale.
Why Do Interviewers Ask How Do You Handle Stress
Interviewers ask how do you handle stress to learn how you deal with particularly stressful workplace situations. Its an especially useful behavioral interview question for jobs that involve tight deadlines and a fast-paced work environment.
The recruiter or hiring manager might also be wondering how you cope with stressful situations outside of work as well since these can affect your performance on the job.
Employers are listening for examples of how you are motivated by stressful situations or how you can minimize stressful situations with careful planning and excellent communication skills.
If a hiring manager hears a story of when you let stress overwhelm you to the point where it compromised the quality of your work, that might affect your chances of getting a job offer.
Also, since interviews are inherently stressful, it helps to keep a calm demeanor when answering this question. If you need help relaxing before or during the interview, weve got more on that here.
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Listen To Music On The Drive Home
Listening to music offers many benefits;and can be an effective way to relieve stress before, during, and after work. Playing an uplifting song while you make breakfast can help you start the day off feeling better prepared to interact with the people in your life. Likewise, combating the stress of a long day with your favorite music on the drive home can help you wind down and feel less stressed when you get there.
Focus On Your Positive Actions Not Your Negative Feelings
When it comes to stress, it’s easy to get caught in its emotion the frustration, the panic, the dread. It’s also easy to blame others: My manager didn’t clearly communicate with me, or My co-worker totally dropped the ball.
Instead of focusing on your feelings and blaming others for your stress, highlight how you overcame the situation. Think of those soft skills. Did you communicate with your team? Did you prioritize your goals?
Ultimately, you’ll impress your interviewer by staying positive not placing blame and highlighting your skills.
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You Should Always Put Forth Your Positives Rather Than Your Negatives:
When appearing for an interview it is up to you to try and make yourself look good. Do not leave any stone unturned. Make sure that you stress on all your positive qualities and even all the talents you might have which will give you that edge over the other applicants.
At the end of the day, companies do want multi-dimensional and multi-talented people on their team.
Ways To Cope With Chronic Stress
“Its key to recognize stressful situations as they occur because it allows you to focus on managing how you react,” Dr. Stoll says. “We all need to know when to close our eyes and take a deep breath when we feel tension rising.”
Use these tips to prevent or reduce chronic stress.
1. Re-balance Work and Home
All work and no play? If youre spending too much time at the office, intentionally put more dates in your calendar to enjoy time for fun, either alone or with others.
2. Build in Regular Exercise
Moving your body on a regular basis balances the nervous system and increases blood circulation, helping to flush out stress hormones. Even a daily 20-minute walk makes a difference.
3. Eat Well and Limit Alcohol and Stimulants
Alcohol, nicotine and caffeine may temporarily relieve stress but have negative health impacts and can make stress worse in the long run. Well-nourished bodies cope better, so start with a;good breakfast, add more organic fruits and vegetables, avoid processed foods and sugar, and drink more water.
4. Connect with Supportive People
Talking face to face with another person releases hormones that reduce stress. Lean on those good listeners in your life.
5. Carve out Hobby Time
Do you enjoy gardening, reading, listening to music or some other creative pursuit? Engage in activities that bring you pleasure and joy; research shows that reduces stress by almost half and lowers your heart rate, too.
6. Practice Meditation, Stress Reduction or Yoga
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To See How You Actually Respond To Stress
In a high-pressure interview, your initial reaction when asked how you handle stressful situations might be you mean, like this one?
Well you might be on to something. Employers often use this interview question to gauge how you actually handle a stressful or high-pressure situation – do you remain calm and collected, or do you become flustered and try to side-step the question completely?
Often, the best way for employers to find out how you act under pressure is by assessing your body language and the answer you give so preparing your response to the question is the best thing you can do.
What Not To Say
Dont mention an issue you created.;Avoid mentioning a time when you put yourself in a needlessly stressful situation. You don’t want to come across as someone who causes workplace stress.
