An artist, a psychologist and
a corporate manager are
facing a firing squad. They are each allowed one last
request. The artist says, "I'd love to have
one last look at an impressionist painting." The psychologist wants to
give a brief talk about coping with stress. The corporate manager then
jumps up and says, "shoot me first! I can't take another talk on stress
management!" (Extracted from P McGhee, Health, Healing and the
Amuse System: Humor as Survival Training)
Many of us are leading rather stressful lives. Medical research
says, "fun is a good medicine that reduces stress and generates fresh
energy into our minds and body." Today, most corporate
employees seem to be engrossed in their work and
have very little chance for fun and humor. Usually, they save it for, say,
a weekend outing, but fun is a necessary part of human life and has
a positive and powerful impact on our health. By adopting a little
humor at the workplace, stress can be reduced substantially.
Increased levels of job stress are not only in the
US, as the Japanese too have high levels of stress and
have coined a new word, karoshi, to describe cases of death due to
overwork. Recently, a survey, conducted at 412 workplaces
(employing 1,40,000 workers) throughout the UK, showed that job stress in
the UK had reached `epidemic proportions'. Seventy-one
percent of the employees said that stress levels were higher than those five
years ago. The causes for increased occupational stressor were:
Growing workloads borne by fewer employees, tough sale targets,
performance-related pay, fears about unemployment and
increasingly in human management techniques. |
