Top 5 Symptoms of Stress

Stress Management

If you’re going to rise high in an organisation or your business, you’re going to get stressed from time to time. Fact. In fact, stress is a much maligned word and generally used to mean something undesirable. Yet a  bearable amount of stress, like when we venture to try something new, can be enormously beneficial. It can actually advance our careers. It’s getting the balance right  that is difficult. If you always tried to avoid stressful situations you’d never advance, never learn and change your ideas. You’d stay where it’s always comfortable. (This is a significant point for ambitious professional women as generally speaking we emerge from surveys as being risk averse and also as disliking conflict. I’ll cover this in a future post)

When the balance gets out of kilter it can have disastrous consequences, for ourselves, and others. Work overwhelm is a serious business.

Work Life Balance

I was listening to an interesting seminar from Julie Hirst the other day (courtesy of  a Women in Logistics seminar, many thanks to them). Julie had been part of a project which  had run for ten years looking into work life balance and how stress affected people. An interesting distinction emerged. Working long hours which spilled over into your personal life were not such  a huge cause of stress for people at the top of an organisation as for those lower down.

In Control of Your Work

The variable factor is actually feeling in control of what is going on. It’s about having a choice; people who felt this was imposed upon them exhibited other symptoms of stress too. When we feel out of control at work serious ill health is sure to follow and then we are NINETEEN times more likely to make a major error. And I mean major error. The survey invited folk to give examples annonymously of mistakes they had made at work. The results were scary, down to actually causing death.

Having an element of control as a factor in helping manage stress is not surprising. The same thing happens in organisations when they are undergoing significant organisational  change. The feeling of not knowing, of having no control is the one which produces the most stress and leads to higher than average sickness levels.

Top 5 Symptoms of Stress

1) Sleeplessness on a regular basis.

2) Fatigue, again feeling tired most of the time, even when you’ve done little.

3) Inability to focus and concentrate

4) Irritability with others and with self

5) Pains in the neck, head and shoulders.

So, if you tick any of these boxes it’s time to start taking your well being seriously.

Sometimes it’ s impossible to take control of the external events, even if you are at the top. And that’s when we have to look within ourselves. There is one place where we can always have control. We can control and manage how we react to the external events. I don’t mean to sound trite, because it’s not as easy as talking positive (although that is a part of it). But it is possible.  Take steps to recognise your stress and then take steps to address the cause when and however you can. But always, take care of what is within your contol- you and your feelings.

Epictetus: “We are not touched so much by life events themselves but by the view we choose to take of them.” Wise words from a Stoic philospher AD 55-AD 135.  There is always a choice.

How do you manage work place stress? Do please share your ideas. The best thing I ever did to manage my work stress was to run my own business! And there are 3 tips here. Or, try listening to my free visualisation and see if you find that calming. Loads of women have told me how much they love it.  Here’s the article that accompanied it : What’s your perfect working day?

Photo Credit: Irum Shahid

Self Help is Indulgent ClapTrap?

If a sign of a good radio programme is that it provokes you to action, then BBC’s Radio 4 Women’s Hour is very good as it has provoked this post!

The programme had a short debate recently between a life coach and an author. The discussion was around whether self help actually makes anyone any happier, given that the majority of self help book buyers are female, and yet the numbers of women with mental health problems are going up.

I found myself (to my own irritation) sat between the two. The coach made many valid points about the value of coaching in helping people to stop seeing themselves as victims, but weakened her authority (in my opinion) by over-advertising her own courses.

The nub of the argument from the author was that coaching is too self centred, too individualised and encourages people to think they can control anything, regardless of external factors. Her view was that this stopped them doing something to challenge the status quo, stopped them becoming active agents for change for the greater good (I am paraphrasing here). She likened it to reality TV which, she believed, encouraged everyone to think they could become a ‘star’ with very little work.

I am sympathetic to the idea that working on issues of one’s own can make us less aware of what is happening in the wilder world leaving us stuck into a ‘I deserve better‘ mentality. Very occasionally, when working in larger organisations, I see this attitude from staff. They are angry about what is happening but don’t always make the connections between what is happening in the world today and what is happening to them. Equally, I KNOW working one to one can be highly effective in helping make positive changes, and also that many of the people I have worked with have made very positive contributions to society as a whole. Coaching done well is not merely self interested new age clap trap!

The author also criticised self help for being a recent phenomenon and symptomatic of our ‘me-me’ times. Well, there she is definitely wrong! You only need to look back at some of the world’s philosophies to see that the idea of choosing how you view what is happening in the world (making the best of it) has a long and venerable pedigree. My personal self help model comes from a Stoic philosopher, Epictetus. He said:

“We are not touched so much by life events themselves but by the view we choose to take of them”

That surely is the founding statement behind all self help philosophies and he made that in AD55!

What do you think? Is self help, or coaching, or personal development indulgent nonsense which helps no one, or does it have a credible role to play in helping people change and achieve to their full potential? I think you can guess my view!

If you’d like to discuss further with me how our working one to one might enrich your life, do give me a call! My confidential number is 01761 438749 or you can use the contact page and I’ll call at a time convenient to you!

Are You a True Stoic?

Stoic philosophy first appeared in around 350BC in Athens (give or take a year or two!) yet it is still really influential in our society today. It underpins many aspects of the modern, popular, and effective cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT).

