Does Stress Have to be the Cost of Success?

Job stress has become a common and costly problem in the American workplace, leaving few workers untouched. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health finds that stress-related ailments cost companies $200 billion a year in increased absenteeism, tardiness and loss of worker talent. Job tension is tied directly to a lack of productivity and loss of competitive edge. Between 70% and 90% of employee hospital visits are linked to stress. Most business owners and managers recognize this enormous burden against profitability, yet the challenge continues to grow. Why?

It appears that the growing complexity of modern life is outpacing our attempts to cope. A 1987 study estimated that we have over a thousand times more individual stressors each day than our ancestors had merely one hundred years ago.

Thriving through the stress of success.

To effectively deal with this workplace blight, it is good to take cues from those who naturally cope well. High achievers and peak performers are masters of optimally processing the pressures that accompany great achievement. These individuals often use stress as a creative impetus, called the Beethoven Factor by author Paul Pearsall. To use daily pressures without incurring a long-term debt against your health, it is important to first understand a typical stress response.

When our bodies sense a threat – even ones like an impossibly busy schedule – they secrete stress hormones that prepare us to fight or run. These hormones trigger a long list of bodily changes: increases in heart rate, blood pressure and muscle tension; decreases in stomach and intestinal activity; and a rise in blood sugar for quick energy. These responses are perfect if a bear is attacking you, but what if your “attacker” is a vendor or coworker in a meeting? You experience the same biochemical responses, but in the conference room they serve no useful purpose. In fact, they actually harm your ability to be healthy, resourceful, positively poised and productive.

Occasional jitters or a pounding heart may not be a big deal for a 20 or 30 minute meeting, the problem is we find ourselves under constant, long-term stress from virtually every area of modern living. It’s almost as if we are being chased by a bear from sunrise to bedtime, and the natural instincts that protected our ancestors now turn into a dis-ease of modern life. An increase in blood pressure can lead to hypertension. Muscle tension may turn into chronic headaches and muscle pain. Intestinal changes evolve into constipation, spasms or ulcers. Hostility turns into cancer. A pounding heart becomes arrhythmia. In short, stress is just a brief step away from a host of disorders, including insomnia, chronic fatigue, musculoskeletal dysfunction, cancer and heart disease.

What to do?

Most discussion surrounding stress in the workplace is centered on the environment that creates stress and how to modify it, i.e., management style, employee recognition, adjusting workloads, team building, etc., to make it less stressful for the employee. While recommended and has been shown to positively impact profitability and worker health, it can be costly and time consuming. What is easier and more cost-effective, and should be the foundation of any corporate wellness program, is providing specific instruction to your employees about how to alter their response to inevitable daily pressures.

This may seem like a formidable task, but it is the essence of what high achievers and peak performers do. Psychoneuroimmunology – the field of science that explores the links between the mind, the immune system and the nervous systems – explains the basis for this “alteration of response.”

The concept is simple; do this thought experiment:

1. Recall the last time you were on vacation: relaxed, refreshed, carefree, perhaps sipping a Mai Tai while the warm Maui waters filter between your toes.

2. Now recall your last confrontation or workplace pressure. Remember that event in detail.

Which memory felt better?

Both memories relate to an original physiological state consistent with the experience. No doubt you know which one corresponds to a positive, healthy, resourceful body-mind state, and which one corresponds to the one that’s a step away from dis-ease.

Here’s the take home message: these memories called up present physiological states equivalent to the original experience. These states represent a field of choices that can be used to reprogram how we respond to pressure, optimally as a thriving response versus the typical stress response. Which state do you believe will lead to a productive outcome given the same external circumstance? Can you imagine a department or an entire company that gains the ability of thriving versus stressing in response to pressure?

While the concept is simple, accomplishing this reprogramming on a personal level requires some effort to overcome our built-in fight or flight response developed over eons of evolution. But don’t let the minor challenge of this critical task obscure its great value. Like any new good habit that replaces an old bad one, e.g., increasing oxygen uptake with proper breathing versus smoking another cigarette, the challenge is quickly forgotten as one enjoys the vast benefits of the new way.

Ultimately, these thriving techniques will help all your employees reach even greater levels of productivity, teamwork, creativity and achievement without compromising their health and wellness. Given the astronomically growing pressures of modern living, learning a new response is not only desirable it is imperative.



Does Stress Have to be the Cost of Success? - To learn more about this author, visit Joseph Giove's Website.

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