I. INTRODUCTION Everyone suffers from stress. No one is immune to it. A certain person suffers stress on some level. Sometimes levels are higher and sometimes they are considerably lower. We don’t have to let stress stop us from achieving what we want in life. Stress is common to workers, parents and citizens. Stress in the workplace is a growing concern in the present condition of the economy, where employees increasingly face conditions of overwork, job insecurity, low levels of job satisfaction, and lack of autonomy. Workplace stress has been shown to have a causing death effect on the health and well-being among employees, as well as a negative impact on workplace productivity and profits. These are solutions that individuals and organizations can take to alleviate the negative impact of stress, or it can be surpassed. But, employees must need to learn first to recognize the symptoms that indicates they are feeling stressed out and employees need to be aware at the effects that stress had on their employees’ health as well as on company profits. The pressures of modern lives, coupled with the demands of a job can lead to emotional imbalances that are collectively labeled stress. Not all stress is unpleasant. To be alive means to respond to achievement and the excitement of the challenge. In fact, evidence indicates that people need amount of stimulation, and that monotony can bring on some of the same problems as over work. Both good and bad events can cause stress in an adult’s daily life. Generally, stress is a part of everyone’s life. If we can learn to control it, then we will probably have a better chance at succeeding.
II. BODY OF THE LETTER
A. DEFINITION OF STRESS STRESS is our body’s physical and emotional reaction to circumstance or events that frighten, irritate, confuse, endanger, or excite us and place demands on the body. Stress is an imprecise term. It is usually defined in terms of the internal and external conditions that create stressful situations, and the symptoms that people experience when they are stressed. Mcgrath’s defined that the implication of the degree of stress is correlated with a person perceived in ability to deal with an environment demand. These would lead to the conclusion that a person’s level of stress depends on their self-perceived ability and self-confidence. Stress is correlated with a person’s fear of failure.

Arnold and Feldman (1986) define stress as “the reactions of individuals to new or threatening factors in their work environment”. Since our work environment often contain new situations this definition suggest that stress in unavoidable. This definition also highlights the fact that reactions to stressful situation or individualized, and can result in emotional, perceptual, behavioral, and physiological changes. Williams and Huber (1986 define stress as “a psychological and physical reaction to prolonged internal and environmental conditions in which an individual’s adoptive capabilities are over extended.” They argue that stressed is an adoptive response to a conscious or unconscious threat. Like Mcgrath, they point out that stress is a result of a “perceived” threat, and is not necessarily to actual environmental conditions. The amount of stress that is produced by a given situation depends upon one’s perception of the situation, not the situation itself. In other words, stress is a relativistic phenomena. Gestalt therapy verbatim(Real People Press, 1969), Perls proposes a more general definition, where stress is a manifestation of thinking about the future. Anxiety is created by focusing attention away from the “here and now”. It is created by expectations of the future. The tension between the now and the later. According to Perls, there is no difference between good stress and bad stress. They are both created by thinking about the future. When anxiety finds an outlet, we say that the stress was motivating, when it doesn’t, we call it debilitating. French, kast and Rosenzweig (1985) also emphasized the idea that stress itself is not necessarily bad. The term stress can be considered neutral with the words distress and eustress used for designating load and good effects. (P. 707). They propose a model that defines an optimum range of stress in terms of its effects on performance. Stress levels that exceed an optimum level result in decreased performance and eventual burnout. Stress levels below a minimum level result in decreased performance and “rust-out”.
B. THE NATURE OF STRESS According to George Jones, 1996, stress is the experience of opportunities or threats that people perceive as important and also perceive they might not be able handle or deal with effectively. FOUR ASPECTS OF NATURE OF STRESS First, stress can be experience because of both opportunities and threats. An opportunity is something that has the potential to benefit a person. A threat is something that has the potential to harm a person. Opportunities such as learning new skills or getting a new job can be stressful if workers lack self-efficacy and fear that they will not be able to perform at an acceptable level. When an organization reduces the size of its work force, employees experience stress because of the threats to their financial security, psychological well-being, or career development that downsizing creates (George, Jones, 1996). A second aspect of stress is that the threat or opportunity experience is important to a person. By important, we mean that it has the potential to affect a person’s well-being or the extent to which someone is happy, healthy, or prosperous. Many of the things that people encounter in their daily lives could be classified as opportunities or threats, but usually only the important ones result in stress (George, Jones, 1996). A third key aspect of stress is uncertainty. The person who is experiencing an important opportunity or threat is not sure that they can effectively handle an opportunity or threat; they usually do not experience stress (George, Jones, 1996). The last aspect of stress emphasized in our definition is that stress is rooted in perception. Whether people experience stress depends on how they perceive potential opportunities and threats and how they perceive their capabilities to deal with them. One person might perceive a job change or a promotion as an opportunity for learning career advancement, and another person might perceive the same job change or promotion as a threat because of the potential for failure (George, Jones, 1996).
C. SOURCE OF STRESS
Cole, G.A. (2000) says that the sources of stress at work can be numerous.
They are:
• Difficult working conditions
• Insufficient resources
• Increased accountability
• Job description overload
• Short deadlines
• Poor defining of the jobs
• Faulty organizational communication
• Changes within the organization
• Restructuring
• Redundancies
• Technological change The effective manager lists common indicators that people may be experiencing excessive stress. The stressor, or thing that cause this stress, may come from work, non-working, or personal factors (schermerhorn, J. hunt J. Osborn, r. 1998). Stress in the workplace arises from many sources. It can result from excessively high or low task demand, role conflicts or ambiguities, poor interpersonal relations, or career progress that is either too slow or too fast. A list of comma work-related stressor includes.
• Task demands –being asked too much or too little.
• Role ambiguities –not knowing performance expectations or work standards.
• Role conflicts –experiencing multiple and possible conflicting performance expectations.
• Ethical dilemmas –being asked to do illegal things; being asked to do things that violate personal values.
• Interpersonal problems –experiencing poor relationships, working with others who do not get along.
• Career developments –moving too fast and feeling overwhelmed; moving too slowly and feeling plateaued.
• Physical setting –being bothered of an healthy or unpleasant working conditions.

