It won’t exactly be a surprise to anyone that stress is bad for you. This is because when you are stressed, your amygdala—the part of your brain that is responsible for processing emotions—is in overdrive. It starts producing adrenaline and other stress hormones, ready for you to run away or fight.
Stress and repair
Why does this matter? It’s very simple. Stress hormones prepare your body for fight or flight. Blood is directed to your big muscles, so you are ready for action. The body also switches off anything that it considers non-essential. That includes your entire parasympathetic nervous system: the system that is responsible for repair and regeneration of your body. This means that your immune system and anti-inflammatory responses are suppressed. You become more likely to develop a whole range of chronic and acute diseases.
The expert’s journey from answering questions from one customer to anticipating what might be of interest to many customers can be stressful. Getting it right builds confidence and reduces the anxiety. Live presentations are perhaps a little more stressful than digital footprints. Nevertheless, the journey towards building confidence can he helped by understanding the following dynamics.
Understanding how fear of judgement works can help you to move beyond it
We all need to belong: to feel like we fit in with others. However, we also need to feel authentic: to be our true selves, and do what’s right for us. If you regularly choose fitting in over authenticity, this will have an impact on your mental—and ultimately, physical—health. You can’t afford to let others dictate your life in the interests of fitting in. That means that you need to get over any fear of being judged for your actions.
The physiological sigh is a simple way to remove carbon dioxide from your body
The ‘physiological sigh’ is a deep initial inhale followed immediately (without exhaling) by a short sharp inhale, like a sniff. You then slowly and deeply inhale to empty your lungs. This fully inflates then empties your lungs. If you do this one to three times, you get rid of the maximum amount of carbon dioxide, which physically reduces the stress on your body.
Control and curate your thoughts
Start with key questions. Jon Acuff suggests that you should curate your thoughts by asking yourself three questions about them. These are whether that thought is true, helpful and kind. If your thoughts are not accurate, not serving you, and making you feel bad, you should discard them. This is, of course, easier said than done—but just asking the questions is often enough to make you pause.
Activate your rational brain
Distract your impulses. Mel Robbins’ 5-Second Rule is simple: you count down from 5 to 1. This has huge neurophysiological implications. It manually changes the part of the brain that you are using, from your amygdala to your pre-frontal cortex. This moves your thinking pattern from emotional to logical. It therefore interrupts the habitual thinking patterns associated with stress, and moves you from panic mode to action.
Mental rehearsal to build neural pathways for success
Mental rehearsal is about preparing yourself to behave in particular ways in certain situations. Visualise yourself succeeding in the situation, in as much detail as possible. This works because our brains really aren’t all that clever. If you imagine yourself succeeding, your brain doesn’t distinguish between that picture, and real success—and this builds the neural pathways to help you to behave in the way that you want.
Fear-setting to helps contextualise the anxiety
Fear-setting is rather like goal-setting. First, set out the action that you fear. Define the worst things that could happen if you take that step. For each one, note how you could prevent it from happening, and what you could do to fix any damage if it happens. Next, set out the benefits of doing the action. Finally, set out the cost of inaction: how this will affect your life in six months, one year and three years. We tend to ignore the costs of inaction, understate the positives of acting, and worry about the negatives. This process casts light on all these areas.
The Swish Pattern from neurolinguistic programming enables you to change behaviours
Visualise the behaviour that you want to change. Next, create a smaller picture of your desired behaviour, emphasising its benefits. Imagine moving the little picture into the middle and expanding it, so that it covers the picture of the undesirable behaviour. Repeat until the behaviour becomes automatic. This is a famous technique that highlights the value of managing your thoughts.
Your turn
What techniques have you found helpful when managing your stress levels?