How To Deal With Stress

Sometimes life can be so stressful and many aspects of life can cause stress such as family problems, work issues and health problem, etc. Stress does not just make you feel bad, it can also be bad for your health. Ignoring stress does not work, you need to deal with it to solve the stress and do not make things complicated due to stress.

Dealing With Stress

• Eat Well – Try to eat healthy foods and start decreasing on tea, coffee and energy drinks. You should eat the right food, your body needs to be healthy and can be properly fueled to help you fight stress.

• Get Enough Sleep – To gain a good sleep, in your bedroom try to keep it as a calm place to relax. Avoid watching TV and computer games, it is better to keep all these things in your bedroom. Cut out light and block out noise with earplugs.

• Being Active – Here you can do a lot of activities like walking briskly for a total of 30 minutes, 5 days a week will not only reduce stress levels, but will also help reduce your risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Get out with your friends, spend an evening and a lot cheaper than going to the pub. Chasing your kids around might help you to tackle stress.

• Exercise Regularly – Exercise help manage stress, doing exercise regularly can improve your mood, stamina and sex life as well. Exercise helps protect you from heart diseases, stroke, high blood pressure, obesity and back pain. You don’t need to go to the gym, just learn the benefits of dancing, gardening, walking briskly and many more.

• Relaxing Your Body – Learn to relax, this is a great way to reduce stress as well. Try listening to soft music with no vocals and choose music with instruments like piano or violin. Take a bath and indulge in your private time and have to relax your body. Get a massage from professional massage spa.

• Do Your Favourite Activities – Do things you love, set aside time on a daily basis to do those things you enjoy or try to learn something new to take your mind off of whatever is bothering you.

• Talk To Someone – Talking things through with a friend, relatives, officemate, your immediate family or even health professionals can aid you find solutions to your stress.

These stress management techniques can really help on reducing stress and they are for guidance only and I advice anyone to consult a health professionals before any major change in diet or levels of exercise and other stress-related illnesses.

How Positive Thinking Helps

The world is full of evil. Ever since the world began, the dark side have already existed. It can be the devil in the garden of Eden, the disasters that the pre-historic animals in the Ice Age experienced or the brutality during the Dark Ages. These are all negative entities in the world. All the more now in the highly advanced modern world. The world is full of evil more than ever. We need positive thinking to overcome it.

The Need to Focus on What is Important

The evil around the world has made us worry about the present and the future. It has taken our attention from making the most of the present where it should be. Worrying about future and even the present is not helpful. There is a difference between worrying and caring for. You do not need to worry about the future to feel okay. What you need to do is to care for it. Not worrying does not mean that you do not care for the future.

On the other hand, worrying can cripple you. It will make you paranoid. And paranoia brings about adverse effects on the thinker and what he does. But if you have positive thinking, you will not worry about your future. You will care for it. You will think of it with a positive outlook. In the process, you will be able to move on towards the future with confidence and actual capability.

The Dream to be Happy

Happiness is still the ultimate goal of human life in this highly advanced modern world. You are still entitled to be happy. You still have the right and freedom to seek happiness. Without positive thinking, you will not think of becoming happy anymore. In the process, you are depriving yourself of this ultimate fulfilment as a human being. In other words, positive thinking helps you to stay human and sane in this maddening modern world.

Doing What Needs to be Done

Further, it is positive thinking that eventually enables us people to be happy, stay happy, set more goals to be happy and actually do what needs to be done to do so. Positive thinking will not be complete and its rationale will not be achieved if we are not able to achieve its goal which is to be happy. We should do what needs to be done to achieve our goals and be truly happy. Positive thinking enables us to do so. It is positive thinking that actually enables us to act and do what we need to do in life. Because of the many and big discouragements in life, without positive thinking, we are paralysed.

How Teachers Spend Their Time When They Are Not Teaching

 Work is generally associated with the work place. We usually think that as soon as a worker leaves company premises, working also ends. This is what most parents and pupils or students see with teachers. Classes end as early as 3:00pm and that is the time most people know that the work of the teacher ends. That is the time when we see they end their teaching work. But what do they do afterwards when they are not teaching? How do they spend their time when they are not teaching?

The Amount of Time Not Teaching

The work of a teacher is usually equated to teaching. Many people think that the life of a teacher is like that of a pupil. That means that teachers also have the time “working” time and free time as that of pupils. In other words, many people think that when pupils are off from school or on long vacations, teachers are also. Workers and employees in other sectors usually envy teachers because of these long holidays and “guaranteed free” weekends because we think “no classes, no work.”

Not Teaching But Still Working

On the average, employees and workers in the UK work 37 hours every week. That is close to a conclusive estimate of the work they do because almost all of them do tasks in and for their jobs only during office hours or working time. But this does not apply to teachers. The nature of their work requires them to do some more work after classes. That is what we do not usually see. And if we add the time being consumed in doing these, it will total 48 hours because they need to prepare lessons before teaching in classes. During the school term, teachers work for as long as 56 hours in a week.

Working When Others Are Not

Further, our idea is that teachers do not have work when there are no classes. That means we think that they are also on vacation when students have no classes, on vacation and school is closed. This, added to the holidays that all working people have, totals to 65 days for the whole year. Other employees or workers only have around 28. However, teachers still do work during student vacations and holidays.

Credit and Compensation

As mentioned, most of us do not know that teachers still do tasks for their job after teaching in the classroom. And they agree. They believe, think or know that many people do not know or even just notice that they put in more hours and effort than can be seen in the classroom and the school. Eight in every 10 teachers who were respondents of a survey paid for by TES Connect say that they think the tasks they need to do outside the classroom and beyond class time are not noticed by employers, parents and pupils. Moreover, performing these incidental tasks during night time and weekends affects the health and personal lives of teachers as human beings. Again, they need to rest and enjoy too just like other human beings. When these are not met, the body and mind will suffer.

Comparison

To give us a better and larger view of how teachers fare among other professionals with regards to logging in official and unofficial time for their work, here is a list of the Top 10 Hard-Working Professions derived by TES Connect in its studies.

1. Production Managers and Directors of Mining and Energy Firms – 49.6 (hours per week)

2. Teache
   rs – 48.3

3. Advertising and PR Directors – 42.2

4. Financial Institution Managers and Directors – 40.9

5. IT Engineers – 39.0

6. Chief Executive Officers and Solicitors – 38.5

7. Medical Practitioners – 38.4

8. HR Managers and Directors – 38

9. Barristers and Judges – 36

10. Accountants – 35.6

Time and Effort

The extension of the working time of the teachers cannot be disregarded. As human beings, they are also entitled to rest or relaxation and recreation. If the employees and workers in other sectors do not need to work after daily working time and in the weekends, teachers should also be afforded the same right. They are not only deprived of time to rest and relax. In the process, they are also being subjected to more health hazards.

The Time Spent When Not Teaching

So how do teachers spend their time when they are not teaching? They prepare to teach. They prepare lesson materials and process the output that they and their students produce. It is not only getting ready for the next school day or week. It is also about assessing the performance of their students and their own. They need to check papers, record scores and compute grades. These are what teachers do during the time when they are not teaching.

Solutions

Yes, the government should highly considering raising the salaries of teachers. Better yet, adjusting the total working time of the teachers must be done. Teachers should be given time to do the “non-teaching” aspect of their job during school working time. For example, they should be given a teaching load of half of a day so that they will still have time during working days to prepare for lessons, check papers and other tasks and do not need to do it during the night and weekends when they should be resting, relaxing, enjoying or do their other roles like being parents to their own children.