• Spillover
a) Family events ex.) The birth of child
b) Economic difficulties ex.) The sudden loss of a big investment
c) Personal affairs ex.) divorce Another source of stressor is personal, including individual needs, capabilities, and personality. These are a property of the individual that influence how he/she perceives and responds to stress emanating from work and non-working sources. Stress can reach a harmful state more quickly, for example, when experienced by highly emotional people or by those with low self-esteem. The achievement orientation, impatience and perfectionism of individuals with Type A personalities, for example, often creates stress for them in work setting tat others find relatively stress-free (Schermerhorn J., hunt., Osborn R. 1998).

D. CONSEQUENCE OF STRESS The fact that stress has become a harmful phenomenon is no longer a shocking information, but what we should do, especially when we think of its negative consequences, is to look at things not only from the individual’s perspective, whose health and psychological state can be affected, but also from the perspective of the environment, respectively from the perspective of the organization of which it is part (Cole, G.A., 2000).

Because what a worker consider stress is highly personal, workers differ the extent to which they experience the consequences of stress, even when they are exposed to the same sources of stress (such as making a presentation or getting laid off). At same point in their lives, however, all workers experience some of the consequences of stress. Each consequence has the potential to affect well-being, performance, and effectiveness at the individual, group, and organizational levels (Cole, G.A. 2000).

D.1. THREE MAIN OF CONSEQUENCES

D.1.a. PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSQEUNCES Such sleep disturbances are just one of the potential physiological consequences or stress. Other potential physiological consequences range from sweaty palms, feeling flushed, trembling, a pounding heart, elevated blood pressure, headaches, dizziness, nausea, stomachaches, backaches, and hives to heart attacks and impaired immune system functioning (George, Jones, 1996).

The relationship between stress and physiological consequences is complicated, and researchers are still struggling to understand the dynamics involved (George, Jones, 1996)

The most serious physiological consequence of stress is likely to occur only after considerably high levels of stress are experience for a prolonged period of time. High blood pressures, cardiovascular disease, and heart attacks, for example, may result from executive levels prolonged stress (George, Jones, 1996)

D.1.b. PHSYCOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES One of the major psychological consequences of stress is the experience of stressful feelings and emotions. Stressful feelings and emotions can range from being in a bad mood, feeling anxious, worried, and upset to feeling and angry, scornful, bitter or hostile. Any or all of these feeling will distract from workers well-being (George, Jones, 1996). Another psychological consequence of stress is that people tend to have more negative attitudes when they experience stress. Workers who are highly stressed tend to have more negative outlook on various aspect of their job and organizations and are more likely to have low levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment (George, Jones, 1996).

