Turning Negative Stresses into Career Strengths
by Rocelly Gwyneth Leonen
Throughout our academic years, we are bound to experience stress caused by personal, environmental, or social stressors, even political, that affect our motivation, academic performance, and how we interact with our class sessions and classmates. We experience stress because we are constantly exposed to different stressors: eustress and distress.
Eustress is the positive stressor that helps improve our performance, while distress is the negative stressor that hinders our ability to perform. It’s important to note that stress isn’t always a bad thing; it’s actually our body responding to the stressors we are exposed to. However, our bodies are not designed to withstand prolonged negative stress as this disrupts our relationships and performance.
To turn distress into career strengths, we must observe and understand how we respond to the negative stressors we encounter and have a complete self-awareness towards them and the action we take to turn them into strengths. After all, being a student is an opportunity to develop ourselves into the person we visualize ourselves to be once we are professionals.
With that, here are some tips you could use to turn your negative stressors into career strengths:
Tip #1: Adopt a Growth Mindset
In striving to become a stronger person, we don’t necessarily have to push ourselves to be optimists. Instead, we should see who and how we are in terms of intelligence, talents, and skills as things we can further work on to become who we visualize ourselves to be in our career path. This will give you an avenue to take action on what you perceive as what is needed to be improved.
Tip #2: Prioritize Evolution Over Perfection
We are already surrounded by different pressures which limit how we express ourselves and our ability to be creative, which usually causes us to strive for perfection. However, we have the power to give ourselves a break from what’s implausible and see that evolving is a healthy view of honoring our own growth and practicing self-improvement. But having this view doesn’t necessarily mean lowering our standards; instead, it’s being able to value being human, and our peak season doesn’t just focus on one time in our lives. We’re also giving ourselves more freedom to take risks that will help us grow with this view.
Tip #3: See Yourself as You Are
There are times when we don’t know how to rate ourselves, our skills, and/or the quality of our work. Oftentimes, this is due to low self-esteem, high levels of impostor syndrome, or a mismatch in perception and reality.
Being honest with ourselves about our strengths and weaknesses is a significant step for us to know what we’re already good at and what we can further work on while also having more confidence and trust in our own capabilities.
Tip #4: Choose Your Words Wisely
Our thoughts and ideas are powerful, and their power can be maximized or hindered depending on how we convey them. When it comes to our career, using strong verbs is best in describing how we were able to gain or contribute through the work we do, the quality of our work, our achievements, and the skills and abilities we have. This gives us a better avenue in how we show others our capabilities.
Tip #5: Take Action
It’s good that we have goals we want to achieve and challenges we want to overcome, but it’s important to note that wanting does not equate to being, which means that setting goals or visualizing isn’t enough. We have to start without fear of making mistakes. We must cultivate effective systems, take opportunities, learn, adapt, and make the necessary efforts to make our visions come to fruition.
Tip #6: Accept the Things We Cannot Change
There will always be things that are out of our control. With that, we’re bound to feel sadness, anger, frustration, and many other emotions. These feelings are similar to the negative stressors we’re exposed to. We feel these emotions as well, and being indifferent towards them or deeming them invalid would be a great disservice to our mental and emotional well-being. The difficulties in our lives will always have weight on us, and practicing radical acceptance may give us more understanding of the pain that comes with them and the inevitable changes in our lives.
The negative stressors we were or might be exposed to vary, and there may be times when they are beyond what we can handle. However, it’s always important to remember that having limitations is entirely human and normal, as these are usually caused by things we can’t control, or we’re not able to anticipate. How we perceive and react to things is more impactful than we think, and it’s one of the things that gives power to strong emotions. Therefore, seeing how negative stressors affect us matters.
Our career strengths are not just the strengths we already have and nurture. They can also come from our weaknesses that we’re willing to work on.
About the author
Rocelly Gwyneth Leonen is an inquisitive person with a heart for psychology, sociology, and arts and is always dedicated to helping others through research and writing. She is currently studying AB Behavioral Science at the University of Santo Tomas. In her free time, she watches fashion shows, documentaries, and films; spends time with her favorite people outdoors; or spends her time listening to music, reading books, and doing self-care.
KadaKareer is a career development platform for underserved students in the Philippines hoping to launch their digital careers. “Kada” comes from the word barkada, which means a group of friends. We are a Filipino student’s cheerleader, coach, and support group throughout their entire career journey!
