Master stress, anxiety and pressure at work. Blog #12

Pressure is a lot of information to process at one given time, stress is too much of it and anxiety is the apprehension of more stress and pressure for us to face

We are creatures of habits. Everything we do is down to how our automatic pilot has been programmed from childhood and through our young adulthood. 70% of today's thoughts are the same as yesterday. The same thoughts trigger the same feelings and emotions and the same feelings and emotions dictate our actions. And that explains why we always replay our past, doing and talking about the same things with the same people, in the same places, at the same time, thinking the same thoughts and feeling and reacting the same way all the time...

Because we become better at whatever we repeat, if we have been cultivating the habit of anxiety and stressing out for long enough, we end up very proficient at the skill and art of feeling anxious and stressing out for just about anything.

Good stress 

In manageable portions pressure and stress are good. We need pressure and stress in the right volume and intensity to elicit adaptation and growth and the adequate recovery to absorb and adapt to the new informations. Physically when we train our body at the gym for instance with a new load of weight or repetition, the muscles and joints involved in the process will experience mini traumas. Over the next couple of days or so the brain will think "mmm I don't know what happened but that might happen again so I am going to make sure that I am better prepared for next time". As a result the body adapts by creating more muscles, stronger joints and enhanced motor skills. 

From a mental perspective the process is similar. When we learn something new we stress our mind with fresh datas to add to our memory banks. When we deal with new situations we stress our mind with new equations and algorithms to develop accordingly so we are ready the next time that happens. Stress is stimulation. Stress is growth. Stress is necessary for our development and human experience. 

Bad stress 

To expand the physical training example, if we train too much too soon and don't allow ourselves enough recovery time we slow down, we increasingly accumulate risks of injuries and the training becomes counter productive when we inevitably hurt ourselves. 

With the mind the overload happens when we constantly sustain negative self talk, self criticism, worrying of not being able to cope with whatever may happen. A lengthy exposure to that regime causes a lingering sympathetic state. It is important to highlight that although it is created in the mind, anxiety is the physical repercussion of a prolonged sympathetic state as it is felt in the body.

Sympathetic versus parasympathetic state 

Sympathetic = Fight, flight or freeze. Parasympathetic = Rest, recover and process

In the wild a gazelle starts to run for her life the moment she senses danger. When the gazelle eventually realises that the predator is out of reach she slows down and resumes grazing under the sun... For the human mind however there is no difference between the anxiety of an upcoming meeting or the stress of being late at it and a life threatening danger. So as we allow our mind to be consumed by the past and worried about the future, unlike the gazelle, we never cease to run. There is not a single organism on the planet that can withstand such amount of pressure, stress and anxiety, and yet we do this to ourselves all day long all of the time. 

Bad stress belongs to the family of fear

The brain can only do one thing at the time. Multitasking is a myth. When we "multitask" we essentially go very quickly back and forth from a place to many other places. It all becomes very messy and the quality of whatever we are trying to achieve is affected. Stress is when we are doing all those things and staring at the list of things to be done at the same time. Stress is the fear of not being able to do all these things in time. Stress is the fear of not being able to cope with whatever may happen...

Stress makes us stupid

This is a physiological fact, not a judgement. Whenever we succumb to stress, because we go into a sympathetic state (emergency survival mode) the blood in the brain that carries the oxygen needed to feed whichever part of the brain needs to be activated is physically sucked from the frontal Neo Cortex (the intelligent part of the brain located at the front) into our primary brains (situated at the back and bottom). From an evolutionary standpoint those brains are the best equipped for that emergency state as they have done a great job for millions of years and we have now switched off physically the intelligent part of the brain, and switched on the reactive, binary, insecure and paranoid primary ones, resulting in a dramatic drop of IQ when we need mind clarity the most in the work context.

We are not our feelings

A good parent will never tell their kids "you are bad, you are stupid". They will say "you have done something bad, you have said something stupid". This way the children don't internalise the disempowering feelings and can learn to do better next time. In exactly the same way we must remind ourselves that "we are not anxious". We feel anxiety.

The reason we internalise our emotions and feelings is because we believe it is the way things work. We want to replace that unproductive belief with the understanding that we can change the way we feel at any given moment by the power of the thought.