Burnout- psychological, emotional, or physical exhaustion – is a special kind of psychological consequence of stress that afflicts some workers who experience high levels or work stress day in and day out for an extended period of time. Burnout or especially likely to occur when workers are responsible for helping, protecting, or taking care of other people (George, Jones, 1996).

D.1.b-1. THREE SIGNS OF BURNOUT A) Feeling of low personal accomplishment Burned-out workers often feel that they are not helping others or accomplishment as much as they should be. B) Feeling of emotional exhaustion Emotionally they are worm out from the constant stress of dealing with People who are sometimes in desperate need of assistance. C) Feeling of depersonalization Burned-out workers sometimes depersonalize the people they need to help. Thinking about them as objects or thing rather than as feeling human beings.

D.1.c. BEHAVIORAL CONSEQUNCES

The potential consequences of stress on job performance are perhaps of most interest to managers. Stress levels that are too high, however, can impair performance and thus are negative. Excessively high levels of stress may prevent workers from effectively performing their jobs. (George, Jones, 1996)

Individual differences also affect the relationship between stress and performance. Some workers, because of their personalities and abilities, are able to withstand high levels of stress that seem to propel them on to even higher levels of performance, for such workers suffer when stress becomes too high. For each worker, the point at which increase in levels of stress result in decrease in performance depends on the worker’s personality traits and abilities (George, Jones, 1996). Excessively high levels of stress may also lead to absenteeism and turnover especially when workers have other employment options. A recent study found that many nurses experienced so much stress and burnout that they are planning to quit their current jobs or leave nursing altogether (George, Jones, 1996).

E. CAUSES OF STRESS
Four major potential stressors (sources of stress) are:
E.1. personal
E.2. job responsibilities
E.3. membership in work groups and organizations
Work-life linkages

Across these four categories of potential stressors, there is an almost infinite variety of stressors that may confront workers and lead to the physiological, psychological, and behavioral consequences of stress. The effects of these stressors combine to determine the overall level of stress a person experiences, each stressor contributes to or influence how stressed a person generally feels (George, Jones, 1996)
F. THE SYMPTOMS OF STRESS AT WORK
Feeling stress can change the way a person feels, think and behaves. These symptoms include:
At individual level:
• Physiological reaction (dorsal problems, law immunity, gastric ulcer, heart problems, hypertensions)
• Emotional reactions (irritability, anxiety, sleep disturbances, depression, hypochondria, alienation, fatigue, problems in family relationships).
• Cognitive reactions (difficulty in concentration in memory in learning new thing, in making decisions).
• Behavioral reactions (drug abuse, alcohol and tobacco, distractive behavior).
• Physiological reaction (dorsal problems, low immunity, gastric ulcer, heart problems, hypertension). At the level of organization
• Absenteeism
• Faulty calendar
• Disciplinary problems
• Bullying
• Low productivity
• Accidents
• Errors
• Increased costs from compensation
• Health care (Jick, Payne, 1980)

G. CONTROLLING STRESS.
It is important to learn how to reduce stress. The following activities can help reduce stress.
• Take time to think and relax.
• Read a good book.
• Work on hobby.
• Play an instrument.
• Exercise, take a walk – this is the easiest and most effective means of reducing stress.
• Listen a music.
• Be aware of the food you eat. Some foods with high fats, sugar, caffeine, salt and addictives can use contribute to stress.
• Breathe deeply and use breathing exercises to relieve anxiety, depression, irritability, and fatigue.
• Build a support system. Talk with friends or family that you trust about problems you have or decisions that you must make.
• Develop your communication skills so that your communication is honest, direct, and respectful of yourself and others.
• Identity areas of agreement and disagreement and look for options to resolve the conflict in a win/win solution.
• Improve your ability to see options and resource that can be use to solve problems.
• Plan
• Laugh
• Take a mental health day and spend time with yourself or with friends.

Four ways to deal with stress before talking a test, giving a speech, our completing a project:
1. Breathe deeply – this will get your blood and will help you to feel invigorated.
2. Exercise – take a quick walk for about five minutes.
3. Eat a snack – fruit or something sweet will help raise your blood sugar and give you some energy.
4. Take a quick break – get up, walk around, listen to music, use self-talk, and visualize yourself completing the test, project, etc…

H. WORKPLEACE STRESS AND CONSEQUNCE OF HEALHT There is no doubt that stress can impact a person’s health. It is a potential source of both anxiety and frustration, each of which can harm the body’s physiological and/or physiological well-being over time. Health problems associated with stress include heart attack, stroke, hypertension, migraine head ached, ulcers, substance abuse, overeating, depression, and muscle aches (Schermerhorn J. Hunt, Osborn R. 1998) Managers should be alert to signs of excessive stress in themselves and their coworkers. The symptoms are multiple and varied. The key thing to look for in observable work behaviors are from normal patterns – a change from regular attendance to absenteeism, from punctuality to tardiness, from diligent work to careless work, form a positive attitude to a negative attitude, from openness to change to resistance to change, or from cooperation to hostility, for example.

