Our lives seem to be increasingly more stressful as the world becomes more competitive and maintaining a work-life balance moves farther out of reach. Research has continually shown that stress, as experienced over prolonged periods, is detrimental to our health. Chronic stress is linked with many adverse health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure and heart attacks. Chronic stress can even negatively impact our mental health, possibly leading to the development of depression or anxiety. Yet, high-stress levels can also contribute to another issue that can affect every part of your life, from your safety to your job—mistakes.
When you’re feeling stressed, your decision-making abilities aren’t at their usual best, and so mistakes about. You’re likely to make bad decisions, according to Harvard researchers. They studied students who were experiencing high-stress levels and found these students to be worse at making good long-term choices. In this way, stress can have long-lasting effects that go beyond your health to affect your life as well.
Sleep is vital for your body to repair the wear and tear your body experiences throughout the day. It’s also crucial for performing at your best, which is long-term stress, and its impact on sleep is so harmful. Stress degrades the quality of sleep you get, which means you won’t be on the top of your game the next morning. As stress interferes with your sleep, you’ll find that you might feel duller and have trouble making the connections when thinking you usually could. Lack of sleep due to stress can cause mistakes in judgment, such as when to make the left turn across traffic lanes, making it a major health risk.
Chronic stress can also be seen as a tendency to view all things from a black and white perspective grows. When you’re stressed, your brain is more likely to over-simplify things to provide some peace rather than complexity to analyze. However, this black and white thinking just perpetuates your stress, as few things are without complication. Thinking along a binary in this manner can lead to significant mistakes because of over-simplifying a problem and not considering all aspects. This mistake is one that can affect your job, as being able to think complexly is a valuable trait in any employee.
Watching out for these stress-induced mistakes can help you ensure your stress levels aren’t getting out of hand. Be sure to take some self-care time to lower your stress and risk of making major mistakes.