Now that we have a clearer idea of the nature of stress and anxiety here are few things we can do.

Stop believing in stress

The first course of action is to change our relationship with stress. The only reason we keep on allowing stress into our life is because we still hold the subconscious belief that it is somewhat useful and normal. Everything we do are down to what we believe. We believethat under pressure we must stress out. We believe that it is normal. Although it is common it couldn't be further from normal. In fact stress is an alarm bell, an emergency siren that alert us that we have taken too much we can chew and are loosing control.

Remember, stress makes us stupid. The moment we fully integrate and accept that powerful truth we naturally end up the habit of welcoming stress into our life.

One victory at a time

One way to do this is to change the way we operate. We want to create a plan of action, learn the difference between a plan and a list, then execute the plan one step at a time whilst keeping an awareness of the potential need for updating plan A to the ever changing flow of new informations. As we invest 100% focus on one task at a time we own a laser mind focus and we execute tasks better, quicker, without stress... whilst keeping access to our full intellectual capacities and memory banks.

Create an invisible force shield

We all live in our bubble. We control the gates of whatever comes in and out of that bubble. We want to switch on our awareness of that bubble and filter all informations from the outside in and from the inside in. In layman's terms we want to create a conscious space between us and the events of the outside world, and also a space between us and our inner world: our own thoughts and reactions. By the time those informations reach us we can disarm the toxic energy from them and become stress proof. If I have decided not to surrender to stress anymore, all I need to do is be mindful and focus my mind over only one step at a time each moment and I will not stumble ever again.

As we repeat that conscious exercise we become more skilled at it. Eventually it becomes automatic and we belong to the people who never get stressed out and develop anxiety as a result, and are very composed and efficient at whatever they do.

You are enough

A very human yet pointless source of stress and anxiety we self inflict every day in any social context in general and very much so at work is comparing and competing ourselves with others. I have written a full article about it (LinkedIn Blog #6 "There is no such thing as a healthy competition and how we keep on recreating unhappiness on a daily basis")

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/thing-healthy-competition-didi-kan/

Many of us also are people pleasers because of the toxic belief that in order to be a good person I must say YES, and we promise to do all these things we know can't possibly be done in time. Often a healthy and honest NO is all we need to bring control and kindness back into our workload...

Meditate

Meditation is a generic word few understand the full amplitude of. Meditation is the gym and training centre of the mind and there are many different types of meditation for many different goals and stages of readiness. A specific meditation teach us how to manifest and maintain the aforementioned invisible force shield protecting us from stress and anxiety and allowing us optimal mind clarity to deal with any type of pressure on the battlefield.

Be happy

The best way to keep stress and anxiety at bay is to nurture balance. Just like when we plan a schedule of the things we want to achieve, we want to plan a strategy for rest, recovery and general wellness and wellbeing. We can implement yoga, mindfulness, sleeping more and better, spending time with our loved ones, spending time doing what we enjoy doing and relearn to appreciate all the little things in life stress and anxiety blind us from.

Just like with the principles of the Yin and the Yang a parasympathetic state brings cohesion to a sympathetic one.

Severe anxiety

Anxiety comes in different categories. Because severe ones originate from associations deeply buried within our subconscious mind, RTT and MBCT are the only protocols I can vouch for to reinstate optimal balance. Rapid Transformational Therapy removes quickly and spectacularly the trigger of anxiety but may leave traces of anxiety as life goes on and new events may affect us in the future. Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy works in the long term by teaching us a paradigm shift that bullet proofs our coping mechanism, but also takes time in order to be integrated and fruitful. RTT+ MBCT is the ultimate combo that I use successfully with all my clients to heal anxiety 100% and long term in as little as one course of treatment.

Conclusion

Happiness is the healthiest state of mind. Feeling stressed out is the moment we surrender happiness to poor habits of life. Feeling anxious is when our mind gets lost in the labyrinth of stress.

Because they are a slippery slope leading to physical, mental and emotional illness, nothing in the world is worth stressing out and making us feel anxious about.

If we can address a mild bad habit of stress from the conscious mind we want to rectify it ASAP before it develops into problems. If you or someone you know already suffers from debilitating anxiety however I can absolutely help you as I have done already with so many of my clients.