Stress is a normal part of life for everyone. Some stress is good and can help you become more productive and aware in high pressure situations. The natural, physical response to it will trigger your fight-or-flight mechanism, which will help you handle emergencies in an effective way. However, when stress is constant over time, it can be detrimental to your health. The fact that the number of students facing mental health issues related to chronic stress is still growing, shows we should devote more attention to how students can cope with- or decrease their stress levels. Hence, this week the Surf your Stress program provides insight in the influence of stress on your body and mind and offers practical tips on how to deal with it.
As the student startup incubator and educator of Wageningen University & Research, we work on a daily basis with students who spend a lot of time and effort on growing their entrepreneurial skills and ideas. From the work of Peter Vork, who did his MSc thesis on stress among student entrepreneurs, we know that entrepreneurial students are prone to experiencing moderate to high levels of stress during their career for numerous reasons. For some of them, combining the academic and entrepreneurial demands simply gives them too much workload. For others, dealing with uncertainty (and risk taking), managing high external expectations and coping with stakeholder demands results in chronic stress. Also, significant attention should be paid to stress originating from the challenges that are faced when working in a team.
That is why, already one month ago, we devoted our first Inspiration session to this particular topic. Together Peter Vork, Wilmar Pasveer, Lian Angelino, Mendelt Tillema and Lisa Ploum, we discussed multiple statements about stress. Here we shortly went over some of the principles of effectuation, which can help entrepreneurs to maintain control by taking small steps in one direction instead of working towards long-term goals with unpredictable outcomes. The five principles of the effectuation theory can be found on https://www.effectuation.org/. The recording of Inspiration 1: ‘’Let’s talk about stress’’ can be accessed here.
To this day, we already strongly advise our students to make use of the coaches that we have, to talk about one’s mental wellbeing. Yet to better understand, deal with and prevent stress among entrepreneurial students, we are working together with Peter on ways to improve our incubator. According to his research, organizing events, workshops or courses on stress management will raise awareness and create a better understanding of the needs of our students. In the future, establishing a peer group of entrepreneurial members who get together periodically to share relevant stress-related experiences and coping resources might turn out to be a great way to prevent and deal with stress in an early stage. This can be done in the form of a group session led by a coach, who ensures a safe environment where you can blow off steam.
We are always looking for your opinion on how to improve our Hub. Are you willing to share it? Just send us an email at Starthub.wageningen@wur.nl.