Joy at work or stress management?

May 21, 2025

Nowadays stress management has become fashionable. Leaders and managers report high stress at work. They go to stress management trainings and learn yoga and meditation. In a way, stress has become a status symbol. In the Nepali context, I am not yet quite sure if people really have enough work and critical agenda for real stress. Even if they are really stressed, the cause is not work, but their incompetence. For a person of higher proficiency, the same problems would be easily solved.

Another cause for job related stress could be that the work does not bring them much joy. Employees cannot see enough meaning in the jobs they do. If this is the root cause, then no stress management training or yoga or meditation can be of real help — only a certain placebo effect which gives a sense of relief for a few days.

This is the reason I have termed my training title as ‘Joy at Work’ instead of ‘Stress Management’. Increasing joy at work helps in both cases — whether your stress is real or otherwise. When you find the meaning in your work and the reasons to be happy, you do not need any stress management. You can return home from work as fresh as you went in the morning. You could be even more spirited with the sense of accomplishment.

There are some more mindsets that lead your work to joyous performance. The higher up a leader goes, the longer-term is his vision. You can see a street side labourer decides if he had a good or bad day by the earning he made at the end of the day. A shopkeeper counts his success by the profit at the end of the month. A bigger businessperson talks about the year and so on. The vision of great leaders, on the other hand, extends over a lifetime and even beyond. So, failure of a day or two does not make much difference. When you broaden your vision and have a long term plan, petty things stop bothering you.

The long term vision is also related to the purpose of life. When you find that the meaning in the job matches your life purpose, stress disappears. Even if there is stress, you begin to enjoy it. It becomes fun and a positive force — a challenge you would welcome in order to fulfil the mission.

However, this is not always the case in real life situations. You may have to work for a living and to support family, even when you are confirmed that the work is against your life purpose. There is a great difference in saying, “I have to do it” and “I want to do it”.

The solution is to plan for financial independence from now on. It may take several years. But if you plan wisely, the day will come that you find yourself financially independent and can shift to the work of your choice. That is the shift from survival to free will.

Joy and meaning are associated and both of them are spiritual qualities. I firmly believe that daily yoga and meditation are must for a healthy body and mind. At the same time, finding joy at work and life is far more spiritual.

(R. Manandhar is the lead facilitator at Kabule – The Wise Leader. He has been a regular columnist on leadership for ten years in The Himalayan Times, Nepal's largest-selling English daily. This article was originally published in the paper’s 'Leadership League' column. He can be contacted at kabule2020@gmail.com.)