The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance.

90 percent of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress Sin order to remain calm and in control [TalentSmart]

For animals, intermittent stress is the bulk of what they experience, in the form of physical threats in their immediate environment.

Bulk of your stress is subjective and under your control. Top performers have well-honed coping strategies that they employ under stressful circumstances. This lowers their stress levels regardless of what’s happening in their environment, ensuring that the stress they experience is intermittent and not prolonged.

Appreciate What You Have

People who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy, and physical well-being [Research at University of California]

Avoid Asking “What If”

Things can go in a million different directions, and the more time you spend worrying about the possibilities, the less time you’ll spend focusing on taking action that will calm you down and keep your stress under control. Calm people know that asking “what if’’ will only take them to a place they don’t want—or need—to go.

Stay Positive

Positive thoughts help make stress intermittent by focusing your brain’s attention onto something that is completely stress-free.

You have to give your wandering brain a little help by consciously selecting something positive to think about. Any positive thought will do to refocus your attention.

When things are going well, and your mood is good, this is relatively easy. When things are going poorly, and your mind is flooded with negative thoughts, this can be a challenge – think about your day and identify one positive thing that happened, no matter how small. If you can’t think of something from the current day, reflect on the previous day or even the previous week. Or perhaps you’re looking forward to an exciting event that you can focus your attention on. The point here is that you must have something positive that you’re ready to shift your attention to when your thoughts turn negative.

Disconnect

Given the importance of keeping stress intermittent, it’s easy to see how taking regular time off the grid can help keep your stress under control.

When you make yourself available to your work 24/7, you expose yourself to a constant barrage of stressors.

Forcing yourself offline and even turning off your phone gives your body a break from a constant source of stress. Studies have shown that something as simple as an email break can lower stress levels.

Technology enables constant communication and the expectation that you should be available 24/7. It is extremely difficult to enjoy a stress-free moment outside of work when an email that will change your train of thought and get you thinking about work can drop onto your phone at any moment.

If detaching yourself from work-related communication on weekday evenings is too big a challenge, then how about the weekend? Choose blocks of time where you cut the cord and go offline. You’ll be amazed at how refreshing these breaks are and how they reduce stress by putting a mental recharge into your weekly schedule.

If you’re worried about the negative repercussions of taking this step, first try doing it at times when you’re unlikely to be contacted—maybe Sunday morning. As you grow more comfortable with it, and as your coworkers begin to accept the time you spend offline, gradually expand the amount of time you spend away from technology.

Limit Your Caffeine Intake

Drinking caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline. Adrenaline is the source of the “fight-or-flight” response, a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and fight or run for the hills when faced with a threat.

The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response – not so great when you’re responding to a curt email. Your emotions overrun your behavior.

Sleep Enough and Well

When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them, so that you wake up alert and clear-headed.

Your self-control, attention, and memory are all reduced when you don’t get enough—or the right kind—of sleep.

Sleep deprivation raises stress hormone levels on its own, even without a stressor present.

Stressful projects often make you feel as if you have no time to sleep, but taking the time to get a decent night’s sleep is often the one thing keeping you from getting things under control.

Squash Negative Self-Talk

Stop negative self-talk in its tracks. The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts.

When you find yourself believing the negative and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it’s time to stop and write them down. Literally stop what you’re doing and write down what you’re thinking.

Once you’ve taken a moment to slow down the negative momentum of your thoughts, you will be more rational and clear-headed.

You can bet that your statements aren’t true any time you use words like “never,” “worst,” “ever,” etc. If your statements still look like facts once they’re on paper, take them to a friend or colleague you trust and see if he or she agrees with you. Then the truth will surely come out.

Identifying and labeling your thoughts as thoughts by separating them from the facts will help you escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive new outlook.

Reframe Your Perspective

Unrealistic deadlines, unforgiving bosses, and out-of-control traffic are the reasons you’re so stressed all the time.

You can’t control your circumstances, but you can control how you respond to them. So before you spend too much time dwelling on something, take a minute to put the situation in perspective. If you aren’t sure when you need to do this, try looking for clues that your anxiety may not be proportional to the stressor.

If you’re thinking in broad, sweeping statements such as “Everything is going wrong” or “Nothing will work out,” then you need to reframe the situation.

A great way to correct this unproductive thought pattern is to list the specific things that actually are going wrong or not working out.

Breathe

The easiest way to make stress intermittent. The practice of being in the moment with your breathing will begin to train your brain to focus solely on the task at hand.

Take a couple of minutes to focus on your breathing. Close the door, put away all other distractions, and just sit in a chair and breathe. The goal is to spend the entire time focused only on your breathing, which will prevent your mind from wandering.

Think about how it feels to breathe in and out. This sounds simple, but it’s hard to do for more than a minute or two. It’s all right if you get sidetracked by another thought; this is sure to happen at the beginning, and you just need to bring your focus back to your breathing.

Use Your Support System

You cannot do it all by yourself. It’s tempting, yet entirely ineffective.

Recognize your weaknesses and ask for help when you need it – means tapping into your support system when a situation is challenging enough for you to feel overwhelmed.

• Everyone has someone at work and/or outside work who is on their team, rooting for them, and ready to help them get the best from a difficult situation – Identify these individuals in your life and make an effort to seek their insight and assistance when you need it.
• Something as simple as talking about your worries will provide an outlet for your anxiety and stress and supply you with a new perspective on the situation.
• Most of the time, other people can see a solution that you can’t because they are not as emotionally invested in the situation.

Asking for help will mitigate your stress and strengthen your relationships with those you rely upon.

Pathfinders is ready to assist whenever you require. Tell us your challenges; we will jointly find the solution. This is what we do with our clients.

 

Suresh Shah, M.D., Pathfinders Enterprise