For accountant stress management to be effective over the long haul, the key is to not only learn and use certain stress management tips that we discussed last week but to also learn to live your life and see your world in a way that makes distress less likely. Stress management is a process that includes more than just healthy living tips but honing and applying personal principles to your overall life as well. If you find the main sources of your stress come from current accounting practices that could use an overhaul or adjustment, Beck and Company Certified Public Accountants and Business Advisors are here to help. Please contact us for a consultation about your accounting needs.
Here are some principles that, when practiced consistently, can help you manage your stress and keep your distress at a minimum:
- Take responsibility for yourself, your life, your behavior, and your stress.
Consciously or sub-consciously, if you don’t take responsibility, you effectively delegate it to someone or something else. This means you are handing over control of your life and your stress level to someone or something else.
- Identify your principles, values, and goals. Live by them, too.
Decide what’s important to you and what you want out of life, and make your behavior consistent with this. For example, if a strong family life is most important to you yet you repeatedly take on tasks that make it impossible for you to be with your family, you will feel distress. The more your behavior matches your values and principles, the less distress you will experience.
Make sure your principles, values, and goals apply to you and your behavior. If your values are centered on everyone else in your life acting fairly and appropriately, you set yourself up for frustration. People will not always act in accordance with your goals. Make sure your principles, values, and goals are flexible enough to allow you to still be human. If it is important to you to be perfect and never make mistakes, you will live your life in a constant state of distress.
- Learn to practice a measure of acceptance in your life.
Things will not always go the way you want them to. Focus more of your attention where you have influence and less of your attention where you have little or no control.
- Don’t take yourself too seriously all the time.
At least once a day, do something just because you enjoy it no matter how small or ridiculous it may be. Find some humor in your day, and in the process, get a change in perspective.
- Conduct an inventory of yourself and identify your own personal internal stressors.
Identification is half the battle to resolution. Are you a people pleaser? Do you have a hard time saying “no” to people or opportunities? Are you a perfectionist? Does every mistake take another notch out of your self-worth? If you need help dealing with these issues, get it.
Identify your own personal cues that signal when you are distressed. Do you tense up? Do you get headaches? Do you become irritable, angry, or defensive? Do you feel confused? Do you have a more difficult time than usual making decisions? Create strategies to lessen or eliminate these tendencies all together.
- Think outside of yourself, and give back to others.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to put stress in perspective is to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes and realize that your life might not be so bad after all. By serving and giving away time and resources to others, you get fulfillment in the process of fulfilling the needs of others. Decide how you want to give back, and go do it!
Although you won’t always do all of these things right, stay focused on the daily process of stress management and living by your personal principles. Over time, you will begin to notice that the times of distress become fewer and further between. Even though the accountant responsibilities and pressures of your accounting job still exist, you will be able to cope better with them. If it is your accounting practices that are causing you the most stress, contact us here at Beck and Company CPAs so we can assist you with these.