In essence CBT is identifying thoughts which cause us problems, have a negative effective on us, and changing them to something more helpful. Stoics had the original idea and (I believe) hold the key to all self help philosophies developed ever since.

What is Stoicsm?

When we talk about being stoic today we often misinterpret it to mean having a stiff upper lip, not showing emotion and putting up with things we don’t much like. Basically we mean almost stifling our emotions rather than dealing with them. True Stoicism is the opposite.

Instead of suppressing our emotions and feelings, Stoicism helps us to understand and control them; then we can feel in control of the negative emotions that feel overpowering from time to time, and can lead to ill health, both physical and mental.

Stoics show us that our feelings of dis-ease (literally unease) come from being mentally attached to something outside of us, such as what other people think of us, looking eternally young, having more money than our friends, continually making unfavourable comparisons with others.

Universal Law

The Stoics believed that the universe is governed by a universal law: the LOGOS, or reason. When we begin to accept change and become less affected by external events over which we have no control, we are living in tune with this divine law. Or, ‘grant me the wisdom to accept those things I can change, the patience to accept the things I can’t change, and the wisdom to know the difference between the two.’

Epictetus

Many years ago when I was working with terminally adults and children, I stumbled on a saying from a Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, and I end all my seminars with it. I have probably corrupted it over the years but the essence remains true. He said:

‘We are not touched so much by events themselves but by the view we choose to take of them’.

These words are on my website and have had a profound effect on how I view my life, and how I help others make sense of how their lives were playing out. Many years later, when learning about CBT in a professional capacity, I was not surprised to learn that Albert Ellis, the founder of CBT had found the writings of Epictetus to be his main source of inspiration.

Practical Stoicism

Try this short visualisation next time life seems overwhelming. Relax, be comfortable and focus for a few moments on how you are breathing. Now try to imagine yourself floating high above the earth, as if from space. As you look down imagine what a tiny speck you are in that whole maelstrom of millions of lives being lived on our planet. Consider what is worrying you against this backdrop and maybe it will help you get a sense of persepctive on your worries.

Another technique to try when you find yourself taking a negative train of thought, is deliberately come up with another interpretation. For example, if an assistant is gratuitously rude to you in a shop and your automatic negative response is to think:’Here we go, another bad day for me, no one is nice to me’. Pause for a moment and acknowledge what you are thinking and feeling. Then consciously change it to something like ‘She’s having a bad day; maybe no one has been nice to her’ and notice how much better that makes you feel.

And finally, try and train your mind to stay with the present, not forever harking back to less good times in your past or worrying about the future. Try keeping a thought journal which may help you identify your negative thought patterns and focus on your immediate environment and that over which you have control. 

‘The Philosphy of Epictetus’ is available from Amazon by clicking this link

Do You Believe People Can Change?

Do you believe people can change? My whole career has been built on the principle that, yes, they can! It’s not easy but it happens all the time.

It is important to believe that it’s possible though or you will be stuck with the same patterns of behaviour for ever. Which is fine, if it’s working for you but not so fine if you are feeling fed up and disgruntled with the hand life has dealt you.

Life Story

When I worked with youngsters who had experienced trauma and loss in their short lives, we frequently made a life story book, looking at the significant events of their lives. Usually these kids had had no control over what happened to them and many of them had had experiences you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. The life story work had many purposes, but one was to help them understand that they could take back some control of their lives in the future and not see themselves as helpless victims of their past.

Don’t Get Stuck

I often work with people who have had a difficult life by any standards. Some are stuck, feeling that they can’t throw this off; their early experiences of life are continuing to haunt and inform everything they do. Conversely, I have been privileged to work with some amazing people who have had equally devastating experiences but have made a decision not to let this ruin the rest of their lives, and to use it in a positive fashion. They have let the negative experiences make them stronger.

Survivors

I am struck by this survivor mentality most forcibly when I read accounts of holocaust survivors. People who endured unimaginable tragedy yet went on to have amazing lives, made films, made music, wrote great literature. One such inspirational woman was Alice Herz-Sommer whose story I read in The Guardian newspaper in 2006. She was 103 at the time!

Alice had endured the ghettos in Prague, lost her husband in Auschwitz along with many members of her family yet when interviewed she showed no trace of bitterness. She had gone on to become a gifted concert pianist and at 103 was still playing for several hours a day.

She said:

” I never spoke a word about it….I didn’t want my son to grow up with hatred in his heart…….my son had very good friends in Germany.

I had a twin sister – same mother, same father, same upbringing. She was extremely gifted but a terrible pessimist, but I was the contrary. This is the reason I am so old, even now, I am sure. I am looking for the nice things in life. I know about the bad things, but I only look for the good things.

Life is beautiful, extremely beautiful. And when you are old you appreciate it more. When you are older you think, you remember, you care and you appreciate. You are thankful for everything. For everything.”

She was the absolute embodiment of my favourite quote of all time, from a first century BC Stoic philosopher, Epictetus. In essence he said:

WE ARE NOT TOUCHED SO MUCH BY LIFE’S EVENTS, BUT BY THE VIEW WE CHOOSE TO TAKE OF THEM.

Therein lies the underlying message of every self help book ever written!

You can read an  article on Alice in full by clicking here