Responsible Towards Self

This morning I decided to go for my complete medical check up. I was amazed to see executives from various companies queuing up right from 7am in the morning.

What further surprised me was the fact that about 20% of the population were men aged between 60 - 70 years and quite a few between 35-50 years.

I wondered why there were only 1 woman in every 10 men in the 35-50 category.

Flash back - some 5 years ago, women were more conscious about their health. In the wake of diversity inclusion more and more women are aspiring for careers in senior positions.

As women are growing in their careers their sanity in maintaining health is surely becoming an outlier management.

So what would a women do to be responsible towards themselves:

1. Don't ignore health. Health is Wealth. A cliche but carries weight. Ensure once a year a thorough health check up is a normal routine.

2. Just like you plan for your career, plan for your health. Opt for a general insurance / hospitalisation cover that assures you of its availability when you need it the most.

3. Insure your family. You never know when fate strikes. It's important to make sure people are secured after you've left abode.

Now that's what I call 'Being Self Responsible'

Your Stress Is Good !

There are various studies that have been conducted in linking 'Stress' to work related environment including job Satisfaction, organizational commitment and employee behaviour (Sullivan and Bhagat, 1992; Nauman, 1993; and Tett and Meyer, 1993)

However, there are some statistical studies that also indicate positive impact of Stress at Work.  I have briefly summarized some points as below:

 1. Results in Creativity:  An article in Journal of Psychology (2012) by March, Cynthia Neal and Patricia share a result from a study conducted on 30 participants engaged in creative tasks.  It indicated that activating positive mood had a stronger concurrent effect on Creative Process Engagement (CPE) and activating negative mood had a longer lasting effect on sustaining CPE across time.  Isn't this an interesting finding and something to ponder upon?


2. Results in Agile and Effective Decision Making:  In situations of stress, you may ponder over an action and its value addition to your profession.  If you view things in a positive light, you would end up assessing various alternative suggestions to a problem and arrive at a decision with a greater speed and effectiveness.  Your ultimate goal would be benefit the organization and mutually gain the same for self and others.


3. Results in a Sense of Urgency and Alignment to Goals:  Having implemented point 2 above, you would now step up the task of implementing the action and insist on faster delivery for results, thus creating a sense of urgency around for the team.  Once done, the team understands the importance of actions, the outcomes and will quickly align itself to the organizational goals.

Thus, Stress entirely is not bad.  It depends on whether you use the stress to become more productive or burn out and quit.


References:

• March L. To, Cynthia D. Fisher, Neal M. Ashkanasy and Patricia A. Rowe (2012) ‘Within-Person Relationships Between Mood and Creativity’ Journal of Applied Psychology . Vol 97, No. 3, 599 -612.

• Sullivan S C and Bhagat R S (1992), ‘Organizational Stress, Job Satisfaction and Job Performance: Where Do We Go From Here?’ Journal of Management, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 353-375