Make stress your friend

The best way to deal with stress in life and the workplace is to embrace it.

In sport, channelling stress in a positive way is referred to as a “state of flow” — when an athlete is completely in the moment and the game almost feels as if it is moving in slow motion compared with their thinking.

As we rush through our days in our busy lives we are constantly being told we need to stress less and be calmer to perform better in all aspects of our lives.

This isn’t exactly true but, like elite athletes, achieving peak job performance does require channelling stress. We know the common stressors of life include pending deadlines, exams and presentations, family problems and financial difficulties.

But in modern life stress is also caused by focus on exercise, what we eat, how we sleep and how we think. The body doesn’t differentiate between stressors but responds in the same physical and chemical ways: lifted heart rate, higher blood pressure, sweating, changes in levels of the hormones cortisol and adrenalin.

This response is known as our sympathetic nervous system and is often referred to as our “flight or fight response’’. Without this reaction our ability to avoid threats and perform demanding tasks significantly diminishes.

We need stress to perform. We need stress to grow and get fitter, smarter and stronger. Stress is our friend. There is no avoiding stress. It is inevitable. What we can do, though, is focus on our ability to handle stressful situations and ensure we bounce back quickly.

In the workplace, being in the zone with no other distractions, not thinking about the past or future, enables us to get the best job done because it does not allow thoughts to distract such as “If I don’t hit my budget, I may lose my job’’. When we are distracted by the past or future, fight or flight kicks in and we begin to feel overwhelmed, which affects our capacity to get the job done.

A study in the US monitored 30,000 people across eight years. Researchers asked people two simple questions: How much stress have you experienced in the last year? Do you believe that stress is harmful to your health?

What they found was those who reported high levels of stress and viewed it as detrimental to their health had a 43 per cent risk of premature death across those eight years. Those who had high levels of stress but did not believe it was detrimental to their health had the lowest risk of death.

What matters most, then, is how we perceive stress, not the level of stress we are experiencing.

If we demonise stress, we make it toxic. If we understand stress is inevitable and it is important in making us more productive and healthier, we can build resilience.

The secret to a healthy relationship with stress isn’t to avoid it but to embrace it. Encouraging stressful situations will increase your resilience and your overall performance. The key is to focus on simple things you can control to harness how stress affects you, such as breathing, giving yourself a few minutes to focus and get in the zone or consciously thinking positively about what can be gained from the situation or goal in mind.

Perhaps American psychologist William James discovered the simplest stress-busting secret more than 100 years ago. His theory was: “Our greatest weapon over stress is to choose one thought over another!”

Greg Stark is the founder of Better Being.