Pressure Doesn’t Have to Turn into Stress
Pressure is an inevitable part of life, but it doesn't necessarily have to culminate in stress. Discover how to transform pressure into productivity, and learn to navigate high-stakes situations with grace and resilience.
Stress is caused by your reactions to external events
In the workplace, many people blame their high anxiety levels on a boss, job, deadlines, or other external factors, but peers who face the same challenges without stress do so without stress
- Four steps to break the cycle of rumination
- Wake up
- Stand or sit up, clap your hands, and move your body
- Connect with your senses by noticing what you can hear, see, smell, taste, and feel
- Control your attention
- Reflect
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Ruminators tend to catastrophize, but resilient leaders keep things in perspective for themselves and their teams
- Try contrasting, questioning, and reframing
- Contrast: comparing a past stress to the current one
- Question: “How much will this matter in three years’ time?”
- Reframe: “What’s an opportunity in this situation I haven’t yet seen?”
Let go
Three techniques help
- Acceptance
- Acknowledge that whether you like the situation or not, it is the way it is
- Learning the lesson
- Ask yourself, “What have I learned from this experience?”
- Action
- The real solution is to do something about the situation