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
