It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it. [Lou Holtz]
The 2023 State of the Heart Report noted that in Africa, which is the majority of my client base, we scored lowest on Navigating Emotions. This inability to harness our emotions can lead to volatility and makes us more prone to an inability to handle stress.
Whilst many of the Baby boomer generation imply that the younger generation can’t handle stress as well as them, we are faced with a far more complex world now, with technology advancing at a rapid rate creating pressure for the younger generation to keep up with. This technology also creates huge overstimulation.
What can we do to create sustainability, and how can we support our employees to navigate stress and uncertainty?
Try using these 3 techniques to reduce stress in your life or with the people you manage at work.
1. Make space between meetings
A quick, easy way to limit stress is to schedule short breaks between meetings.
Microsoft’s Work Trends Index just released a study that tracked people’s brainwaves as they attended multiple hours of meetings – with and without breaks. Participants took part in video meetings while wearing electroencephalogram (EEG) equipment—a cap to monitor the electrical activity in their brains.
All attended 30-minute meetings devoted to different tasks – half with no breaks scheduled between meetings and half with 10-minute breaks, during which they meditated on the Headspace app.
The next week, the two groups switched. The researchers found that during two hours of back-to-back meetings, the brain waves associated with stress increased and accumulated with time.
Interestingly, researchers also noticed that the transition period between calls caused beta activity, or stress levels, to spike. Except for the group who took breaks,who had a chance to ‘reset’ – not only preventing a spike but causing a dip in stress-related brain activity.
Jumping from one meeting to the next with no breaks in between, as most organizations do, is causing stress to spike. Taking proper breaks helps to reduce stress levels. These can be as short as 10 minutes.
The solution therefore to reduce stress is to schedule breaks between meetings.
2. Connect
When you are stressed, your pituitary gland releases oxytocin, known as the ‘love and trust’ chemical. As strange as this may sound, it’s your body’s way of telling you to connect and seek support – the ultimate antidote to stress.
Kelly McGongal , author of The Upside of Stress states that, “The production of oxytocin drives you to seek support in times of stress,” and “To tell someone how you feel and to be surrounded by people who care about you.”
As Michael Miller of 6 Seconds says, “The next time you’re stressed, remember: That’s a message from your body that you need to mobilize your social support network”.
A study from the University of Buffalo found that stressed people suffering major life disruptors (financial, relationship, medical, career) had a 30% increased likelihood of death compared to stressed people who helped and were connected to others, and who had a 0% increase in likelihood of death.
Social connection is also a known immune booster. One of the pulse points of teamwork in the Vital Signs Model is Connection.
So, in helping to reduce stress, connection also enhances teamwork. If you notice the warning signs of stress in your team or meeting (ie. irritability, snappy answers, body language tension), take a short break and do a fun connection activity, or take a coffee break and shoot the breeze for a while.
Often what happens during the break time, is that people go straight from a stressful meeting onto their cell phones and become overstimulated from the numerous mails, messages, etc., which pushes their stress levels even higher. So maybe a ‘no cellphone policy in a mid-meeting break’ should be implemented.
Create real space for your team to connect with each other, and in so doing stress levels will reduce.
It’s not stress that kills us, it’s our reaction to it. [Hans Selye]
3. Change how you think about stress
What we think about stress matters and how we manage it ultimately impacts on our brains and bodies.
We all experience various levels of stress, but how we respond or react to that stress is the distinguishing factor. When we feel stressed, we can become irritable, angry, anxious, overwhelmed, withdrawn, etc. However, as McGongal says, “When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body’s response to it.”
The key difference in how we think about stress is whether we see it as a challenge or a threat.
In both cases, stress is a physical and emotional signal. Stress means we care about something and it’s at risk. It’s not inherently good or bad; it’s data. And its data based on what we perceive around us. But the key difference is whether we think we have sufficient resources or support to deal with it.
We experience feelings of challenge when we feel we have enough resources to cope with the situation. But when we feel the situation is too demanding and overwhelming, and we don’t have sufficient resources to cope with it, we experience it as a threat.
Whereas a stress challenge energizes you; makes you more efficient, productive,and literally improves cardiovascular function. A stress threat slowly kills you, inhibiting you in all sorts of ways and leading to decreased cardiovascular function,heart attacks, and all the other negative health outcomes associated with stress. The difference is often simply in how we think about what we’re facing.
How often have you woken up at 1am and thought about what you are dealing with or facing, and in that moment it seems insurmountable? I know I certainly have – that is literally my highest stress time.
Acknowledge your stress, remember ‘Name it to Tame it’, then break it down into key areas of what you are facing. Change your viewing point from seeing it as a threat to a challenge. Remember, if you are feeling under threat, you are in the emotional hijack state, which means you are dominated by your emotional brain in fight, freeze or flee mode.
However, when you see your stress as a challenge rather than a threat, you’ll engage both your emotional and rational brain and can respond with thought and reason.
Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to ask for help or to step off the treadmill for a while to recharge. Remember, there are multiple benefits in taking a break, connecting with others, and changing how you view or perceive your stress.
I would love to get feedback from you and your teams on this method, if you try it in the future.