Tag Archives: fear

How to Bust Stress and Fears

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How to Bust Stress and Fear

You know that stress is bad for you. Yet you endure it every day. Modern life is stressful. Whether it’s work, your boss, your spouse, your kids, your parents, driving or simply trying to fathom what to eat today. Your life is filled with stressors. So what can you do about it?

Imagine you are visiting a theme park

The best rides always have a long queue and you look with disdain at a group of ‘bullies’ who cut the line and push in front of you.

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3 Fears that Undermine Your Authenticity

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3 fears that undermine authenticityThere’s something not quite right.

Something just isn’t sitting well in your gut.

You can’t quite place it exactly, but there is something wrong between the words and something else.

Have you ever heard the adage that communication is only 7 percent verbal and 93 percent non-verbal? Well, much of it is a pernicious myth, but there is some truth in the idea of congruence between what you say and how you say it. And when we witness a lack of congruence (in our perception) it is often that ‘gut’ feel, that sense of unease that causes us to mistrust what we are hearing.

We’ve all hidden something about ourselves from others.

We’re all tempted to “spin” to protect ourselves from some vulnerability or difficult situation. Sure, I have plenty of hidden parts, thank you. My recent intimate relationship with death has led to a great deal of mind spring-cleaning. In so doing, I’ve come across three common fears that cause us to hide some of our authenticity: rejection, exposure and vulnerability.

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Stop Stress and Anxiety

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Anxiety or stress versus Fear

Fear and anxiety and stress are close cousins yet distinct from each other.

Fear, evolutionary speaking, is a useful, protective trait critical for survival. It sharpens our senses and prepares our body to face sudden danger. Critically, fear is our response to a real threat and imminent danger. Fear has a cause that is both tangible and present and is usually something specific.

Anxiety is usually a fear of an indefinite something that we cannot always explain or even locate in space and time.

Stress is the way our bodies and minds react to something which upsets our normal balance in life. Stress is how we feel and how our bodies react when we are fearful or anxious. Some level of stress has some upside to mind and body function to enable us to react in a positive way. Too much stress though, is both harmful to the body and our performance. How much is too much? Well, that depends… on you and how you respond.

As fear is a critical survival mechanism in response to a real threat, stress from fear is something to be tolerated in order to survive. Anxiety, on the other hand, is fear looking for a reason.

Anxiety is fear looking for a reason.

In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) there is a category for “General Anxiety Disorder” (GAD). Diagnostic criteria for GAD are: Excessive and difficult-to-tame anxiety and worry occurring more days than not for at least 6 months about a number of events or activities. And you have 3 or more of the following symptoms:

  • Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge
  • Being easily fatigued
  • Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank
  • Irritability
  • Muscle tension
  • Sleep disturbance

Also, the worry should not be about something specific.

Manifest symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning in life.

As you read through the clinical diagnosis, if you think, “yeap, that’s me”, you need to stop right now and book an appointment to visit your doctor. So, just check the details again, is your anxiety occurring more days than not? At least 3 of the symptoms? IS your anxiety causing you significant distress? Again, if your answers are yes, you need to seek professional advice.

Anxiety is the tacit awareness that something is missing or wrong in our lives or that our values an aspirations are out of focus or under threat.

Active versus passive fear

Taking action in response to threatening stimuli enables us to engage in active oping strategies instead of a fearful response. The central nucleus of the amygdala plays a critical role here. Specifically, “Type 1” cells in the Central Nucleus (CeA) that, when activated, inhibit transmission activity. When inhibited, the CeA is selectively silenced. This silencing is linked to activity in the frontal region of the brain (the Cholinergenic basal forebrain) which is known for its arousing influence on parts of the brain cortex. In short, silence the CeA and you more actively seek a way out of a threatening situation.

The bed nucleus of the stria terminals (BNST) mediates slower-onset, longer-lasting responses that frequently accompany sustained threats, and that may persist even after threat termination. Continuing the feeling of anxiety.

It is possible to bypass, or at least significantly reduce, the anxiety experience by training ourselves to use alternate pathways.

We can avoid being gripped by anxiety. Not by withdrawing from life, but by actively choosing to negotiate ourselves away from negative thinking and engaging in more pleasurable activities and constructive behaviour.