Individuals can experience stress in different ways, that’s why some response here may seem contradictory. Different personalities can be more resilient than others, but this does not lessen the significance of stress as a workplace health and safety issue (Schermerhorn J, Hunt J, Osborn R. 1998).

Physical responses and effects
Short-term responses:
• Increased heart rate, blood pressure and levels of cortical (known as the “stress hormone”), muscle tension, an increase in the frequency or severity of headaches;
• Over-eating or loss of appetite
Long –term consequences:
• Back problem, heart disease, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes,
• Gastrointestinal problems such as stomach ulcers and heartburn.

Stress can also weaken your immunity system, making you vulnerable to illness, as well as aggravate any existing health problems.

Emotional responses and effects
You may:
• Feel anxious, irritable, hopeless, isolated or guilty.
• Have low-self-esteem.
• Suffer depression or mental illness.
Behavioral responses and effects
You may:
• Feel aggressive, causing conflicts or showing risk-taking behaviors.
• Feel lethargic, unmotivated and apathetic.
• Drink or take drugs to cope, unwind or forget your pressures.

It’s important to remember that these signs may be similar to those of an illness or disease, and may have nothing to do with workplace stress, investigate fully and cautiously before coming to any conclusion, and always talk to the person without any preconceive opinions and or judgments.

III. SUMMARY
This study primarily aimed to know more information about the values and essence of stress in or lives.

Below is the summary of this term paper:
1. Stress refers to the physiological arousal that accompanies negative emotions that threatens our mental and physical health.
2. Stressors are people, events, situation that cause stress.
3. Emotionally, people who are frustrated become angry and annoyed, when pressured they become aroused and anxious when placed in conflicting situations, they become irritable and hostile.
4. Physiologically, stress responses produced changes in the individuals bodily functions increased heart rate, faster breathing, high blood pressure, sweating palms, and dilation of the pupils.
5. Behaviorally, individuals who are moderately aroused or stressed behave in optimal effectiveness, when they are under aroused, they lack the stimulation to behave effectively; and when they are over aroused they become disorganized and ineffective.
6. Burn out is work-related and people who are face high-pressure conditions at work often feel debilitated, hopeless and emotionally drained.
7. Most people have ways of coping with anxiety and with physical ailments produced by stress: resilience, social support, “laughter is the best medicine”, defense mechanisms (rationalization and reaction formation), exercise, and nutrition and diet.
8. Behavioral psychologist recommend task-oriented coping strategies for managing stress: identifying the stressor, choosing an appropriate curse of action, implementing the plan, and evaluating its success.
9. Health psychology is concerned with the use of psychological ideas and principles, and rehabilitation processes.

CONCLUSION:

Based on the findings of this study, the following conclusions are drawn: Stress affects individual well-being and has the potential affect the extent to which individuals and organizations achieve their goals and perform at a high level. Stress is bound up with worker’s personal lives; thus the study of stress also entails exploring the nature of work-life linkages.

Stress can have physiological, psychological, behavioral consequences. The relationship between stress and physiological consequences is complicated, and the most serious physiological consequences result only after considerably high levels of stress have been experienced for a prolonged period of time. Psychological consequences of stress include negative feelings, moods, and emotions; negative attitudes; and burn-out. Potential behavioral consequences of stress include job performance, strained interpersonal relations, absenteeism, and burn over. College counselors report that burn-out often causes students to drop out, they should consider ways to reduce their work and class load so that school seems less overwhelming and more manageable.

One way to reduce the livelihood of burn-out is to take a vacation. Research shows that time spent on vacation enhances peoplzes well-being by decreasing their complaints about health problems and exhaustion.

A certain level of stress is positive in that can result in high levels of job performance. When stress levels are excessively high, negative stress is experience, and performance suffers. other potential behavioral consequences of high stress include strained interpersonal relations, absenteeism, and turnover.