Since this post will hit your inbox a day or two prior to Christmas, I am going to keep it relatively short.
Over the last few weeks I have been working through a series on describing the habits I have noticed over the years of stress resilient people. You know the types, it seems like their world is caving in around them and yet they have an ability to remain cool under pressure. If you’d like to catch up or review the previous posts, you can find them by clicking here.
If you don’t want to click back and forth, I will give you the first 4 steps in improving your stress resilience:
Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is going to happen to you. You are not immune to adversity, and there is no vaccine. Reframe your attitude from “Why did this happen to me?” to “Why not me?” Adversity is as much a part of life as joy.
The second lesson I have learned about being more stress resilient is when you are undergoing adversity, to 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.
The the third observation I have made about people who seem to have high stress resilience is they have an ability to find the good in the circumstance or the people. How they frame life seems to be very appreciative.
The fourth thing that I have noticed about people who are resilient in times of stress and ambiguity is that they can answer one key question for themselves. The question is this: “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?” Our focus as leaders needs to be on the kinds of things that will actually help me instead of making my “stress hole” even bigger.
My perspective
The final post in this series is the most important of all. The reason is, for example, you can do your best to ask yourself, “is what I am doing helping or harming me?” which is the fourth suggestion I made to improve your stress resilience. And indeed, if you focus on this question, your resilience to stress should improve.
However, what I have observed is people who ask themselves the question, “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?” will work really hard to convince themselves that the harm they are actually doing to themselves is not really hurting them.
This is why human connection is so important in creating stress resilience. In one of the most impactful studies I have reviewed on the subject of stress resilience actually has to do with living longer. Poulin, Brown Dillard Smith (2013) out of the University of Buffalo monitored participant mortality and time to death for 5 years by way of newspaper obituaries and monthly state death-record tapes.
Mortality revealed a significant interaction between helping behavior and stressful events.
Specifically, stress did not predict mortality risk among individuals who provided help to others in the past year, but stress did predict mortality among those who did not provide help to others.
Bottom line is, creating human connection and helping others can help you live longer.
And not just creating human connection, but when you do, listen to those who you connect with.
Story
My wife and I were back home in Peoria, Illinois this past weekend to celebrate Christmas with my mom. It was a really nice weekend connecting with mom and my siblings. We spent the afternoon together on both Saturday and Sunday. At the end of our time together on Sunday, my wife and I went to a Christmas show at one of the local churches in town. ‘
When we went into the church the weather was a bit cold and the sky was overcast. About 2 hours later when we came out of the show, there was about 2.5 inches of snow on the ground and near blizzard driving conditions. It took us quite a while to get out of the church parking lot, and once we got on the main roads they were snow packed and very slippery to drive on.
I have been driving on snow and ice since I was 14 years old in my dad’s old pickup truck, usually in a parking lot somewhere just to get some practice. So, I know how to drive in pretty treacherous conditions.
However, about 7 years ago my wife and I got out of the midwest snow belt, and moved ourselves to sunny Florida. Not much snow to drive through in the Sunshine state!
Needless to say I was a bit nervous driving, not as much for me, but as we made our way back to where we were staying there were cars all over in ditches. The result, no doubt, of forgetting the important rules of driving on snow and ice. My nerves had more to do with not knowing the skill level of other people driving then knowing myself what to do and not do.
It was all a bit stressful, to say the least.
I was really glad I had my wife along with me because her human connection really made me want to make stress my friend and listen to what my body was telling me. Having Kim in the passenger seat next to me heightened my own sense of self-awareness and self-preservation.
I could feel the stress with every quarter-mile that we drove. Sometimes the back end of the car sliding, sometimes the front wheels just not get anyone traction on the wet surface. Feeling the stress and embracing it helped me in the moment to realize this was not a time for heroics. Not at all a time to “see how fast the car could go” or “how close could I get to the car in front of me.” My stress was actually my friend in that it was telling me to keep a safe distance from other vehicles.
I also really tried to listen to my wife as she became my copilot, searching for the best route for us to take and making sure I was still on a drivable road surface. I think so many times we get into stressful situations and our knee jerk reaction is to just bear down and do it all ourselves. This is a time, when you are making stress your friend, to really listen to others.
This listening can really help you answer the question “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?” If I am willing to listen to others input then I am less likely to make a mistake; convincing myself that something that is really destined to harm me will help me.
My Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Stress Resilience
In summary here are my top 5 ways for you to improve your stress resilience
Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is just going to happen to you.
Choose where to focus your attention.
Find the good in the circumstance or the people.
Ask Yourself; “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?”
Make Stress Your Friend
Now go out there and have a stress free Christmas and a very happy new year!