So why do we persist in ever being anxious?

We worry because we think that worrying is the most useful, and sometimes the only apparently useful, strategy and keeps us preoccupied and safe. I.e. it keeps us from taking action to deal with the situation.

If we want to beat anxiety, we must be disciplined to exercise our incredible capacity to conquer it with calm and positivity. Every time we purposefully take action towards change, we contribute to the creation and consolidation of new behavioural responses and the underlying neural circuits that can bypass our anxious response.

Your Brain on Stress and Anxiety – Infographic

Leaders, loosen your grip to stay in control

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What helps distinguish leaders and managers is about control and, quite literally, how “hands-on” you are. When you first learn the game of golf, the chances are that you grip the club tightly. After all this is basically holding onto a stick that you will swing through the air and hit a ball. Allowing the club to “follow-through’ – if you don’t hold on tight, the club might just go as far as the ball.

(I appreciate that many of you reading this may not have ever played golf, for you some alternatives, perhaps liken the tight grip of a golf club to:

  • the tight grip of the reins of a horse
  • controlling your dog on a very short leash
  • holding on tight to your child’s hand )

New golfers have to learn how to ‘let go’ – to relax their grip. If a tight grip is a 10 on a scale, we want a 4 out of 10. The same is true of leadership and the way we hold on to our people. Hold on too tight (micro manage) and people have little freedom to use their own skills and strength. Hold on too tight to the club, and it is the golfer doing all the work.

So the question is: “who should be doing the work?” The manager or leader or the member of staff?

The golf club is weighted for a reason. If you allow the club to do the work, the swing and striking of the ball, becomes almost effortless. Relax your grip on your team and allow them to excel at what they do, and the work becomes almost effortless.

Once you know, as a golfer, that the club is designed to do the job of striking the ball and your job is simply to swing and allow physics do to its job, you can relax. Maintain just enough control to ensure alignment, direction and distance and the ball will fly according to the club used, and the size of the swing. If you want a long distance, you use a long club and a full swing. A short distance off the fairway onto the green requires a shorter distance club and a smaller swing. The power to achieve the distance lies in the tool being employed and the chosen swing – the rest is pure physics.

So what can we learn as a leader?

Isn’t it the same? Make sure that you are using the right tool – the person needs the right skill set (and/or mindset) to do the required job. The leader’s job is to have a little control to ensure that the skills are employed in the right direction for the right distance – that’s about judging how far it is to the goal and translating that into the swing itself – in the case of people, the swing is influence and motivation… let the staff do the rest.

And just like that golf ball landing exactly where you both planned and wanted it to be for the next shot. You celebrate. Unlike golf though, praise your club and thank them for their effort. After all, they did all the work!

When we use this metaphor on our golf leadership workshops, the feedback is instant. Hold tight onto the club and the golfer has to use a great deal of effort and the ball often ends up being pulled, pushed, sliced or hooked – going two thirds of the required distance. Relax the grip maintaining directional control and the ball flies straight to the full distance of the club and swing used.

(For non-golfers… try this with a horse, hold tight, the horse will slow down even when you whip it! You dog on a short leash stays by your side whilst pulling your arm out of its socket! Your child dangles from your hand as you cross the road.)

When the going gets tough, leaders in control let go!

Yet, new golfers on particular find their grip tightening in more difficult situations. The very moment when they need to be most at ease, most truly controlling, fear envelops them, pressure builds, the grip tightens and the ball goes astray.

The same is true of business leaders under pressure. Listen to the media hype about the doom and gloom of the current economic situation and fear can easily creep in to the mind. Many leaders respond by tightening their grip on their people and their business, believing that the tighter they hold the more control they have and the more likely they are to survive and pull through. Albeit, they expend huge amounts of effort, feel incredibly stressed, and more likely to explode a blood vessel!

Tough times in business are better served by leaders keeping a clear head, a loose grip, maintain direction and let your people do what they do best.

Let’s face the truth here, even a behemoth the size of AIG can’t control the market, what makes you think that you can? My advice, ignore the noise (media doom and gloom), look for the opportunities and focus on the goal and it’s direction, choose the right club, loosen your grip and let your club do the work.

Loosen your grip and you’ll have more control.