Stressed Ahead of Tight Deadline or Work Conversation? Read This.
Let’s say you are the kind of person who is relatively scared of height. Your childhood friend, however, is a true adrenaline junkie, and she managed to get you onboard for a unique celebration of her 30th birthday: jumping out of a moving plane from 3,000+ meters above the ground.
The last words your friend spoke with her feet hanging off the airplane edge were, “I live for this!” Shortly after, she jumped. It is your turn now, and as you stare into the blue sky in front of you, you find yourself almost reconsidering it all. Your tandem jumper starts the countdown “3, 2, 1…” All you can think of is, “I am terrified. I am terrified.” And in a second, off you go.
If we were to look into yours and your friend’s bodily responses, they would look almost the same. That is: how anxiety and excitement look in your body and brain is incredibly similar. And you can use this to your advantage.
Let us first understand two main terms — stressor and stress response:
Back to primary school level biology. You might remember the word “homeostasis”. In a nutshell, homeostasis refers to having a relatively stable internal environment (think ideal body temperature, heart rate, etc.). Now, a stressor is anything — be it a mysterious person chasing you or an upcoming difficult conversation — that sets you off this balance. A stress response is a palette of changes in your body and your brain designed to get you through the stressful occasion you found yourself in and bring you back to your old balanced self.
Something that is important to grasp — especially during the pandemic-marked year — is that stressors, big and small ones, are an everyday experience for all of us. The subsequent stress response or you being stressed is biologically something useful and helpful. Still, as you are already aware, prolonged stress exposure can have ill effects on your health.
In addition, stress can make you sort of underperform during a work presentation or a test.
And here is the trick, first popularized by health psychologist Kelly McGonigal:
There are ways of thinking about stress that can change its negative consequences.
Studies have found that when people interpret the stress they feel as excitement rather than anxiety, they do better on the task they are excited about.
As we already mentioned, anxiety and excitement have similar bodily fingerprints — both are high arousal states. It is much easier to go from anxiety to excitement than it is to calmness.
So now you are probably wondering: How exactly do I do this?
Mindset:
To help yourself change your mindset, you can tweak the words you tend to use when stressed.
If you usually say, “Ugh, if I don’t do this, it will kill me.” when faced with a pile of unread documents you promised you would go through, you might want to say, “There is a reason why I care about doing this right so much.” Similarly, if you notice your heart is racing before a meeting, instead of thinking, “Woah, I am so anxious.” try to frame it as “My heart is pumping blood to prepare me and energize me in the best possible way. Let’s do this.”
Also, be in tune with your body. If you find yourself swamped with work, try being mindful and weight what is your body telling you against the situation you are in. Ask yourself:
Do I need to slow down?
Do I need to reach out?
Do I need to arise to the challenge?
Being in tune with ourselves and our stress also helps us to be in tune with others. People who reframed stress before having a conversation made more eye contact and mimicked other person’s body language better, helping build rapport a.k.a. ”We simply really clicked.”
Now go and face that challenge of yours and affirm these four magical words: “I. Am. Sooo. Excited.”
