How to handle stress at work

I have been a production support engineer at an investment bank, and a market making trading firm. One part of what I do in a nutshell is putting fires. You can think as a first-aid responder, constantly working under extreme pressure. So here I am going to address those and hopefully give people some tips.

1. High stress situations represent opportunity. Stress gives you the adrenaline to perform better physically. Mentally it helps one mature, because there will be more stressful scenarios in the future. The only thing you can do is to overcome head-on and be ready for the next round. Therefore this is a great opportunity for personal growth and show what you are made of when all eyes are on you.
2. Preparation eliminates certain stress as well. Writing good documentation and following good process can both help navigate through different quagmires with less panic.
3. Expecting others to be 100% perfect like us gives unwanted mental stress. It is miserable to blame someone else. The best way to think about is to firstly admit different people have different merits and life goals. Secondly, focus on the work itself and be remote about personal relationships. You need to draw a clear line between what is a politically admired connection and what is a buddy-like connection. Thirdly, always remember there will be more people appreciating negative feedbacks with good etiquette than you can imagine. Fourthly, identify tasks that can make a physical impact to the company. This will inevitably give up other smaller tasks which can be done by anybody. Remember more ownership means transferring the stress from uncontrollable-things to controllable-things. Finally, it is a good thing that everyone in your team is promoted. It just means more room for you rather than sinking together.
4. Stress can come from incorrect form of leadership. Leadership is not about assigning people tasks and ask people to do the things your way, which can be easily disagreed. Rather, leadership is about taking total ownership, expand influence, respect, being-a-servant and motivation.
5. A psychological research paper pointed work stress was mainly handling simultaneous tasks and having limited time. To overcome such, we need to ruthlessly prioritize our to-do list and automate redundant tasks. Do 20% of work and have 80% of impact, and not the opposite. You will be very surprised by how much you can achieve striking out two least important to-do tasks daily. Furthermore, you will be amazed how much it can do for you if applying those techniques outside of work.
6. There can be stress where one might think is not contributing enough. The reality is no one is expert in every fields. An expert in python may not know the specific library you are using for database connection. Every person is hired with certain unique traits which can help the company.
7. Both failures and mistakes are part of the success, depending on how humble we are to treat them. We learn from mistakes, and we learn more from failures. More importantly, proactively accepting failures frees us from unnecessary expectation, competition, and stress. I understand keeping appearances up is very important, however humans can mistakes.
8. Exercise, sleep and self-discipline can relieve stress and prepare us. We need energy to physically sit through stressful scenarios. Keeping ourselves healthy in the 20–30s will make sure we can enjoy the rest of our lives to the fullest.
9. Spending your salary is also a great way to handle stress. Buy or do something you like worth of all the efforts you put in. This will hopefully motivate us through difficult times to not easily give up.
10. Attitude is everything. Stress is knowing things need to be changed but we are too easily giving things up. Self-discipline is your capital to be set apart with majority of the people. Dreams don’t come true without lasting self-discipline.