Even if you’ve discovered your dream job, you’re not immune from work stress from time to time, simply because everything in life only sometimes goes perfectly according to plan.

Whether you’re battling work stress every day or just once in a while, you can use some practical techniques to relieve it. Learning healthy ways to release your stress and prevent a stressful reaction in the first place is critical to your health, success, and peace of mind.

Here are some strategies to combat work stress:

1. Practice effective communication. If coworkers are causing you stress, ask yourself, “Why?” There’s a good chance that the two of you aren’t communicating.

• Put yourself in their shoes to better understand their point of view.
  
  
• Listen to their needs and see if they can be met. If you can satisfy their requirements, a source of conflict is removed, and so is the stress associated with it.
  
  
• Also, if you can better communicate your needs, others are more likely to agree with your requests.

2. Think positively. When things turn sour, you may be tempted to fall into a negative pattern of thinking. It’s easy to say that you hate your job, but are you doing anything to improve the situation? If you adopt a positive attitude, it’ll be easier to maintain the drive you need to overcome problems at work.

• It’s possible that everything at work is not as wrong as you think! Focusing on the things that are going right will bring you more patience and less stress and increase your overall business satisfaction.

3. Take care of yourself. If you’re dedicated to your job, you may lose yourself in it. No wonder you’re under a great deal of stress! You may feel as if your business has become your whole life. In these instances, it’s best to take a step back and focus on taking care of yourself.

• Take regular breaks and enjoy something that’s not work-related when you’re not working.
  
  
• Avoid working overtime or taking work home with you. Occasionally, it may cause you less stress to stay and finish a project rather than be late. However, it might also help you to work on strengthening your time management skills if this occurs frequently.
  
  
• Take care of your body by exercising, eating nutritious foods, and getting enough sleep. While that sounds so simple, how often do we rush around on 4 hours of sleep, a coffee, and a donut all day long?

4. Accept that everyone’s human, including The drive to be perfect, is an automatic stress inducer! Everyone makes mistakes – you, your coworkers, and your clients.

• Trust that other people will get the business done right. You and your team can still produce quality work, even with occasional mistakes. If you remain flexible, you’ll be less likely to feel stressed.

5. Understand other points of view. When you know where someone is coming from, you’ll be better able to understand the situation without all the stress. For example, if you can understand your manager’s expectations, you can take action to meet them, or you can communicate your own more realistic expectations.

6. Get organized. Organization can be a crucial factor for business stress relief. If your workplace is disorganized, it can also cause disorganization in your mind. Your thoughts may become scattered, and you’ll be less likely to think on your feet effectively, causing even more stress.

7. Take responsibility. If you take responsibility for your actions, you can also reduce stress. When you keep yourself accountable, you’ll be focused on constant self-improvement without the lies, blame, or cover-ups.

Reducing stress at work will take a little practice, but the results are well worth the effort. Follow these work stress strategies daily, and soon you’ll find fewer and fewer situations to feel stressed about.

A classic on stress management is Robert Sapolsky’s Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, now in a third edition. A great mix of technical and practical, you will learn why stress management is critical for performance and health, and it will convince you to get your stress under control.

If you want an excellent primer on stress management for women executives, try Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski. She focuses on how stress impacts women differently and offers several strategies to manage stress and break the stress cycle.