Today’s post is by Kurt Smith (no, that’s not him in the picture – at least we don’t think it is…). Stress. Everyone has a lot of it – it’s almost a prerequisite for being a professional. However, too much stress takes a toll on your health and can eventually lead to multiple chronic illnesses. Sometimes, to power forward, you need to concentrate on rejuvenating your mind and body. Get More Sleep It sounds counter-intuitive, but sleep helps you be more productive. Interesting research done by Stanford’s Cheri D. Mah shows that male basketball players who sleep 10 hours a night improve their free-throw and three-point shooting skills by about 9 per cent. Daytime naps have a similar effect in the office – air traffic controllers were given a 40 minute nap and performed much better on tests that measured reaction time. Research from the University of California, Riverside, showed something similar. A 60-90 minute nap improved memory test results. So did eight full hours of sleep. Most professionals romanticize collapsing after a 16 hour day. Putting in a lot of hard-work just seems like the right thing to do. But if you really want to be productive, a nap may be all you need. Start a Journal A stress journal can be helpful with pinpointing “triggers.” Stress triggers, like noise from outside, a never-ending run of phone calls when you’re in the middle of an important project, or even lunch that didn’t sit well with you, can all impact not only your day but your life over the long-term. Get into the habit of identifying regular stressors in your life and the way you currently deal with them. Every time you feel stressed, keep track of it in your journal. Pretty soon, you’ll see a pattern develop. Make sure you write […]

Today’s post is by Nick Petrie, a Senior Faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership. There is no such thing as a stressful job, stressful company or stressful life. Thirty years of research on stress and resilience has found that all of your stress is created in your head, period. The researchers from York University found that stress was driven by one key factor – Rumination. Rumination is the process of thinking over and over about events from the past (guilt, regret) or events in the future (fear, anxiety) and attaching negative emotion to them. When you ruminate the hormones adrenaline and cortisol flush through your system sending you into fight or flight. The result for people who ruminate a lot is that they are stressed all the time. This is problematic on a number of levels beginning with your health. Continuously elevated levels of adrenaline and cortisol lead to increased chances of a heart attack coupled with suppressed immune functioning. Secondly people who ruminate a lot spend most of their life in an unhappy mental and emotional state. Finally, people who ruminate are not good at achieving things because the one thing they are not doing is work. In summary, all that rumination gets you is a short, miserable, unproductive life. Other than that, there is nothing wrong with it! The first key to reducing your rumination is realizing that there is a difference between pressure and stress. Pressure is simply demand in your environment e.g. deadlines, bosses. Stress is what you do with that pressure inside your head. People who have high pressure jobs but don’t ruminate aren’t stressed. People who have low pressure jobs, but do ruminate are. Think of someone you know who ruminates a lot – how stressed are they? So what can you […]