Today, we face hyper-competitiveness and an unprecedented pace of change, which leads us to ask ourselves: How can we keep calm at work when stress reaches high levels?
According to the American Institute of Stress:
- 80% of workers feel stress at work
- 25% have felt the urge to scream due to job stress
- 14% of respondents have felt like punching a coworker in the past year, but did not do so
- 9% are aware of a violent act in their workplace.
Under stress, we regress
Many psychologists believe that we revert to behaviors we used in childhood when faced with emotional threat .
If as a child you ran away and hid in your room, or sat grumpy if things weren't going your way, it's quite possible that today your reaction to stress is to "shut down" and shut people out.
What is the difference?
Most would agree that a good corporate executive has a calm, confident and assured demeanor . While others run and react throughout the day, highly successful executives seem to walk calmly, purposefully and remain focused on their predefined objectives.
3 questions we all have in our heads:
- How do successful people do it?
- How do they stay calm under pressure?
- How do they overcome the natural reaction to retreat when under stress?
1- They take care of their bodies
The environment is the biggest variable when it comes to behavior, and the body is the immediate environment of our mind.
Successful people are intentional about when and what they eat - food is fuel!
And so are they with respect to their sleep. Eight hours is unrealistic for most of us, but instead of thinking about the quantity of sleep, we should focus on its quality (maximizing deep sleep time).
2- Exercise
Numerous studies have shown that exercise reduces stress, anxiety and even depression .
This is because it increases the amount of feel-good hormones, such as serotonin, and reduces cortisol, which is the main stress hormone.
3- They train their minds
Many of the most emotionally stable people have strengthened their minds through meditation .
A Harvard study showed that after eight weeks of meditation there was a growth in the hippocampus (the area of the brain that regulates emotions) and a reduction in the volume of brain cells in the amygdala, the part responsible for anxiety and stress.
➜ The good news is that doing a meditation mind workout only takes a few minutes.
➜ If you want to learn how to meditate, favorite apps include: Headspace, Waking Up and Muse.
4- They are based on gratitude
Highly successful people have an attitude of gratitude. Negative emotion is eliminated by positive feelings of gratitude.
No matter how bad our situation is, if we pause, it is usually very easy to see how much better off we are than others. Similar to meditation, having a solid gratitude practice literally changes our brain.
If stress is a focus on something we value that is under threat, it's no wonder we are all feeling it more than ever. We worry about our careers, being good parents, our health, our faith... However, the day has a limited number of hours.
