Success Under Stress

Powerful Tools for Staying Calm, Confident, and Productive When the Pressure's On

Sharon Melnick

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780814432136
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Salud mental y bienestar

Sharon Melnick provides a flexible array of stress-busting strategies to help you overcome the things that are weighing you down.

From overflowing priority lists to power-hungry colleagues to nagging parental guilt, stress is the defining characteristic of most of our lives. Business psychologist Sharon Melnick teaches you how to gain control and exude calmness amidst everyday chaos by offering professional-level solutions appropriate to assist you in managing your big-time stressors.

Success Under Stress ditches one-size-fits-all breathing exercises and visualization techniques and instead offers tangible advice to help you:

• see opportunities rather than obstacles,
• get focused when overwhelmed,
• find energy when exhausted,
• stay calm when wired,
• and change the problem to prevent stress from returning.

You'll gain a veritable arsenal of "magic-bullet" solutions--hundreds of situation-specific, quick-acting tips for defusing stress and boosting productivity complete with quizzes, examples, exercises, and more that allows you to reach your professional goals.

SECTION II


Taming the Stress of Too Much to Do and Too Many Obstacles

In the New Normal, we simply have to accomplish more, but with fewer resources. I hear it every day from my training seminar participants:

“As sales representatives, we have 12 hours of work to do in an eight-hour day.”

“In my telecommunications company, they play the “and” game. That’s when you have to do that and that and that. I have to give my all to completing projects and network with an eye on my next account and find quality time to spend with my family.”

“I’m overwhelmed. I am in meetings much of the day and can’t finish what I’m accountable for. I have to be creative and strategic, but I’m just putting out fires all day.”

You start your day with a well intended to-do list and end it with memories of interruptions, minor crises, derailments, and “I Need It Now!” requests. Despite lamenting our 24/7 culture as much as the next person, you’re “always on.” Priorities, including your own, change frequently. You regularly face that “crunch” moment when everything seems to require your urgent attention and it feels like you’re headed for a crash.

In the New Normal, old markets shrink and new trends emerge. These days, many people are staying in their jobs or their industries because they feel stuck, so it may be harder to progress in your organization. Similarly, many people have left their industry to become independent consultants, so your field may be more crowded than ever. If so, it’s tough to distinguish yourself to prospective clients—not to mention that your quotas or goals may be higher than ever!

Section II is about how to have more control over daily challenges. You will learn how to change your perspective so that you rise to the occasion of dealing with challenging circumstances rather than allowing them to overwhelm you. You will learn mindsets and skill sets that turn obstacles into opportunities and enable you to adjust to changes. Then you will learn how to change your physiology so you can have energy when you want it and relaxation when you need it. Finally, you’ll learn to change the problem. We’ll cover strategies for efficiency and effectiveness, aimed at bringing your workload to a manageable level. And you’ll learn how to eliminate most interruptions and have more choice over when you’re available to other people.

3


Changing Obstacles to Opportunities

“The people who get on in this world are those who look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”

—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

The thrashing airplane took its passengers on a series of hair-raising dips. The pilot’s voice over the loudspeaker said nothing more alarming than, “Sorry folks, we’re experiencing a little more turbulence than usual.” The older woman across the aisle from me was turning green. I clutched at the armrests, trying to remember to breathe. And, then, there was the school-age boy a few rows behind us. He shouted with glee as the plane mounted and dropped. He threw his hands up in the air and exclaimed, “Wheeee!” with the exhilaration of riding on a roller coaster.

One event, but three distinct experiences. Why? Conventional wisdom says it’s not what happens, but what you make of what happens that matters most. Though you might not be aware of it, you automatically evaluate every situation. Will it enhance or threaten your wellbeing? Can you take any actions to prevent harm or to achieve benefit? Can you handle it or not? These “appraisals” determine how you will act. Perceive a threat and you will try to protect yourself. Perceive a challenge and you will marshal energy to master it. Conclude that nothing can be done and you will feel trapped and resigned.

