Vogue-U Potion - The Stress

Praise to Allah, the Almighty, the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful

Mak Pah used to take up a motivational course on Personal Effectiveness. And in one of the subject, it covered on Stress!!!! In every subject, we need to submit a learning guide activity whereby we need to write on what we have covered and learned based on our own experiences or encounters.

Let me share the information with all of you as my trainers said sharing of knowledge is virtue. Mak Pah was asked to write on 3 possible stress situations I might encountered and how I would be able to control or overcome them......

So Mak Pah gave 3 scenarios:

Too much work

This factor is quite common nowadays with the current job situations. All of us tend to be multi-tasking and began to feel the pressure. Sometimes we do prioritize our job accordingly, however circumstances of impromptu incidents do come at the very last minute, whereby you need to stop your other official duties and rectify the current problem or project as soon as possible. For example, in Mak Pah's case, I am in the Administration so any Admin matter including government legislations shall be under my portfolio. For example, if the NEA officers come for inspection and then penalized us on certain issues like mosquito breeding, I had to quickly act on the counter measures like getting our NTS workers and cleaners to quickly clear the area and also get our pest controller to fumigate and larvacide (oiling/killing) the larvae as soon as possible. With this kind of interruptions, it could cause a lot of back lots in other Administrative works and could make me feel stressful especially if I could not meet my other Admin deadline of invoices and good receipt submission to Finance for the closing of accounts. Initially I had a hard time juggling with such situations, but now after many occasions, I tend to take things easily and not get stressed up like staying back late to clear the back lot and on top of that learn to increase self-awareness like quickly manage the time if possible in order to prioritize critical ones to non-critical ones. Eventually the habit has develop the positive thinking like take things as it comes and handle it professionally.

Changing job requirements

With the current fast moving pace of our job market, we began to feel everything around us are beginning to be a part or at least important to us. Mak Pah was from a secretarial post, then all of a sudden I am now moved to Administrative post and I had to be prepared for any new technology and responsibilities. At first the stress of being given more tasks to do made me feel very frustrated and started comparing job portfolios with other colleagues. Eventually as time past, I managed to overcome the stress and accepted the changes positively. I began to build my own support network by listing down who to contact for verification or support. I took the initiative to seek help and enquiries from government bodies like NEA, LTA and MOM for any matter pertaining to the latest legislations and also from professionals like from my peers (engineers, technicians and even lower rank staff who has many years of work experiences), direct bosses or other bosses/depts. In fact as time goes by, the circle of friends from every walks of life began to increase and Mak Pah felt more secured and confident. I think most of us went through many barriers before reaching our goals right.

Personal and family problems

When I send my maid home due to medical problems. The initial part was quite tough for both my husband and me as the children were not able to take up the responsibilities of juggling the house works and school works at the same time. We had to teach them step by step on how to do the task properly like how much detergent to put in the washing machine, how to iron their school uniforms, fry an egg, etc. No doubt when the maid was around, our children did perform some of the chores but with the supervision of the maid, my husband or myself. Now after the maid left and with nobody at home during the day, they need to learn to be independent and manage the task independently and with confidence. Initially there are bound to be hiccups and unsatisfactory tasks performed but as time goes by they managed to pick up easily. The stress level of not being able to juggle my time and commitment with them during the day affected me emotionally. I began to worry about them all the time and always call them to check their welfare and well beings. Initially when I reached home and seeing the house was in a mess made me mad and started nagging at the children. However I managed to overcome that by seeing the positive side of things like at least they took the responsibility of performing the tasks even if they were not to my satisfaction. In order to overcome the stress, both my husband and myself would make it a point of rewarding the children. No doubt we have more two-way communications with them to get feedback, but sometimes certain issues the children preferred to settle among themselves. Through communications with them, we realised there are still some gap between the youngsters and adults. Mak Pah realised now why our parents did the same to us when we were teenagers that time. Nevertheless we try to build the trust and stronger bonding among ourselves without any boundaries if possible.

Well as the saying goes, it is easier said than done. So everyone of us need to be given the opportunity to excel in whatever makes us feel comfortable but of course in a positive way. Nobody in this world should be condemned and criticised coz nobody in the world is born perfect. Everyone has their plus and minus points. So enjoy life to the fullest and don't let others stress us up. God created us as the most beautiful living thing alive, why waste it on trivial matter or remarks from those who wants us to fail.

So vouge-u-ers, stay cool and happy always. Take things and enjoys life to the fullest.

I'll share some more in the future postings okay......

Luv from Mak Pah.