Stress is a natural response that your body displays when you face an imminent threat. This is the so-called fight or flight response.
This is why, when you are stressed, you experience a number of symptoms, including a faster heartbeat, higher blood pressure, a feeling of having a knot in your stomach, and more. These changes exist so that you are better prepared to either run away quickly from a threat or to fight against it.
However, when the stress response is continuous, your body never has a chance to relax and recover. This leads to a state of chronic stress, which is extremely bad for your overall health (both physical and mental).
Our modern lifestyle is particularly conducive to the development of chronic stress because we tend to struggle in dealing with competing demands for our time and attention.
As a result, we never let go of worries and we might start worrying too much about things that happened in the past or may happen in the future. This can lead to a loss of perspective and stress and anxiety dominating our lives.
Finding ways to manage, reduce and relieve stress is, therefore important to keep chronic stress at bay.
Chronic stress can lead to (or exacerbate) serious health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune syndromes, depression, anxiety disorders, and more.
This is why being able to manage and reduce stress is so important for your health.
In addition, stress management helps you improve your relationships with others (as you will be more positive and less likely to want to escalate conflict) and it can benefit your career too.
In the workplace, stress management is important both for the individual members of staff and for an organization as a whole.
For you as an individual, being able to cope with stress at work will make you more productive and increase your chances of success and job satisfaction.