This might initially sound counterintuitive but stress is not the enemy of optimal performance and wellbeing.
On the one hand, stress has been implicated in numerous studies showing detrimental effects on performance and organisational productivity and the debilitating impact on people's lives in terms of mental and physical health and interpersonal relationships.
However, strategies that fall under the traditional umbrella of 'stress management’ are not fully addressing the magnitude and growth of the stress pandemic. This is because managing stress is an incomplete approach to strengthening health, wellbeing, performance, and relationships.
We deserve better than merely managing - we owe it to ourselves to master stress.
When we can master how we relate to stress, respond to stress, and learn from stress we are on a path to be at our best and grow through life's challenges and setbacks.
That's why it's our firm position that learning and practising skills and strategies that help us to master stress in our work, life, and relationships are a ‘must have’ for our overloaded and overwhelmed society.
Let's acknowledge that stress will never go away, and we don’t actually even want it to. We can build a mindset that recognises the fact that stress can be experienced in an empowering as opposed to debilitating way. We can establish a mindful and active approach to strengthening the resources that promote stress resilience.
Stress is not the issue. Our relationship and responses to stress that occurs - that's the issue. And in there lies the opportunity for growth!
So although stress can be very challenging, it is not always negative. In fact, stress can be good for us and we can become good at stress. That might sound like an odd idea at first glance - to become good at stress - but it's exactly what emerging scientific research is encouraging us to realise and learn how to do. Notice it’s not about being good when stress is gone. It’s about stressing better. The idea that stress equates with distress is outdated and so our mindset and approach to stress needs an upgrade.
Therefore, when harnessed mindfully, stress can lead to significant wellbeing and performance gains, as well as personal and professional growth. Research and practical interventions are showing how upgrading our mindset to stress and bringing a more mindful approach to stress will help us better navigate and capitalise on the challenges we encounter in work and life… and let’s face it we all need that right now.
So how do we get better at stress?
Adopt a Helpful Stress Mindset.
Our relationship to stress means our mindset, attitude, and beliefs about stress are incredibly important. Some stressors benefit the most from adopting a learning approach - that is, a growth mindset - as this creates a relationship towards challenges that activates curiosity to learn and motivation to make progress rather than avoid or run away. Let’s adopt this mindset to learn more about stress mindsets right now. There are two key stress mindsets we want to share from the science:
Enhancing (aka helpful) Mindset
The belief that stress has a positive influence on health, wellbeing, and/or performance effectiveness.
Hindering Mindset
The belief that stress has a negative impact on health, wellbeing, and/or performance effectiveness.
Research is showing how helpful it is to learn and know how to adopt a helpful and enhancing mindset when it comes to navigating our way through the stresses and difficulties of modern work and life. There are many ways we can work on building and enhancing a growth mindset and the following three ideas are a starting point. These ideas help us upgrade our mindset towards stress. By upgrading our mindset we are building and broadening the way we understand what stress is like. We can open up to the purpose stress serves. We can realise that while there are numerous stresses that can be distressing or even traumatic, there are also numerous stresses that may be challenging and difficult but that can also be viewed as positive opportunities for us to learn, grow, and make progress in our lives and work.
the 3 propositions
Stress is helpful because it is showing you that there is something important you need to attend to in some way. It’s helpful because you have a system that activates and fuels you to engage with and respond to difficulties you face.
Stress can be good for me because facing and working through difficulties can teach things - about yourself, others, and the world. Stress helps us learn, develop skills, grow, and build resilience that can help us to navigate and recover from tough times into the future.
I can stress better with practise. Practise functions in a few ways. We practise bringing helpful mindsets about stress into our daily life. We can practise skills regularly that will help us bring our best to difficulties when they arise. It’s practise that prepares us - just like training builds strategies, fitness and strength for a competition. Skills can include handling our headspace, emotions and decisions making when tough times arise and for this mindfulness practise is very helpful. We may also have conflict management or negotiation skills we can practise that help us when we face stressful challenges, where dealing with others is involved.
Apply Mindfulness Techniques.
Our relationship to stress makes our mindful engagement with stress another important factor that we can work on. Some stressors can be dealt with by bringing our attention to the reality of the present moment. Then, attending to a stressor with some perspective as opposed to automatic judgments, assumptions and expectations. Then, regulating our thoughts, feelings, choices and behaviours. Taken together, this helps us to open up to the current stress instead of resisting or fighting it. When we engage with mindfulness and open-minded perspectives on our reality, we can respond more skillfully and effectively. We recognise the following quote has been around the block a lot. However, not only is it still powerfully relevant right now, there are clear links to our experience of stress that we can extract from the wise words. Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor penned this... “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Let’s paraphrase for the purposes of bringing this wisdom into our approach to stress.