Dont say that you were really stressed.;You shouldnt focus too much on how stressed out you felt. While you should certainly admit that stress happens, try;to;emphasize how you dealt with the stress rather than how much it bothered you.
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Up Your Avoidance Of Caffeine Alcohol And Nicotine
We previously said that it was a good idea not to have too much caffeine, alcohol and nicotine as a way to avoid stress. If you are already feeling stressed, this becomes even more important. Caffeine and nicotine are stimulants and so will increase your level of stress rather than reduce it.
Alcohol is a depressant when taken in large quantities, but acts as a stimulant in smaller quantities. Using alcohol as a way to alleviate stress is therefore not ultimately helpful.
Swap caffeinated and alcoholic drinks for water, herbal teas, or diluted natural fruit juices and aim to keep yourself hydrated. This will enable your body to cope better with stress.
You should also aim to avoid or reduce your intake of refined sugars – they are contained in many manufactured foods and can cause energy crashes which may lead you to feel tired and irritable.
There is more about this in our page What are Carbohydrates?.
Why Employers Ask About How You Handle Stress
Interviewers want to make the best hire for each role. If they know that a certain role sometimes involves stressful situations, they may want to verify that a candidate can react to that environment in a constructive rather than destructive manner. Employers may not want to hire candidates who: ;
- Outwardly express stress in the form of anger or sadness
- Are reactive to stress in a disruptive way
- Allow stress to impede or degrade the quality of work
- Become overwhelmed or shut down as a result of stress
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Put themselves and/or others in unnecessary and stressful situations
On the other hand, employees who understand their reaction to stress are an asset to hiring managers. They will appreciate a candidate who:
- Is motivated by healthy pressure and uses it to produce quality, efficient work
- Avoids stress by planning ahead and prioritizing work
- Keeps open lines of transparent, constructive communication with managers and colleagues
- Has healthy boundaries
Related: Job Interview Tips: How to Make a Great First Impression
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Stressful Situation Example 6
To help deal with stress, I always look for the positives in every situation. Instead of concentrating too much on the things I didnt manage to get done that day, I focus on how much progress I have made in other areas. For example, last month we had 2 weeks where multiple people were on annual leave, and two people were off sick. I was therefore left with a big workload which was very overwhelming to begin with, but I tried to think of the glass half full and would write down 3 things that went well at the end of each day, which really helped me to stay positive and keep going.
Tips To Manage Stress
We all have stress at work, at home, and on the road. Sometimes we can feel especially stressed because of a bad interaction with someone, too much work, or everyday hassles like getting stuck in traffic.
Negative stress can keep you from feeling and performing your best mentally, physically and emotionally. But no ones life is completely stress-free. Its important to know how to manage the stress in your life. Try these three simple techniques for dealing with it.
1. Positive Self-Talk
Negative to Positive
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To really make it work, practice positive self-talk every day in the car, at your desk, before you go to bed or whenever you notice negative thoughts. Its a great practice to teach kids, too!
2. Top 10 Emergency Stress-Stoppers
Emergency stress stoppers are actions to help you defuse stress in the moment. You may need different stress stoppers for different situations, and sometimes it helps to combine them. Here are some ideas:
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Meditation And Yoga Are Something Which You Regularly Do:
In this day and age, most people turn to yoga and meditation to control work stress. If you are someone who does so, then you can state that these forms of meditation has really taught you dealing with stress and pressure in a good way.
Say that previously a stressful situation might have shaken you, but now thanks to mediation you have been able to get better control over both your body and your mind and there is no situation too daunting for you.
Types Of Answers To Avoid:
- Stress? whats that- the robot
- Stress triggers me to act and work smarter- the lone wolf
- I usually take a step back when I feel stressed and plan an effective and best plan of action – Over planning employee
- Dude, blah blah blah. Just chill as it very common and happens at times- cool dude
Also, make sure to avoid a few people who handle stress negatively. Some of them are
- Angry stressor gets angry when stressed
- Sad sack goes into a sad and depressing emotion
- Shut down goes into shutdown mode
- Delegator passes the task to others
Though We have mentioned 15 points on how to answer this question. Let me sum up the whole thing in a few points
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What Are Practical Ways To Reduce The Impact Of Stress
Life is often stressful, but there are things you can do to become more resilient and cope with lifes ups and downs.
