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How to hack stress in the workplace
Is work leaving you stressed? Wondering how on earth you can lower the levels of overwhelm and release some of the strain? Here’s some advice from our Head of Happiness, Stephanie Davies, to help you hack stress in the workplace and start viewing it in a completely different way.
The stress epidemic
A recent trip to the dentist confirmed that months of sleep-induced jaw-clenching, a product of the usual deadlines, demands of running a business and life’s general ups and downs, meant I had cracked two teeth. So after leaving with a mouth guard that would rival Rocky’s and leave me a dribbling mess by night, I decided to look further at the ‘stress epidemic’ and what we can do to hack our stress.
Okay, here’s the grim stuff first. Last year, the American Psychological Association found that two-thirds of people in the US reported feeling more stressed during the pandemic and predicted: “a mental health crisis that could yield serious health and social consequences for years to come.”
There’s no denying that too much stress can harm both body and mind. It’s been linked to all six leading causes of death in the West: cancer, heart disease, liver disease, accidents, lung disease and suicide.
It can also weaken the immune system, hamper cognitive performance, reduce productivity and increase the risk of mental health problems. There’s also an increased risk of diabetes, depression and cardiovascular disease (and more) - all associated with high stress levels.
Small wonder that the World Health Organization has described stress as the “epidemic of the twenty-first century”.
It’s enough to make you feel stressed just thinking about it.
But perhaps we just need to think about stress differently? Researchers studying the mind-body connection say there are natural benefits to being stressed, and if we change our “stress mindset”, we might be able to turn things around and make stress a positive influence on our lives.
Start with adapting your mindset about stress.
Stress didn’t always have such a bad rep. When Hungarian endocrinologist and pioneering stress researcher Hans Selye brought the word into the medical lexicon, he defined it simply as “the nonspecific response of the body to any demand”. The body’s stress response is designed to help us thrive and survive when faced with threats or challenges to our existence and our goals.
The Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of stress lies at the heart of the new school of thought about how best to deal with it. For many years, the spotlight has been on the negative aspects of stress.
However, research published in 2013 showed that when people under a lot of stress believed it was good for them, they fared better than people who thought it was bad for them.
Alia Crum, an assistant professor of psychology at Stanford, has been studying a century's worth of stress and anxiety and says, “Stress is inevitable when you’re living a life that’s connected with things you care about. And learning how to embrace it and work with it is really what helps us thrive and grow and perform at our highest level.”
Four basic ways to adapt your mindset to stress
Crum believes there are four basic ways our mindset can affect our stress response.
- Shifting our attention: rather than noticing all the unpleasant effects of stress, try and focus on possible opportunities instead.
While not necessarily reducing negative emotions – you are going to still feel sad, angry or upset when dealing with a difficult situation – a positive mindset means these can be accompanied by positive emotions such as feelings of hope, connection or resilience. - “The ‘stress is enhancing’ signal. By using stress effects and feelings as a signal to tell you something, it reduces unnecessary stress – the stress about stress.” In other words, don’t try and fight it or be worried that you’re stressed.
Go with it and believe it will pass but ask yourself what the stress tells you. How can you listen to it and use it as a signal for what you need to do? - Behaviour. People who view stress as bad tend to behave in one of two ways: either they ‘freak out’, akin to the fight response, or ‘check out’, a bit like a flight response.
Faced with the stress of this article deadline, for example, I might work myself up into a panic, feeling so hyped up and on edge that I’m unable to focus on the job at hand, or I might wildly procrastinate in the hope that the source of my stress might go away.
Do you recognise that?
For some, this flight from reality can also take the form of additional unhelpful behaviours, like drinking or avoidance, says Crum. So notice the behaviour and write down a more helpful behaviour with small steps and actions for moving yourself forward. Writing stuff down in small actionable chunks helps. Use some of our resources, such as the Pomodoro or the Eisenhower technique, for better time management. Read more about these techniques and resources here
Meanwhile, those with a positive mindset don’t dodge the unpleasantness of stress but can use it to get stuff done. Crum’s doctoral research showed, for example, that such people are more open and receptive to negative feedback and more willing to persist in times of struggle.
- Turn the stress response to your advantage. Stress evolved to help us deal with the toughest of situations. The rush of energy and boost of alertness are things we strive for at other times, but they need to be focused on the task at hand rather than on ways to avoid it, say.
Reframing anxiety as excitement, for example, has been shown to help people do better in tests, negotiations, and public speaking. As a comedian, I learnt this early on in my career. As a psychologist, I know it’s the same response, so reframing the feeling helps me think and behave differently in the moment.
“There is no magic to thinking our way out of stress.”
In preliminary studies, Crum and her colleagues have found that people who view stress as enhancing rather than debilitating have better regulation of cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate, a hormone that helps with brain growth after stress.
Thinking our way out of stress might sound like wishful thinking, but there is no magic bullet. We have to work on these techniques. And, of course, none of this spells the end of stress.
“Trying to get rid of your stress is like emptying out an ocean with a bucket. It’s just silly,” says Crum.
Nor does it mean that all external causes of stress are good and should be tolerated. You can’t just tell your team they should work more because stress is good for them or put up with an abusive partner. Instead, by helping people better utilise stress, the approach can help provide the focus and the motivation to get us out of stressful situations.
Ultimately, whatever is causing your stress, the way you view it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, so it really is time to stop stressing about it. Given all the debilitating consequences of feeling stressed, that can only be a good thing.
For more information, go to www.laughology.co.uk and access our free stuff page or email info@laughology.co.uk to enquire about a workshop on hacking your stress.
Stephanie Davies is a motivational speaker and one of the UK’s leading voices in happiness and engagement in organisations. She also happens to be Laughology’s founder, CEO and Head of Happiness too. Phew, no wonder she needs that mouthguard.
