For those of reading this who are NOT Scottish, anyone saying this phrase might be feeling a bit overwhelmed and stressed.

I've had some great conversations recently around this subject, and in particular, work place stress. A valued client of mine commented that work stress is that kind ‘that follows you everywhere, it comes home with you’.

Does this sound true for you? if so, can you do anything about it? Is there someone you can talk to? it’s no good for a company just to thing that running a weekly yoga class is their ‘we’re looking after our employees’ policy. Can you speak up about it?

Sometimes we can be the source of our own stress, as in, we haven’t discovered the coping strategies yet, don’t know what processes are in place to help, or we can be displaying what I call CEO behaviour from an employee who is nowhere near that level of responsibility.

What can you do to step back from your work when you leave for the day? Is there anything you can do to help you concentrate during the day, and possibly get more productivity in? I say this knowing that open plan offices are noisy places to be with loads of distractions. I have spoken to people before who take their work home with them to do in the evening so they can get peace and quiet to do it. I was really taken aback by this!

Stress doesn’t just have to be about work though. Do you recognise when you are stressed? Here are some examples that are personal to me.

1. Driving somewhere unfamiliar or in Edinburgh (seriously, do you know what I’m talking about??)

2. Driving in bad weather

3. Loud places where you have to shout to have a conversation

4. Tip of the tongue syndrome. Would you believe that a symptoms of menopause is not being able to find the right words and sometimes I stammer?

5. Feeling disorganised.

I think that recognising what potentially can make your bloody pressure rise is a good thing.

Something else that I have started doing recently is, stop saying YES to everything. My stock answer now is ‘let me get back to you’. I’m very lucky that running my own business, I don’t really have anyone but myself adding to my workload, but what about you? How do you cope when a peer asks you ‘oh can you just do….. as soon as you can?’ Do you ever find yourself agreeing to it, and it feels like you are agreeing on someone else behalf? Thats a good time to say ‘I’ll get back to you on that’.