Anyone feeling like the flow of their daily life is dictated mostly by stress?
You have to get to the office early so that you aren’t stuck in traffic. Traffic is stressful – it’s a waste of time and you don’t have a minute to spare! Why?
Well, not wanting to disappoint anyone (because that’s also stressful), you have overcommitted at work. By the way, the work must be perfect (because making mistakes? Yup – stressful).
Since that deadline is approaching, you’ll have to skip your (otherwise stress-busting) creative practice and your daily workout routine. When you finally have space to rest at the end of the day, you’ll flip on a Netflix series because that’s the only type of recovery you’ll have the energy for.
It takes a while to shut your brain down for the day, but even if you stay up late for the sake of recovery, you’d better set your alarm clock to get out the door early enough to beat that traffic…
Welcome to the stress cycle, where everything we do seems like an attempt to manage, avoid, or recover from it! It’s an anxious, reactive way to conduct daily life that creeps up on us before we know it. When we’re on guard all of the time, we leave little room for life to simply unfold around us. It narrows our focus onto what we don’t want, rather than what really matters.
Like calm, clarity, and creativity.
When we give our power over to stress, we’re perpetuating the cycle of saying “yes” and “no” to the wrong things. We’re essentially charting the course for burnout.
But we don’t have to!
How Did Stress Start Taking Over in the First Place?
Very subtly!
It starts with the glorification of “busy”. We tend to take on more stress than we really need to because we feel that a full schedule is a successful one. It can even serve as a defense mechanism! It means we’re doing enough.
Ever see that episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza figures out how to look important at work? “I always look annoyed. When you look annoyed all the time, people think that you’re busy”. And if you’re busy then you must be doing something right. You’re really earning your accolades, right? Wrong – but it certainly feels that way!
The difference is, we’re not pretending. We are annoyed, stretched, and overworked.
Typically, we’re not even actively seeking out things to fill our calendar. People simply ask us to do more, and in pursuit of success we tend to comply. It can feel like we don’t really have a choice!
The truth is that stress is a necessary and appropriate part of success, and we do have the power to confidently accept it into our lives. The problem is that we don’t always know:
- How much is reasonable, and
- How to deal with it effectively.
We get stuck in a loop when we start trying to minimize it. This can look like:
- Perfectionism
- Overcommitting
- Overworking
- Meticulously planning for contingencies
These are all attempts to control the uncontrollable so that we don’t have to feel the stress (while ironically creating more of it).
(The related post Preparation over Prevention expands on this!)
So how do we stop the cycle? We have to start accepting stress as a signal, not a goal and not a taboo.
Stopping the Cycle and Reclaiming Our Power From Stress
First, we need to reframe stress. Then we need to know what to do with it when we feel it.
[Disclaimer: This is a great space to work with a mental health professional. I am not one!]
Reframing Stress: Who You Are Versus How You Feel
Especially when you’re experiencing corporate burnout, it’s normal to have a knee-jerk reaction to stress. It feels awful. We experience too much of it. We need to get rid of it as soon as possible.
Stress starts running the show when it becomes more than just something we experience. We tend to embody our feelings, as in “I am… happy, stressed, burnt out.” It catastrophizes the stress and turns it into an urgent problem that needs solving. This is in contrast to just noticing that “I’m experiencing stress”, which emphasizes its temporary nature and allows you to separate from it.
When we identify too closely with our stress, there’s no easy way out of it. So we’re left waiting for circumstances to change (or trying to frantically force change).
If we can get a little distance from it though, we can more easily tune in for an objective view of where the stress is coming from. In the process, we learn a little more about what is important to us, and what makes us tick. Then we figure out what we’re going to do about it.
We’re essentially reframing stress as an indicator of how things are going, not something that needs to be avoided at all costs and immediately remedied.
There’s a spectrum to work within. A little stress is okay. It’s normal, and it can help us grow or motivate us to make positive changes in our lives. A lot of stress might be okay temporarily, but know that you may need some extra support. Perpetual stress is probably not great.
