Over the last few weeks, I have been working through a blog series on describing the habits I have noticed throughout the years of stress-resilient people.
You know the types, it seems like their world is caving in around them, yet they have an ability to remain cool under pressure. If you missed them, you can find the first two posts in the series here.
If you don’t want to click back and forth I will just give you the first steps in improving your stress resilience:
1. Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is just going to happen to you. You are not immune to adversity, and there is no vaccine, per se. Reframe your attitude from “Why did this happen to me?” to “why not me?” Adversity is as much a part of life as joy.
2. The second lesson I have learned about being more stress-resilient is when you are undergoing adversity, carefully choose where to focus your attention. When things come into our lives that don’t go the way we want them to, we are meant to learn something from them. But we can get so wrapped up in the wrong little details, or in the emotions surrounding the event, that we can miss the learning. Choose wisely where you focus your attention.
These two posts lead me to the third observation I have made about people who seem to have high stress-resilience;
They have the ability to find the good in the circumstance or the people. How they frame life seems to be very appreciative. Before we unpack this, let’s go over some data on the topic just to cement the need.
Coping Successfully With Stressful Life Events
There is a really good chance, even if you are someone who is fairly stress-resilient, that as you are reading this, the person on your right AND the person on your left is not so good.
A recent (2013) survey of adults and teens commissioned by the American Psychological Association showed 65% of people said managing their stress is very or extremely important (I found this a little lower than I would have thought), but just 38% said they do at least a good job of managing stressful situations.
So, we as humans think something is important and we recognize we are not very good at it. And for way too many of us, that is where the story ends. But not for people who are more stress-resilient. And it turns out that for most of us, it can be a simple shift in perspective.
Lets examine the most prevalent emotion people experience in stressful situations…Anxiety.
There is data to suggest that 1 in 5 Americans will suffer from a diagnosed anxiety disorder in a given year. Anxiety is the most prevalent emotional stress response.
A common definition of Anxiety is "…facing an uncertain threat.” We see something in our future, either real or perceived, that we don’t know or understand as going to do us harm. A situation or a context like this will cause us to feel anxious.
Our anxious feeling is telling us something about our uncertainty in the situation and often gets compounded by other negative thoughts or emotions until we get ourselves so worked up that we can not even remember what the root cause of our anxiety really is.
A Personal Story
Let’s play with this definition for anxiety a bit and see if we can build some stress-resilient muscle in the process.
I’ll offer up a personal story as a frame for our learning.
This time of year always creates a bit of an anxious time for me as a solopreneur. Many of the coaching and training engagements that have been running in 2019 will be coming to an end. Many of my clients are changing approaches in how they are using services like the ones I offer.
I can become anxious about where my business is going to come from in 2020.
5 Things to notice in this short story.
1. The main character in the story is me.
2. The story I created in my head is that business is uncertain (see the definition of anxiety).
3. The story I created has a threatening tone (see the definition of anxiety).
4. The timing context of the story is a perception I am feeling.
5. Clients are changing so that means they won’t need me any longer.
Being Stress Resilient
People who are stress-resilient have adaptive resources in both cognitive and emotional arenas to be able to handle the story they are perceiving.
One of the most important adaptive strategies is to find the good in the situation.
I know what you might be saying because I have said it myself…”What could possibly be good about losing clients or business in 2020?” Frankly NOTHING! But we are not working at the right level to deal with the anxiety. There is nothing good about losing business, feeling rejected, or having to experience lean times in business. Please hear me; I am not one of those Pollyanna overly optimistic leader development guys. You know the type, they just don’t seem to live in the same world as I do when it comes to being anxious about losing something important.
What I am advocating for here is letting go of the outcome.
Since what I am projecting in my stressful and anxious situation has not happened yet, there is time for me to do something about it. In essence, I need to Find the Good in the inputs that will ultimately drive the outcome.
Focus on Quality Inputs
If I can let go of the outcome, just for a moment, that is causing my anxious feeling and focus on Finding the Good in the inputs, will this lessen or eliminate my anxiety?
That becomes the central question for people who have the ability to be resilient.
What I am going to do is to Find the Good in the 5 elements of my short story above and see if I feel less anxious. Here they are repeated with a reframing of each of them to find the good:
5 Things to notice in this short story.
1. The main character in the story is me. This business has never been about me. It is about the clients I serve and the good we do for them. Part of my work here is to get the story off of me and to focus on those I serve. In doing so, my needs, whatever they are, will be met.
2. The story I created in my head is that business is uncertain (see the definition for anxiety). Business is complex, it is not uncertain. Now more than ever in recorded history organizations need leadership development. My clients are good people who can use my objective perspective on developing leaders in their organizations.
3. The story I created has a threatening tone (see the definition for anxiety). The threatening tone I am picking up is one of perceived loss. That this loss will mean a loss of income, so I won’t be able to meet the needs of my business. I may have to close my operation and do something else that I don’t love near as much. I hope you see in this how a threat can cycle down into a negative vortex of things that are so far from being real at the moment. But this vortex of fear can become paralyzing, and none of it is real. The good in the story is for me to get excited about some of the plans I have for 2020, rather than how I can make my reality less horrible than I am seeing it. I want to be excited about the opportunities I have and not just see how I can squeak by.
4. The timing context of the story is a perception I am feeling. Coming to an end feels like such a threat. While I do have some engagements that are ending; 75% of my business comes from existing clients. So that I may have individual clients that will rotate off my schedule, but that does not mean that my relationship with the organization has to end. The good in this is that nothing is ending, it is just an opportunity to start over and learn something new.
5. Clients are changing so that means they won’t need me any longer. My clients are changing. Fact. But this does not mean they no longer need a service like the one I provide. Change doesn’t have to be a threat. It can be a golden opportunity. I need to become curious about what life is like for them and find additional ways to partner with them using the services I provide.
So, there you have a nice little reframing exercise.
Step 1. Don’t focus on the outcome
Step 2. Focus on the quality of your inputs by finding the good in your story.
Spend some time with this little exercise. If you are feeling anxious about something, write it down. Then find the inputs and turn them from negative toward the good. See if this helps you become less anxious about your situation.
I love feedback, so if you try this I would love to hear your story.