Stress; How to Make it Work to Your Advantage
“To change ourselves effectively, we first have to change our perceptions.” Stephen R. Covey
Pressure will always be part and parcel of our daily lives. We don’t have to be paralyzed by the pressures of life. You can make stress work for you by harnessing it for your own good.
Pressure and stress are not the same thing
People use these two terms interchangeably like they mean the same thing. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. For his Harvard Business Review story, Nicholas Petrie illustrates that what matters is our perception of stress. Pressure and stress are not the same thing, he reports.
Pressure is converted to stress when a single ingredient is added to it.
Rumination: “The tendency of thinking and rethinking past and future events and associating them with negative emotions and thoughts.”
In simple words, overthinking can lead to overwhelming feelings. When we feel like there is too much on our plate, our cognitive abilities are usually impaired as the stress response is spooked up. This reaction makes us more prone to developing sicknesses.
If only we can demote stress to productive pressure, then we can take advantage of the opportunities that come up around us. When we learn how to use pressure to our advantage, we can come up with creative ideas, improve our plans in innovative ways and improve our overall performance. We can train our minds to look at challenges from a different perspective.
To stop the worry cycle, here are some techniques that you can adopt;
· Change your perspective
The reality is that three years from now, or even a year from now, the things that are stressing you out won’t matter at all. Remind yourself about this as soon as you find yourself spiraling down the negativity route. You have solved difficulties in the past. Remind yourself how you did it.
You can even write it all down. When you list down ideas of how you overcame difficulties in the past, you will have the confidence to do the same again.
· Quit living on autopilot
Clear out the mental clutter by engaging and redirecting your senses back to this moment. This will make you feel like you are in control more. Get active; clap your hands, take a walk, listen to the sounds around you. Engage your senses to feel, smell, touch, and hear the present moment.
These exercises will help you stay mindful of everything in your surroundings.
· Think about what’s more important
If you are in the habit of creating mountains out of molehills, all you are doing is depleting your emotional resources. There are small inconveniences that aren’t worth a lot of effort. Clarity can help you distinguish between what’s worth the energy.
With a clear mind, you will be more productive. As you focus on a single task, your mind will be settled. This way, you will be able to conserve energy that can be used to solve problems.
· Think of stress as a challenge and not a burden
The growth or abundance mindset, a concept introduced by Carol Dweck, A Stanford psychologist encourages people to believe that they can accomplish everything they set their mind to do. People with a fixed mindset believe that things that are happening to them cannot be changed.
This mindset holds people back. It makes people comfortable to not even try changing their situation.
On the contrary, people who have an abundance mindset look at challenges as an opportunity for growth. These kinds of people turn stress into excitement and they find the right approach to use pressure to enhance their performance.
Think about it; performers argue that they always feel anxious before a performance. Even Tiger Woods himself admitted that if he doesn’t feel stressed out before a match, he knows he’s going to perform poorly.
The right mindset makes stress a performance enhancer and not a burden.
· Reframe the situation
Studies have shown that when people are stressed out, telling themselves to “calm down” doesn’t really change the situation. However, people who reframe their minds are better equipped to handle the situation.
Anxiety can cause loss of memory capacity, reduce self-confidence, and harm overall performance. And to know that this is exactly how we will react to stress makes it even worse. When you anticipate stress, you end up thinking of a counterbalance — how to calm down.
However, assistant Harvard professor Alison Wood Brooks found that reframing the mind to cope with stress leads to better performance rather than the idea of trying to push the mind into remaining calm.
· Create a new track for your mind
We’ve all experienced stress, negativity, anxiety, and unproductive thoughts. Well, neuroscientist Alex explains that thoughts are complex patterns resulting from activity between proteins, chemicals genes, and our brain’s connections. The more we think of something, the stronger that mental connection becomes.
Think of thoughts as a “ski track.” As you ski down a certain path in the snow, it becomes easier to continue skiing down that path rather than go through another.
The more you give way to negativity, fear, anxiety, and self-doubt in your mind, the easier it becomes to react similarly when faced with the exact situation. Cognitive reappraisal is the fix for this kind of mentality according to psychologists.
When you turn off your negative thoughts, you will definitely have to replace them with other thoughts. Cognitive reappraisal is about being realistic and not dwelling on untrue negative thoughts. When you realize you are going down a negative path, stop yourself. Ground yourself in reality.
The best way forward is to write down your thoughts and identifying what triggered them in the first place. You will most likely learn that you don’t have grounds to support all your negativity, self-doubt, fear, and toxic thoughts.
You must not stop there. Look for evidence that supports the contrary. What things do you excel in?
Note down everything that counters your self-doubt. As you write, your memory becomes stronger, and the easier it becomes to reframe your mind from doubt to confidence.