Neuroscientists have estimated that human beings experience about 60,000 thoughts during our waking hours each day.¹ No wonder we sometimes feel like our heads are about to explode! In this chapter, you’ll learn how to steer those 60,000 thoughts toward a positive outlook and create momentum for your Ideal Day.

In seminal research asking 300 people to record their thoughts about work-day events, Harvard Business School professors Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer were able to describe how these thoughts form a running scroll of perceptions, emotions, and motivations regarding what’s happening in our external and internal worlds. The researchers’ pithy summation is, “Every moment you are performing your job you are working ‘under the influence’ of your inner work life.”²

The best way to take control of your own inner work life is to drive all your thoughts in one direction. This is known as thinking in service of an intention. To be intentional, you should have a picture of the kind of outcome you want to create, and then think, feel, and act with purpose toward it. When you have clear intention, it orients your thoughts to the aspects of the situation you can control. Here are three ways to set an intention and orient your inner work life away from survival mode and toward the cycle of success.

1. Come to Work on Your Own Terms

How would you like to come to work on your own terms instead of feeling subject to the whims of other people? “Sounds good,” you may say, “and next, you’re going to try and sell me a Bridge to Nowhere, right?” Before you dismiss the idea, remember that you are the instrument of your own success. An important step in achieving any goal is to become the “you” who can think, feel, and act in accordance with reaching that goal. I call this reaching your “Horizon Point.” Imagine you are captain of a ship. A captain’s job is to train her sights on the destination and keep steering the ship with moment-to-moment course corrections toward that point. Out on the high seas, there will be stormy waves, icebergs, and other ships. The captain can’t control any of that, but she can control herself. She can remain steady and agile as she steers the ship around the obstacles and keeps focused on the destination.

The idea of your Horizon Point is to impose a sense of purpose and control on your day. If your purpose is to display the qualities and attributes required for success, it’s less likely you’ll default into merely reacting to requests and problems thrown your way. No matter what challenge you face, you can always control how you respond to it.

Try this practical approach: As you go through your day, instead of concentrating only on your tasks or appointments, bring more of your attention inward. Think about who you need to be to reach your Horizon Point. This shift in focus will ensure that despite moment-to-moment ups and downs, you’re always progressing toward the result you desire. Who do you need to be in order to achieve success? Keep that—your Horizon Point—in mind and you’ll maximize your chance of getting there.

Your Horizon Point has a dual role: internal guidance system and filter. There’s a bundle of fibers in your brain called the “reticular activating system” (RAS). In part, it’s responsible for sorting out which information you want to focus on and which you don’t. A clear intention allows your RAS to allow in stimuli you want and filter out stimuli you don’t want. Once you have defined who you need to be, you can go through your day being intentional. Each moment, each interaction, each meeting, you have a choice: you can act consciously and proactively toward your Horizon Point, or you can let the experience happen to you. As you are about to take an action, you may even want to ask yourself, “Will this help me reach my Horizon Point, or not?”

Finding Your Horizon Point: Exercise 1

Start by listing the qualities, attributes, and skills that make up who you want to be, as well as those that your employer or clients expect you to have. Your Horizon Point should be the convergence of what you want for yourself and what your work requires of you. You might not know what your own bigger picture goals are. That’s OK. Your Horizon Point is less about the external goals you want for yourself (such as income level or your next job) and more about who you need to be to achieve that outcome.

Remember Stacy and Dan, my clients from Chapter 1? Perfectionist Stacy had to get everything right, even at the cost of her work-life balance. And Dan wanted to land whale clients instead of minnows, he had trouble realizing his financial goals. Here’s how they identified their Horizon Points.

DAN’s HORIZON POINT

As a financial planner, he needed and wanted to be:

Respected *

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: What This Book Will Do for You
• Section I Constant Stress: Reclaiming the Power to Succeed
• Section II Taming the Stress of Too Much to Do and Too Many Obstacles
• Section III Solutions for Self-Imposed Stress: How to Care Less About What Other People Think
• Section IV Rx for Relationship Stress
• Section V Create Success Under Stress All Around You
• Appendix The Top 12 Resilience Strategies for Success Under Stress
• Endnotes
• Index
• About the Author