- Exercise: Regular exercise can relieve tension, relax the mind and reduce anxiety.
- Time management: Developing regular routines and planning ahead can reduce the chaos that can lead to stress.
- Spend time with family or friends: Being with people you find uplifting, resolving personal conflicts, and talking about your feelings can help.
- Look after your health: Maintain a healthy diet, ensure you get enough sleep and avoid using drugs and alcohol to cope.
- Do things you enjoy.
- Change your thinking: Sometimes stress is more about our perceptions or attitudes to a situation than the situation itself. Unrealistic expectations of yourself or others can lead to stress. If you have a tendency to negative thinking, it can help to write down these thoughts, try to come up with a more realistic view and focus on the positive.
- Cognitive behaviour therapy : This involves working with a therapist to change your thinking patterns.
What The Interviewer Wants To Know
The interviewer really wants to know whether you can handle job-related stress, and what you do in particularly stressful situations at work. This is especially important if youre interviewing for a position where stress is;an;integral part of the job. That’s because job stress can have a negative impact on workplace performance.
The hiring manager may also be wondering whether stressful issues outside of work can impact your job performance. Employers look for candidates who can deal;with;a;range;of stressful situations, whether these are personal or work-related.
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Why Do We Get Stressed
As I mentioned above, you may get stressful emotions due to various reasons. Also, while some people find a situation, stressful others may not. We havent found the exact reason why some people get stressed about a specific problem while some wont. But still, it may be because of how their mind handles the situation.
Following are a few of the causes behind their stress reported by many people who were diagnosed with it.
- job-related problems
- death of a loved one
Now you may understand why interviewers want to know how you cope with stress. Stress is something that you may go through at complications and hard situations at the job. So, to be successful in the job role and keep the business work running, you should be able to handle stress and work parallelly. They consider this as an added advantage. Thus, get ready to answer their question with confidence and win their trust.
Try Not To Get Overwhelmed
You have a report due by the end of the day, two memos that need to be written, and an email inbox thats overflowing. But where do you start? First, make a list. This helps you see whats on your plate so you can prioritize what needs attention now and what can wait. Number the items in order of importance and complete them one at a time.
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How To Answer Describe A Time When Your Workload Was Heavy
When answering the question, Describe a time when your workload was heavy, provide a detailed anecdote about how youve dealt with this challenging situation in the past. Offer some context into how the situation arose and how you came up with an effective solution.
In your response, include mention of specific problem-solving or time management skills that helped you to handle the heavy workload.
Answers To Tell Me About A Time You Were Under A Lot Of Stress At Work
If they ask for a specific time that you were under high amounts of stress, heres a good sample answer:
In my previous job, my manager resigned two weeks after I was hired. This was particularly difficult because I was still learning the basics of the job. I overcame the situation by reaching out to senior team members for help, asking the department head if he had any suggestions for how to succeed in learning the job, and taking a couple of hours at home each night to review the basics that I was learning. All of this helped me get up to speed quickly, and I became a top performer on the team within six months. Fortunately, a new manager was brought in a couple of months later, but I was in a much better position to succeed at that point because I had used my first few weeks to learn as much as possible instead of letting the stress of this unpredictable situation slow me down.
For behavioral interview questions like this you should break your answer down into four parts: Situation. Task. Action. Result.
First, what was the general scenario you were in?
Then, what was the task or challenge to overcome?
Next, what action or strategy did you choose, and why?
Finally, what was the outcome and what did you learn from the experience?
The sample job interview answer above is effective because it breaks the story down step-by-step and shows that you stay calm under pressure, stay positive, and make the most of any situation.
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