Surviving Stress

Last week’s blog was about our comfort with putting out fires but what about handling the stresses that the fires create? Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to work in a nonstop, action-packed, high-performance role? That desire for achievement and competitive success urges us on but sometimes it takes us past our physical and mental limits.
The most successful people we meet are exceptionally adept at handling the stressors that go hand-in-hand with results, accountability, change and leadership. They certainly have no shortage of stressful situations in their lives.
These highly effective people know how to better process high-stress situations and they know the difference between urgent and important. Then, they find efficient ways to offset or counteract the stressors they face. Like athletes they also build in time to recover, but at work we rarely do. Why not? The issue for many is that commitment is noticed through hard work and suffering, after all, only slackers take time off during the day.
However, if we have the self-awareness to shift our mind-set toward developing skills that allow us to deal with pressure and stress, we will develop the capability to survive and indeed thrive, in our action packed business environment
Staying occupied is never an issue for a busy professional. The real challenge is carving out the time for all the things that we want to do and need to deliver. As we have already stated, successful people develop organizational skills to help them manage it all. They rely on their to-do lists and find a system that works for them whether that be a list or some latest App on their smartphone. They don’t get stressed.
Even so, it’s all too easy to fall into the habit of mindlessly adding to these lists throughout the day and the list that’s blank at 8 a.m. quickly can get out of control by lunch time.
It is critical to minimize the odds of getting overwhelmed by taking on only what we know we can successfully deliver. We need to delegate some items or prioritize and delete those that aren’t truly necessary. We must focus our attention on the most impactful action items, or we’ll just be wasting our time and energy.
We must break down our goals into realistic, high impact tasks that we can track. The thought of accomplishing a huge task can be overwhelming and so we must break down our large tasks into more manageable goals. Daily actions will yield greater benefits than biting off more than we can handle.
It’s best to avoid stress when possible, but some stressors are inevitable and indeed positive stress can be a great motivator. When negative stress is encountered, you need a healthy way to deal with it. When you are utilizing tools and skills to handle volume and stress you are being productive and you are preserving your ability to impact outcomes and others.
Stress should be a powerful driving force, not a health hazard……