Chapter 4: Reduce stress & increase resilience
When your stress is high, look at your beliefs and believe in yourself.
It helps to notice that once you’re stressed, you may be holding specific beliefs about the situation that are adding to the stress. You also need to believe in yourself to reduce stress.
Reflect on the questions below.
Exercise:
Do you believe certain things to be true? Are you holding certain assumptions about your stressful situation?
When your stress is high, take 5 minutes to reflect on the following questions:
What assumptions are you making that are creating stress? Quickly brainstorm the sources of stress.
Are you assuming that certain work needs to get done right away, where you have set that expectation, not anyone else? Often times, we make assumptions that tasks are due now, when in reality, we can deliver a little later.
Are you assuming that the work has to be done to a certain level of quality? What level of quality would be good enough?
Are you assuming there is only one right way to get things done? Sometimes we think tasks have to be in a certain order or deliverables need to be done exactly one way. If this is a source of stress, is there an alternative?
Are you assuming you have to do it all and can’t delegate? Or, can you delegate to others?
Now that you know the sources of stress, what choices do you have? Can you change your belief or assumption? Can you take a specific action to mitigate the stress?
Action: identify your beliefs or assumptions if you’re in a stressful situation and choose what changes in thought or actions you want to take and take the first, next step.
Along with assumptions, you may have beliefs about yourself in this stressful situation, that are not helping you. Take 5 minutes to reflect on the following questions:
What beliefs do I hold about myself in this situation? (i.e. I’m capable, I’m not capable)
Which beliefs are helping me, and which are holding me back?
How do I want to shift my beliefs?
What would it take to shift my beliefs? (i.e. a new thought habit, affirmations, support from colleagues, etc.)
What’s the new action you want to take?