Keeping your chin up - Topic - Common Talk Weekly

Keeping your chin up
December 3, 2003

Are you sweating the small stuff? Can you strike back when stress strikes? Remember when things take a nosedive, do your best to keep your chin up! All you need is to take action and go out and get what you want. Sure, stress can get the best of you, but you should learn how to manage to deal with it constructively.

Taking the strain

Stress can affect anyone at any time for almost any reason. Everybody deals with stress in different ways with varying degrees of success. A big part of managing your stress is knowing about yourself —how you think and what you respond to.

You may be suffering from physical stress with tense muscles and a stiff neck. In which case there are several simple remedies. Massage is one option whether it be of the deep tissue variety commonly found in China or more gentle with essential oils. The smell of the oils can be very therapeutic which brings me on to another alternative, a steaming hot bath with soothing bath salts.

A third answer to physical stress is a good session of stretching followed by exercise. It may seem perverse but this will have a variety of beneficial effects including the release of endorphins into your system. These are like a natural drug which have the dual effect of energizing and relaxing you.

But physical stress is only half the story and probably more people suffer from mental stress.

The irony of mental stress is that it is more often than not self inflicted. We are very good at putting unreasonable expectations on ourselves in this world of high achievement.

We start it so we must finish it and one method which helps is the idea of self-talk. You have to encourage yourself and convince yourself rather than meekly accepting that you are doomed. I learnt this valuable lesson when I was about 15 years old. At that time I was learning the piano and at a level where concert performances were becoming quite important.

My teacher, a Mr Thompson, was a hard task master who regularly admonished me with the words "You play like a pig laddie!". He recognised my stress levels and taught me to tell myself that I was going to perform the best of all piano music, on the best of all instruments and that I was the best person for the job. The results were surprising.

Self-talk can be applied to any situation and it will give you an immediate aura of confidence. This confidence will radiate to the people around you and they will feed off of it and respect you more. Instantly the task in hand will become more "do-able".

Start practising self-talk today and I have little doubt that before long you will be laughing in the face of stress!

John Dench, a senior teacher at Times Language Training Centre and no stranger to stress.
John，来自英国，现任时代语言培训中心老师。

The meaning of stress
My dictionary describes stress as: "great worry caused by a difficult situation, or something which causes this condition'.

When we think about the causes of stress we usually relate them to employment. Deadlines, overtime, high-levels of responsibility and high-pressure negotiations, we believe, all cause stress. This might lead us to believe that corporate high-fliers are the most susceptible to stress; however, statistics would not support us in this view.

According to a British survey the top five most stressful careers are prison officer, police, teaching, ambulance service and nursing.

It seems that whilst higher-level managers have heavy workloads, bigger salaries and more control over their work help to counteract the negative role of stress. Research shows that factors such as lack of control, boring or repetitive work and lack of consultation contribute greatly to stress.

Perhaps we have been looking in the wrong areas for the real sufferers of stress. I recently read an article in which a professional footballer talked about the stresses of his high profile and high-pressure job. An unemployed man wrote to the newspaper suggesting that if he felt that way, then perhaps they could swap roles. In return for the player’s salary of around $50,000 per week he would kick a ball around a football pitch and, conversely, the footballer could spend his days searching for employment and figuring out how to support his young family on less than $200.

Paul Gascoyne, an English instructor for nine years. For the past four years he has been working for Times Language Training Center first as a teacher and now currently as Academic Director.
Paul，来自英国，现任时代语言培训中心教学主任。

Stress across cultures
Staying in Xiamen for 6 weeks, I have Common Talk on my table. What is the best way to handle stress? Can stress be positive? I am not at all stressed negatively here in Xiamen. In Germany, where I come from, I work as a trainer and consultant in that field. There is a big demand because many employees lose their ability to handle stress in a positive way.

I went to the Common Talk English Corner on the 21st of November and met many young, highly motivated Chinese. My impression was that there is not so much negative stress. Audience and moderators shared a lot of ideas on how one can combine hard work and relaxation. The methods of relaxation named by the Chinese participants were the same I would get in Europe! There seemed not to be a cultural difference. But I was surprised that nobody was talking about Taichi as a method of relaxation and concentration. I have to find out why.

Ursula Dravenau-Otto, Business Administration, Economics
A second time visitor to Xiamen University accompanying her husband who is lecturing at the State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry.
Otto女士,德国工商管理经济学硕士，现暂居厦大，陪伴来厦大从事研究工作的先生。从报上获知Common Talk英语角的话题讨论，极感兴趣，主动联系并且来到Common Talk的英语角。