Lidia Dols: "People with a lot of stress make more mistakes".

Lidia Dols talks to us about the effects of excessive work stress and how to manage it.

For a long time, what we know today as work stress problems were seen as something completely natural, just another element of the job.

Fortunately, there is now a growing awareness of mental health issues and it is no longer assumed that suffering from stress at work is just another part of the job. it is no longer assumed that suffering from excessive stress at work is something to be normalized.. In this interview we talk about it with Lidia Dols, creator of Gurumind.

Interview with Lidia Dols: How to reduce work stress

Lidia Dols is the creator of the meditation and Mindfulness content application Gurumindas well as the stress management training program of the same name. In this interview Lidia talks to us about the effects of work stress and what can be done to "tame" it.

Is it assumed that stress is something that is totally beyond our control and that we have to resign ourselves to suffer?

Unfortunately the word stress has become too normalized in our vocabulary and without realizing it we have adopted it as something normal, without thinking about the serious consequences it can have.

In prehistoric times, when man was hungry and went out in search of food, the fact of having to face animals or go into unknown places caused stress, but this stress helped him to find a way to survive and return home with the reward of food.

Thus, stress is an automatic response of our body to circumstances that we feel difficult or threatening in our daily lives.

In our current lives we do not have to face wild beasts, but our environment and way of life has evolved so fast that it has not given us time for our brain to adapt to the changes. Whatever we perceive as stressful, our brain translates it as: Danger! Danger! And that's when our stress starts!

But it is not at all something beyond our control, nor should we resign ourselves to suffering it. On the contrary.

Why is work-related stress so normalized?

At one time, it was believed that people performed better with a certain amount of pressure and by subjecting them to a certain level of stress. On the other hand, current circumstances are not helping us either. The pace of these times is very intense and frenetic.

Fortunately, nowadays, stressing people is totally out of place, because it has been proven that the opposite is the right thing to do. You start to become aware of the reality and to know that stress is synonymous with blockage. People with a lot of stress make more mistakes, and because of this, they feel more clumsy. When they notice the loss of ability to concentrate, they take longer to perform a task, so they automatically become less productive.

What are the main characteristics of discomfort due to the accumulation of work-related stress?

Bad stress" leads us to feel anxiety, anguish, fear, burnout, insomnia, hatred, impatience, nervousness, anger, bad mood, feeling of inadequacy, lack of assertive communication... these are the first symptoms that are triggered.

And at the moment of making decisions, people with stress problems do not react adequately on external stimuli, do not calibrate the repercussions of the problem, and do not value the problems in their right measure, which causes these problems to intensify and join with others, increase the intensity or repeat themselves. All this leads us to experience inadequate or parasitic emotions, which are constantly repeated.

The person acts contaminated by his emotions, which form a chain and are mixed with other existing emotions, which makes him feel the distorted reality that does not correspond to the intensity of the real stimulus.

If we do not pay attention to these symptoms, physical somatizations come later... And sick leave.

What are some of the lifestyle habits that, according to your perspective, make it possible to manage work-related stress?

I work on seven aspects, but without a doubt, for me the most important is to know how to breathe.

It may seem silly, because we all breathe, but when we suffer stress, we modify our breathing without realizing it and this leads us to modify ways of acting and feeling reality and ends up affecting our psychological and physical health.

Once we learn to breathe, we can move on to the other fields that, in my point of view and experience, need de-stressing.

At this point begins the work of training people to work without stress and be happier. Working on: mental, creative, physical, emotional, social, time management, and self care. Each one of them is fundamental to achieve the objectives to balance body, mind and environment, and to be able to face stress from all angles, as well as to have good tools that can be applied at any time, when detecting the slightest onset of stress in our lives or in our environment.

People who currently incorporate these trainings have a clear advantage in their quality of life and in their jobs.

Why meditation can change the way we experience work?

Because it teaches us to put distance to see and observe things with perspective, so we can look for solutions much more resolute than if we are blocked by stress and entangled with our own emotions.

We can observe our emotions without being dragged like rag dolls.... We get to feel more secure in our lives.

Beyond the individual benefits to a person's well-being, what are the advantages of creating a company culture that helps employees manage stress?

Stress directly affects productivity in terms of both quantity and quality, and in terms of possible sick leave. When a team is subjected to high levels of stress, its members automatically become less productive.

To understand this, when people's stress is managed, everyone's happiness increases. We feel happier, as this predisposes us to be more enthusiastic about our work, our life, our projects... To get more involved in them.

It helps us to be more productive, resolute and creative... It helps us to reduce bad moods. Work flows differently, communication is assertive and motivation is much higher. In addition, it potentially reduces burnout and "talent drain" from companies.

And of course, physical somatization decreases: muscular pains, headaches, vertigo, insomnia... And with that, sick leave is reduced.

So work teams where stress is managed function completely differently compared to teams where it has never been managed.

Does it take a long time to learn how to manage stress at work?

Generally, I teach how to eliminate it with eight hours of training, but then people have to apply what they learn. In general, they always do, because their quality of life improves qualitatively.

Just as we train our body, we have to train our way of regulating stress, our breathing, our mind and our emotions... It certainly helps to be proactive and start training as soon as possible!