The Colour Works Presents: Stress Awareness Month Challenge

We’ve all been stressed at some point in our careers. It’s a natural emotional response to feeling challenged or overwhelmed. The stress response can be advantageous in certain short-term situations. However, our bodies physical response to stress can change our brains and damage vital organs and cells when activated for too long.

The long-term effects of stress increase your chances of having a heart attack or stroke. While many people believe it is an emotional response, the risk to your health proves otherwise. This month, we’re changing that. 

April is stress awareness month. So this month, The Colour Works challenge has been created to help you identify your stress receptors. What is it that is causing the physical response that could harm your body over time?

Not only that, but we’ve put together a list of our favourite resources to help you practice mindfulness, de-stress and improve your working environment. Believe it or not, individuals perform better when they are not in a stressful situation in the long term. So if you want to promote a healthy workplace culture that doesn’t affect productivity or efficiency, get your team involved in The Colour Works Challenge. 

If you’d like more information on stress awareness month, check out the free resources available at https://www.stress.org.uk/stressawarenessmonth/.

The Colour Works Challenge: Stress Awareness

Last month we brought you the remote workers challenge. The month, in honour of stress awareness month, we'd like to present the Stress Awareness Colour Works Challenge.

Over the next five days, we’ve laid out five activities that take almost no time out of your day. The last thing we want to do is make you feel more stressed!

These activities aim to help you, your friends and your colleagues identify stressors and learn how to manage them without jeopardising the work that you do.

We’re going to be right here, doing the challenge with you! We’d love to hear your thoughts over the next week so get involved over on social media. Using the hashtag #ColourWorksChallenge to keep us up-to-date about how you’re getting on.

We’ve got loads more free resources for anyone struggling to manage stress, The Colour Works Challenge is a great way to get started.

Day 1: Rob Cooke: The Cost of Work Stress

Today in The Colour Works Challenge, your task is to watch this 10-minute TED Talk by Rob Cooke. The purpose of this activity is to highlight the negative effects of stress on our mind, body and economy. 

According to Wrike, 86% of people state that they are overworked. Over a third of those who say they are overworked say that they are happy about it. Employees are asked and encouraged to put in extra hours to achieve targets and deadlines, often made to feel ‘less than’ if they are not prepared to put the extra time in. 

Today is about helping you recognise the negative impacts of stress. For too long, workplace culture has revolved around overworking employees. Let’s change that.

Day 2: Team Talk

While the Stress Awareness Month Challenge was designed to help you manage and identify your stressors, sometimes it’s good to get a second opinion. This article, published by ISMA, highlights the natural psychological, emotional, physical and behavioural signs of stress.[ultimate_spacer height="60"]Have a read through and see if you can associate any of these signals with yourself or your colleagues. Once you’ve done that, get your team together for a virtual catch-up. Here you can talk openly about each other's workload, projects or tasks that are causing a stressful working environment. 

Find out whether your team are stressed, overworked or overwhelmed. Highlight some of the signals that you have recognised and go over the health risks associated with long-term stress.

People notice different things. There may be an individual who has seen you or a colleague display clear indications of stress. Their input will help you understand more about your subconscious self.

Even if your colleagues aren’t participating in The Colour Works Challenge, you can still work with them to promote a healthy working environment.

Day 3: Practice Mindfulness

A great way to practice mindfulness is to take a few minutes out of your morning to breathe. Breathing is key to opening your conscious awareness and will help you get your day off to a good start.

Today is also the day where you’ll slow down. If you tend to move at a very quick pace while getting your day started, focus on bringing that pace down. You can still get everything you need to do finished in a short time frame but by controlling the racing to-do list in your mind you will be able to regulate energy in a different way.

These are two easy things you can incorporate into your working day that will help you practice mindfulness and reduce stress at work. This is a great blog for anyone who needs to slow down, take a breath and bring a bit more mindfulness into their work life:

Day 4: Michelle Spirit: Using the “BEAT IT” Model to Regulate Emotions and Reduce Stress

This is a fantastic podcast from Michelle Spirit of Spirit Resilience, hosted by The Colour Works. While we always aim to bring you a variety of resources from expert organisations, we can’t argue with Michelle’s expertise.

The podcast is 30 minutes long and covers everything we’ve learnt so far during this month's Colour Works Challenge. Michelle offers fantastic insights that will help you practice resilience, manage stress and improve your working environment.While the entire podcast is fantastic, we want you to focus on the BEAT IT model so feel free to skip to Michelle’s explanation of this which is 20 minutes in. The BEAT IT model teaches you how to regulate your emotions and reduce stress. 

Day 4 of The Colour Works Challenge is the perfect time to do this as you’ve already learnt about the damaging effects of long-term stress, identified some of your key stressors and discussed your working environment with your team. 

Don’t forget to use #ColourWorksChallenge to share your experiences on social media. We’d love to see how you’re getting on (and your colleagues will thank you for it as well).

Day 5: Balancing Work and Life

It’s Friday. You should be finishing off projects and getting ready for the weekend. How many of us actually switch off when we leave the office? Or, to bring things up to speed, how many people actually switch off when our office is in our own home? As it's stress awareness month, we think you should give it a bash.

The pandemic has taught us a lot about remote working. In this podcast, Patty McCord runs through these lessons - the first of which is your team is not your family. The lines were blurred with most people spending more time with their colleagues than they were with their family, but that’s not the case anymore.

Patty McCord tells her experience of employees struggling with work/life balance. If you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, being able to switch off is crucial. Watch this 10-minute TED Talk and find out how you can draw a solid line between your work and your life.

Stress Awareness Month

As April is stress awareness month, we wanted to include additional resources to help you manage stress and take care of your mental health. By the time you’ve completed The Colour Works Challenge, you’ll be fully-equipped to take control of your stressors and manage your emotions to reduce stress.

You’ve heard from experts like Michelle Spirit and Rob Cooke and you understand the importance of managing a healthy work/life balance thanks to Patty McCord. The extra resources we’ve included will help you further practice mindfulness, identify stressors and improve your working environment.

Identifying Stress Signs:

This blog from The Colour Works will help you identify your stress causes and signals based on your Insights Discovery Profile. While cool blue’s struggle with a lack of information, earth green’s find tight deadlines stressful. The useful remedies listed here will help you to create a healthy working environment for your entire team.

Practice Exercise:

This 10-minute practice exercise is available on mentalhealth.org. Professor Mark Williams, mindfulness expert, coaches you through breathing and relaxation techniques to help you destress at the end of a busy day.

Colourful Coping Strategies Activity:

When we are feeling stressed we can find ourselves feeling out of control, quickly entering a state of concern. As it's stress awareness month, take part in this activity to help you refocus your energy and take control of the things that are within reach.

By taking part, you will realise the impact you can have on others in your team. You’ll also be able to let go of the things that you can do nothing about. This will help you prioritise your workload, unload stressors and build stronger relationships within your team.

Ready to Take on the #ColourWorksChallenge?

You’re ready to take control of the stress that burdens you on a daily basis. We really hope you enjoy taking part in the Stress Awareness Month Challenge. Over the course of five days, our aim has been to help you identify key stressors in your working life and manage this emotion more effectively. That's what stress awareness month is all about!

Don’t forget to join the conversation over on social media. You can tag us in any of your #ColourWorksChallenge themed posts and updates to let us know how you’re getting on.

Most importantly, don’t forget to get your colleagues involved. By working together, we can all help to create a healthy working culture that allows us to thrive in any situation.