JOB STRESS & SATISFACTION

Motivasi Talk from Dr. Hj. Sulaiman

Before the seminar begins, our mind have been filled in with something useful...something meaningful and refreshing our mind...

JOB STRESS

- How people feel about the job overall and about different aspects of them – the extent to which they like their job (bagi aku….not a problem at all...i love my job)

- Stress is not necessarily something bad – it depends on how u take it. (yup…if u take it badly, it will become bad and worst for you, if u take it positively…it will make u move faster)

People feel stress when they have:-

· The time

· The experiences and

· The resources

· They feel great stress when

· They think they can’t handle the demands put upon them

(The degree of stress depends on ourself….it depends on the degree of our perceptions…if u think that u cannot handle it, then u become more stress though the demand is just a simple demand or task)

Stress is therefore…a negative experience

It depends a lot on people’s perceptions of a situation and their real ability to cope with it

(the ability to handle certain job or task will determine the level of stress)

Response :

Instinctive response : beyond our control( responses that cannot be controlled when someone stressed out)

Short-term “Fight-or-Flight” responses – basic survival response – brain will not working at this time…no rational thinking, just do the action:-

· Run faster and fight harder

· Excitable, anxious, irritable and jumpy – which will reduces our ability to work with people, find ourselves to make a god decision, difficult to execute precise, controlled skills

· Is a normal part of everyday life and a part of everyday stress, although often with an intensity that is so low that we do not notice it

General Adaptation Syndrome – long term effect of exposure to stress – testing to animals:-

· Alarm Phase – they reacted to the stressor

· Resistance Phase – the resistance to the stressor increased as the animal adapted to and cope with it

· The way we think and interpret the situations

SIGNS OF BURN OUT

· You find yourself being more cynical, critical and sarcastic (tegur dalam bentuk destructive) at work

· You have lost the ability to experience joy

· You have to push yourself to work and / or you have trouble getting started once you arrive

· You face insurmountable barriers to work

· You lack of energy, motivation and / or ambition to be consistently productive

· You can no longer laugh at yourself or your mistakes at work

· You feel disillusined about your job

· You have to use food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or to simply not feel

· Your sleep pattern have changed

· You have loss of appetite – habit makan berubah (kurang makan atau terlebih makan)

· You have started to experience more headaches neck pain or back pain

· If you use a keyboard, do your fingers feel as though they do not want to move over the keys

RECOVERY FROM JOB BURNOUT

The terms and cons, in order to recover from the job burnout :-

· must admit that we’re burnout to address the issue, but it takes you to admit to yourself it is occuring

· to determine the cause

· take the appropriate action to solve your problems

sometimes just simply believing enough in prayer and talking aloud (in a secret place of course) and express all the thing you feel – mengadulah kepada Tuhan Yang Maha Esa, Dialah tempat sebaik-baik pengaduan.

HOW WE MANAGE STRESS:-

· Action-oriented – seek to confront the problem causing the stress, changing the environment

· Emotionally-oriented – manage stress by changing the interpretation of the situation and the way we feel about it

· Acceptance-oriented – focusing on surviving the stress, accept the fact that different people has different behaviour...n

Why Project Fails - 1001 reasons by Andrew A.L. Tan

Nowadays, we heard so many projects fail reported by Medias or experienced by the government agencies or by private companies regardless how big the company is.

In this book, the 1^st part explains why some projects fail. The reasons for failures are:-

1. Insufficient funds;
2. Improper focus of the project management system: the network must not become the project but help to manage the project;
3. Incorrect fixation of the first estimate; needs to be constantly dated;
4. Wrong levels of details;
5. Awarding tenders to the incompetent contractors;
6. Lack of authority of supervision;
7. Etc…etc…etc…etc

The author also listed out the problems and what is the successful project management. Some of the problems listed out in project management:-

1. Assembling an incompetent and incompatible team;
2. Poor lines of authority leading to difficulties in communications;
3. Complexity of handling a matrix organization with conflicting priorities;
4. Coping with politics, “managing people”;
5. Introducing changes involve rapid re-planning;
6. Bad reporting of progress;
7. Feeding wrong information to other parties;
8. Insufficient project definition prior to commencement of design work;
9. Etc…etc…etc…etc

Author Mr. Andrew explains that one of the project success factors is having an effective and efficient Project Manager where the project manager also acts as an:-

1. A generalist and a facilitator (a manager, not a doer);
2. A high level of communications skills for mediation, conflict management and negotiations;
3. Analytical skills;
4. A resource finder and cheerleader – manage to balance the good and bad situation in the work environment;
5. Technological and administrative credibility;
6. Inter – personal and political sensitivity;
7. Leadership (direction, purpose, focus);
8. Capable of “intelligent” anticipation of problems.

