What makes you snap?

Remember that little bell that goes off every time you get late for office, or see the neighbourhood gossip bouncing towards you, or have a project you can’t finish on time? Suddenly you feel like a locomotive engine with steam coming out of your ears and find yourself telling friends how ‘stressed’ you are. So have you been able to identify what makes that bell ring – what exactly triggers off the stress? This chameleon-skinned 5-letter word has been graying people since time immemorial and yet, changes with time.

While work and relationships are among the top causes of stress, experts have said that continuously saying the word ‘yes’ down the phone to a voice-recognition system that fails to identify your voice is one of the greatest stress-triggers of the modern age.

According to experts, technology, greater traffic congestion and increased time pressures have dramatically changed the nature of stress. Stress management coach Simon Davie, from corporate training company Sliding Doors, said waiting and not being heard or understood were the biggest stress triggers. ’The more people have to wait, the more impatient they get. A part of their brain just gets hijacked and suddenly they snap’, he said.

Also included in the list is missing your train by seconds after waiting in a ticket queue. Ask Sandip Ghosh about what stresses him out the most and the fear of missing his train tops the list. The Chandannagar based web designer has to travel two hours either way and missing a train by even a second can mean either having to wait for twenty minutes for the next one, or doing a number of break-journeys to save time.

Web developer Mridul Chatterjee, who used to work in a Sector V IT company before changing his job, recalls how he would leave home at 7 every morning and travel for two hours before reaching office. What kept his nerves ticking was the fact that coming in late for the eleventh time meant having half a day’s salary deducted from his pay cheque.

Today’s world seems to be spinning a lot faster on its axis. With each day being a Xerox of the previous one and the weekend being just as busy with catching up on family and ‘life’, time management is the modern world’s mantra. Obviously so, when time’s in such short supply, 24 hours don’t seem enough.

With competition sharpening its claws, stress isn’t limited to adults anymore. 15-year-old Ishani Banerjee is no stranger to stress. Says the student of G. D. Birls Centre for Education, ‘Exams stress me out and with them just around the corner, I have little time for anything else’. So is she the only one stressed out in class? Far from it. Ishani’s friends have the additional burden of tuitions. As soon as the bell rings at 3:30, they jump onto an auto and zoom to their tuition classes, eating their packed lunch en route. According to Ishani, some of her friends are focussed on getting into the IITs and are busy getting their fundamentals right. So there’s no getting away from it – you get stressed out studying so that you get a high paying job which stresses you out even more.

College is the time for fun right? Strumming your guitar in front of a group of laid-back friends? According to Soham, a fourth-year law student, that’s only part of the story. He and his friends are already crumbling under the pressure of their studies, internships and part-time jobs, with most of them complaining that they’re heading for insomnia.

But stress isn’t just related to the professional spheres. Homemakers, with overworked husbands and children to take care of, are only too familiar with the feeling. After all, the timings of a homemaker’s job is 24x7x365, and there are no holidays.

Stress- the five letter word that everyone’s singing about has always been around. It’s just that it dons a new cloak with every age. A few minutes of pre-planning may go a long way in organising a day’s activity. While some triggers just can’t be avoided, a few can easily be banished by a little advance work. A key to beating stress involves believing in what you are working towards – see it as an investment and not an expenditure of time and energy.  So the next time your about to snap, visualise the end you working towards and banish stress from your mind.


ilovekolkata
(With ANI inputs)