Between stress and reaction, there is a space. We can use that space to find perspective - accessing the power to choose a helpful stress mindset and response. In a mindful stress response lies incredible growth and freedom.
When stress is activated, be mindful of what thoughts you have about the stress. The story you are telling yourself and the way you are speaking to yourself (i.e. self-talk). Are you being self-critical and judgmental? Are you blaming yourself or beating yourself up? Are you making excuses or blaming others for the way you feel instead of understanding and owning your headspace and emotional reactions? Is there a broader vocabulary to tap into when labelling the stress you’re experiencing? We can learn to be more specific about the type and level of ‘stress’ we believe we are experiencing if we practice it. E.g. Is the stress most accurately labelled ‘stress’, or is it really about feeling under ‘pressure’ or being ‘challenged’ or a sense of ‘discomfort’ or being ‘confused’, or ‘overwhelmed’ or ‘anxious’ or ‘distressed’ or ‘hurt’? Being more actively mindful of our stress - of what reactions, thoughts, and emotions surge up in us - gives us a chance to be openly present with our experience, get some perspective by looking at it in different ways, and be more kind and compassionate towards ourselves as we navigate our way through.
And, of course, we will still benefit from...
Have some Stress Management Skills up your sleeve.
Our responses to stress are important. I know what I just said about stress management earlier. It is an important part of the equation as opposed to the complete solution. Coping with a stressor over time requires management. Managing our responses to stress can alleviate default reactions or coping patterns that can be harmful to yourself or others. Bouncing back from stress, struggle, or setback is a key element in the stress mastery mix. This can mean anything from allowing and accepting stress openly when there are stressful experiences we can’t control. Engaging with stress curiously and adaptively - solving problems and experimenting with creative solutions. Demonstrating skillful and resilient stress management skills and actions to reduce stress and/or initiate valuable forward momentum in spite of stress.
BUT!
master stress!
An incredibly important skill underlying stress mastery is being able to identify what aspects of stressful situations you can vs can’t control and influence. When you can explore and gain greater mindfulness of the type and level of stress you are experiencing, you can consider what mindset(s) can serve you best. When you can identify what you can control and/or influence, and what you can’t, you can be clearer on what aspects of the stress need to be managed. When you can more accurately identify what you are experiencing and what you can vs can’t control/influence, you can better ‘choose your response’ - the strategy or skill that fits your situation. The nuts and bolts of it are as follows:
If you can control or influence the stress - do that! If we have solutions or even experiments we can implement to address the stress, that’s a very pragmatic approach to take. Arguably, the harder stuff is when the stress (or parts of it) are outside of our ability to control or influence. This is where the rubber hits the road. Even when we have stresses that are outside of our control, we have more control over our mindset and mindful responses than we are likely to give ourselves credit for. It’s our mindset and mindful responses - our psychology - that we bring into our focus of control. We choose our response. We can accept stress is a natural response. We can understand stress can bring discomfort, uncertainty, and even fear. We can choose to focus on looking after our headspace, regulating our emotional reactions, speaking kindly and compassionately to ourselves and others. We can choose who we look to and engage for support through difficult times. We have many many choices for approaching, resolving, and learning through stressful experiences that are always within our control, even if avoiding or reducing the stress is not.
The overall objective when it comes to Stress Mastery is that learning AND practise are key.
That is, it's not sufficient to simply 'know' about strategies for working effectively with stress. Sure, we need to be understanding. We need to have learned what works for us. Most importantly, however, we need to draw on skills for working with stress when we need them most - and that requires practise.
Without practise, we rely on our default reactions, reflexes and embedded patterns that may not draw on the best of our knowledge and experience. Commitment to practise and skill development is key - as we always say… “Practice makes progress!” And to throw in just one more helpful and inspiring quote, the famous swordsman Musashi stated “You can only fight the way you practice” (Miyamoto Musashi, 1584 – 1645, The Book of Five Rings). This means…
In order to master how we approach and navigate stress (aka fight stress), we need to practice the skills we will use and build our resources for coping and recovery. There really is no better way.
We can all benefit from being our best through times of stress and we love researching and experimenting with the various science and evidence-based practices we can collectively learn from and practise to make Stress Mastery a prominent capability into 2022 and beyond.
Here at Benny Button we create online experiences, for workplaces, that explore topics such as Stress Mastery, Mindful Action and Leading Wellbeing, to name a few! Take a look at our Webinar Guide here.