Feb 24, 2006

How To Defuse Stress (Part 1)

I read a newspaper article today titled “Only half of worried Americans try to manage their stress.” The first paragraph read:

“When it comes to dealing with stress, a number of Americans turn to unhealthy behaviors such as overeating and smoking for relief and don’t exercise … What’s surprising and alarming is the fact that too many people weren’t taking active steps to do anything about the stress they’re feeling.”

I have a feeling that whether you’re American or not, it’s pretty likely that you can relate to this to some degree. I think we all can. And stress robs you of a lot of important things in life – your peace of mind, your time (by hurting your productivity), and your health. And for some reason, facing the stress head-on and working to negate it generally isn’t on most people’s to-do lists.

But you can’t live that way. If stress is impacting your life, you need to attack it head-on and destroy its power to drag you down. I’m going to give you three quick ways you can do that right now, based on a theory by Martin Seligman, president of the American Psychological Association:

#1 – Stop seeing your stress as something “personal.”

This is a biggie. We tend to take the things that are stressing us in life far too personally. We internalize problems and link them to our (often skewed) idea of what we’re capable of. An example could be someone who’s depressed thinking “Why am I so weak when it comes to (dieting, follow-through, etc.)?”, or “I’m not (smart/strong/popular) enough …”, or “Why do I always do this?”

As you can see, thinking thoughts like this automatically starts you off in a position of weakness. It’s no wonder it contributes to stress and depression. You begin to think that because your behaviors are causing you to fail at certain things in life, that it means *you* are the failure. Not true. Not true at all.

The way to push past that is to immediately stand up for yourself and say “Wait a minute. I am not going to label myself like this. Sure, I may be screwing up in this area now, but that doesn’t make me a loser. And it doesn’t prevent me from doing something, taking just one step right now in the right direction. I am more than just a set of behaviors.”

Or, for short, “The problem is not me, it’s my behavior.” You see, that gives you something to work with. You can change your behavior, that’s pretty emotion-neutral, and a lot more likely to succeed than “changing yourself.”

So the first way to shed that stress is to stop taking your challenges personally. Decide that you are not a victim of your behaviors, and you can change what you firmly decide to change.

#2 – Stop seeing the causes of stress as “pervasive.”

Often we have a stress that “leaks” over into every area of life. We’re stressed about our finances, so that makes us edgy in our relationships. We’re stressed about our jobs, so that makes us tense even when we’re not at work. We have a fight with the person we care about, and then we’re carrying that with us wherever we go that day.

In other words, we have a stressful event in one area of our life and we don’t “switch off” when we’re acting in other spheres in our life. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not a very simple task to unplug from a painful, stressful thing that’s going on in your life, but there is something very powerful that you can do:

You can tell yourself, consciously, that it’s not worth worrying about problem X when you’re busy doing Y. You can tell yourself, “Ok, I’m stressed because of my finances, but I’m not going to settle for letting that ruin this night at home with the people who I care about. I may be struggling with one area of my life, but it doesn’t have to drag everything else down with it.”

This is important, because we don’t always take conscious control of where our thoughts are leading us. We have to be able to remind ourselves that there are so many factors in our lives that make it worth living, and a nosedive in one area is just that – a nosedive in *one* area.

Again, easier said than done. But don’t use that as an excuse not to do it.

So the second way to shed stress is to take a step back and realize that despite the problem you’re facing in one area of life, there are plenty of other areas that are still okay. Then you can lean on those to lift your spirits.

#3 – Stop seeing the causes of stress as “permanent.”

Remember, just because something is a problem now, doesn’t mean that it is going to stay a problem forever. Very, very few problems are permanent. Remind yourself of that. Just because something seems painful, or even end-of-the-world right now, you *will* move on eventually.

Now, also keep in mind that there are a lot of things that you can do, depending on your particular stress, to speed up when that “eventually” gets here. Remember, there is very little in life that you cannot overcome, that you can’t make progress on, even if it’s slow and steady.

Don’t leave yourself in a position of weakness by convincing yourself that your stresses and problems are never going to get better. That’s crazy talk. You may not be able to fix everything overnight, but you sure as heck can do something right now to start turning the tide.

I guess you could sum up all three of these points by saying that to defuse stress, you have to rid yourself of the “victim mentality” that says that the events and circumstances of your life are what shape your feelings.

Instead, you need to decide in a very real way that you will no longer settle for putting yourself in anything less than a position of strength, rather than a position of weakness. You have to decide that you are going to overcome your initial feelings and do the work to push past them. And the more you do that, the more you demonstrate to yourself that you really are capable of that, the more you will realize that almost none of your problems are personal, pervasive and permanent … and that will do an enormous amount to reduce your overall stress level.

So the next time you feel stressed, apply one of these three techniques to defuse it (especially if you don’t feel like doing it!). You’ll thank yourself for it.

All the best -

Dave Navarro