Owing to our fast-paced workplaces, our collective stress baselines are higher than ever before, and against this backdrop, you might find yourself getting anxious more easily at work. Today, workplace anxiety is common, but it is also manageable and to some degree, even preventable. Our minds and bodies aren’t our enemies; in our modern relentless work environments, they’re our greatest allies — if we know how to use them. To manage workplace anxiety, it is important to adopt approaches to support our salience network (the brain’s system for prioritizing and integrating important information) and calm the nervous system. One way to do this is to adopt the salience network hack — every 20 minutes, rotate your neck and eyes, and shift your focus between close and distant objects. This breaks the pattern of sustained stillness, disrupting the “panic circuit” and resetting the nervous system, helping to reduce anxiety and restore calm and focus. Another strategy is to create a “panic pack” — a small bag containing items to calm your senses. You can keep it at your desk or in your work bag. Your bag should include something with strong tastes like sour, bitter, or salty to stimulate the vagus nerve at the back of the tongue, which may help promote a calming effect. You could also keep nuts, fruit, or homemade energy bites that can help stabilize blood sugar and provide essential nutrients. Chewing and swallowing activate the vagus nerve, which can help calm the autonomic nervous system.