(Further reading in the post Is Burnout Okay? When to Push Through and When To Walk Away.)
You need to know yourself well enough to feel out where on the spectrum you are, what’s tolerable for you, and for how long. This understanding will inform the appropriate action to take next.
Speaking of action – it’s also important to understand the difference between validating your experience of stress, and complacency with the circumstances. Sometimes stress just signals that it’s time for a little extra self-care. Other times it’s indicating that a big change is needed. Either way, you don’t need to just grin and bear it!
What is Your Stress Trying to Tell You?
One of my favourite ways to manage stress (and stay ahead of burnout) is to consider a pendulum with a center of balance.
Start with a relatively low-stress, balanced daily or weekly lifestyle. That’s your baseline level of balance.
As stressors build up, the pendulum starts to swing. (I am also not a physicist, so bear with me here!) There’s always going to be something pulling at our time and attention, so what we want to do is just be aware of the movement of the pendulum.
We want to maintain our awareness of how far away from our balanced center the pendulum has swung. When we feel that’s enough, which takes practice, we want to actively find effective solutions to swing us back toward balance.
Sometimes the answer will be consciously letting go. Often it will be asking for help. Sometimes it will be simplification. Frequently it will be a little extra self-care (sleep, creative projects, exercise, time with friends and family, and so-on). Occasionally it’ll tell you that something is out of alignment with your values.
(You might also enjoy the post How to Find Your Unique Work-Life Balance.)
Listening to the stress helps us calmly make informed decisions including the most effective and practical approaches to addressing it!
Back to Basics: Address The Easy Wins First
What’s stressing you out? Stress can be quite pervasive and hard to pin-point. If you know you’re stressed but you can’t quite put your finger on what’s contributing to it, get back to basics:
- How’s your sleep? Are you getting enough? Do you need a better wind-down routine?
- What about nutrition – are you able to eat healthy well-rounded meals? Have you been skipping meals?
- Have you been moving your body? Are you able to fit exercise into your busy schedule? What are some opportunities for movement?
- Is your calendar jam-packed? Do you have some you-time blocked off in there? Is there anything on there that can be delegated out?
- What are you saying “yes” to, but you wish you could say “no”? How can we make that happen?
- Are you making time for connection? When’s the last time you just sat down to chat with a friend or family?
- Have you done anything for you lately? Do you miss being creative? Maybe you need a creative outlet to relieve stress!
How Are Your Boundaries?
The next place I’d look (although it’s not always easy to pinpoint) is your boundaries. Healthy work-life boundaries mean that you will not:
- Take on more than you can reasonably handle
- Give up on other commitments because work is demanding
- Feel obligated to work outside of your agreed-upon hours
You can also set boundaries for your stress in the same way. You will not:
- Let stress keep you from things that you love and enjoy
- Allow stress to tell you who you are or what you’re worth
- Ignore your self-care practices*
- Devalue the things that matter the most to you
*Stress can tell you what you’re missing and perhaps how to fix it, but it’s also a blanket signal to start engaging in some sustainable self-care.
If you’d like more of a challenge, get introspective and examine where your daily life is in or out of alignment with your values. I’ve written a fair bit about cultivating authenticity, which can help you get more clarity on what matters most to you so that you have a bit of a guidance system.
Are You Ready to Take Charge?
Calm clarity.
It’s like a breath of fresh air, isn’t it?
Don’t let stress define you, and certainly don’t let it call the shots. Instead of reacting to the feeling of stress, get inquisitive about it!
If you can listen in, then you can take actions that are within your control to help alleviate it when it arises. The more you practice this, the less you may feel stuck in this loop of feeling stressed, anticipating more stressors, and then stressing out over trying to prevent stress.
This calmer, more controlled approach to dealing with stress will help you create space for what matters most to you, allowing life to unfold with much more ease.
What are you going to do today to take your power back from stress? Grab your journal or comment below. We’ve got this!