You can also find ways to be a successful project manager by having a successful project management that includes good planning, ability to handle constraint, consistently monitoring and reviewing the progress of the project, have clear objectives and aiming the target well, detailing in estimating and forecasting, and ability to handle change of controls.

The role of authority plays an important to ensure that only qualified consultant or contractors get the project. There must be a stringent control over both the development and construction process to ensure the project is done accordingly.

There will be many reviews on this book as I’ll try to review it extensively. The 2^nd part from this 1^st part will be reviewed later…InsyaAllah

How To Get Rid of Excessive Negative Emotions

How To Get Rid of Excessive Negative Emotions

Emotions - are how we feel about something – something that make us happy, angry, sad, disappointed, excited etc. Emotions can be bad and good. It depends on how we express our emotions.

Dealing with emotions is complicated and time consuming. According to Richard Cockrum, in his articles on November 15, 2006, there are several things we have to realize first:-

• You sustain your own emotional state, not anything outside you.
• Emotion is the result of beliefs, especially evaluative beliefs.
• Emotions result from identifying with beliefs.
• The beliefs generating the emotion are things you are telling yourself.
• If you don’t want to change, you won’t.
• Most emotions are situational.

You may suffer from stage-fright. You may get a cold and wet hand before the presentation. You may get angry with your subordinate for not doing the job as specific accordingly to the job scope. You may get angry and hurt when your spouse married another one more or having an affair with another woman or man. You may get angry when you’re 15 minutes late for work and stuck in a traffic jam. You may get angry and disappointed with your boss for not taking the problem of his or her workers and staff seriously.

Basically, you need to focus on one situation at a time. Don’t try to work with emotions in general. And remember that you emotions may affect people around you…especially when you get too emotional…you will not think, act and speak accordingly and rationally and you might hurt other people’s feeling and thoughts.

Be Open

Open the doors and invite others into the auditorium of your mind. If you can’t open it wide, just open it slowly…it you can’t open it slowly, just open it a little and allow people you trust to explore and understand your emotions.

Emotions expecially negative emotions, are largely reactive…it’s like a volcano waiting to explode. When you’re in the actual situation especially on the negative emotions, it can be almost impossible not to be overwhelmed by the emotions.

Try hard to control it…and from my point of view…when I have a negative emotions, just keep quiet and away from other people, as I might be afraid that something bad coming from my act or from my word and eventually hurting other people’s feeling.

However, sometimes you need to express it because people might not know what is it in your mind…how do you feel about something especially something that is not right and appropriate.

Ellis and Harper, in A Guide To Rational Living, list 10 irrational thoughts that people tend to have that sustain negative emotions. These are:-

• I have to be loved and admired by almost everyone for almost everything I do. If they don’t, I’m worthless.
• I should be competent, adequate, and achieving in everything I do. If I’m not, I’m worthless.
• I am inherently evil or bad and should be blamed and punished for their sins. I’m worthless and not responsible for what I do.
• It is horrible when things don’t go the way I don’t them to go.
• Other people make me unhappy and I can’t control my feelings or get rid of negative feelings. I’m not responsible for how I feel.
• If something is or may be dangerous or fearsome, I should be preoccupied with it and upset about it.
• It is easier to avoid difficulty and self-responsibility than to assume some form of self-discipline that can lead to rewards.
• The past is all-important and should affect me for the rest of my life.
• People should be different from the way they are and catastrophe will happen if we don’t do something about it.
• I can be happiest by doing nothing and passively enjoying myself.

This is the hard part. You need to replace the negative emotions with positive, or at least neutral.

This can literally take years, or it may happen in one night. It depends on how deeply attached you are to the emotion. Over time, the negative thoughts will go away, taking with them the excessive negative emotion. You didn’t accept them. They won’t stay. You accept them, it will last long enough in your life that you might forget how beautiful life is for you to live to the fullest. Don’t let the negative thoughts and emotions conquer and haunted your life. The choice is yours.

Sometimes leaving a destructive situation is the best thing you can do. There is no reason to subject yourself to abuse for the sake of a job, a husband, a wife or of others. You are not them. Your worth doesn’t depend on them.

Meditation gives us the time to just be, to detach from our mind, body,and emotions. In the process it helps provide structural changes in our emotions, often without our being aware of them, that leads to long term emotional improvement. For Muslims, praying is one of the way to meditate… mengadu kepadaNya adalah sebaik-baik pengaduan. Meditation / Praying for me is the best way to remove my negative emotions…that is the time where you are alone with your God and feel that He is always be with you in what ever situations you are – good or bad.

Wallahua’lam