Managing Stress Book Review

BOOK REVIEW

Name of the Book: Managing Stress

Author: Donald H. Weiss

Publisher: American Management Association

We are all aware that in today’s competitive business world, Stress is inevitable and is a part of our life. Stress producing situations are plentiful on the job and at home, and they take a toll on our life, lead to illness, shattered relationships, so on and so forth. This book entitled “Managing Stress” shows us how to

• Identify stressful situations at work and home, as well as our reactions to them.

• Manage our reactions to stress by giving ourselves “first aid”, by making necessary changes, and by anticipating & planning for stress in advance.

• Combat stress by developing anti-stress eating, sleeping, and exercise habits

It is a surprising revelation that we ourselves are directly responsible for our own levels of stress at work and at home. This knowledge gives us an advantage as awareness of stress helps us deal with it in a better way.

This book is divided into nine chapters. Chapter 1 “What is Stress?” looks at what stress is and includes definitions, highlights the difference between pressure and stress and explain the biology of stress. Stress occurs when pressure exceeds your perceived ability to cope. Stress is real and is not good for us. We work at our optimum when we are under the right amount of pressure. An internal Locus of Control is desirable and good for our psychological health.

Chapter 2 “A working model of stress, coping and resilience” provides a working model of stress that underpins the approach of the book, and looks at the importance of life events and the concept of helpful and unhelpful negative emotions. The working model of stress highlights why some people become stressed where as others can cope, perform well, are resilient and in good health. The stress response occurs in a number of stages. There are three key responses to stress: Psychological, behavioural and physiological. Long term stress can lead to some serious medical

This help to take out trauma from a crisis. This chapter also considers improving confidence, self-esteem and self-acceptance, which are aspects of stress. Psychologists have identified 15 thinking errors that frequently contribute to stress and hinder successful problem solving. We need to identify those thinking errors and try to modify them.

Chapter 4 “Changing your Imagery” focuses on the images or pictures which create high levels of stress and reduce performance. We can focus on them and modify these pictures or visualisations. Sports psychologists and coaches do exactly the same for top athletes and it is scientifically proven that it works. Coping imagery is a powerful technique to deal with future events and reduce stress. Motivation imagery can help to motivate. Similarly there are other imageries which help us improve our performance. Regular practice makes it much easier to use imagery techniques and