Travis Bradberry* says there is no way to avoid stressful situations in the modern workplace, but there are good and bad ways of dealing with them.
There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe they can make things happen and those who believe things happen to them.
The first group are convinced that the outcome of their lives and careers is more or less in their own hands.
The second group take more of a Forrest Gump approach — they sit around and wait for the bus to take them somewhere.
Research has shown that the empowered people who feel that they control the events in their lives end up doing better on nearly every measure of work performance.
What makes empowered people special, whether they work on the shop floor or in the executive suite, is that they don’t get overwhelmed when the going gets tough.
Just like you, the empowered feel intense stress and anxiety when hard times strike, but they use this anxiety differently.
Since the empowered believe that they have control over the outcomes in their lives, their anxiety fuels passion instead of pity and tenacity over trepidation.
The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance.
TalentSmart has found that 90 per cent of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control.
Anxiety is an absolutely necessary emotion.
In fact, performance peaks under the heightened activation that comes with moderate levels of anxiety.
The trick is to manage your stress/anxiety and keep it within optimal levels.
Researchers at Yale University have found that intense stress reduces the volume of grey matter in the areas of the brain responsible for self-control.
As you lose self-control, you lose your ability to cope with stress.
It becomes harder for you to keep yourself out of stressful situations, and you’re more likely to create them for yourself (such as by overreacting to people).
The Yale research shows us why so many people get sucked into progressive rounds of greater and greater stress until they completely burn out (or worse).
You can get better at managing the anxiety you inevitably feel when facing difficult and uncertain situations.
You just need to follow the steps that successful and empowered people take to keep their anxiety from taking over.
Expect and Prepare for Change
People change and businesses go through ebbs and flows — it’s a fact that even the empowered can’t control.
The difference is that they believe they are fully capable of dealing with changes and making something positive happen.
In other words, they are mentally prepared for change — and you can be too.
If you don’t anticipate change naturally, you need to set aside some time regularly to create a list of important changes that you think could possibly happen.
This will open your mind to change and sharpen your ability to spot and respond to impending changes.
Even if the events on your lists never happen, the practice of anticipating and preparing for change will give you a greater sense of command over your future.
Focus on Your Freedoms, Not Your Limitations
We’ve all had the old mantra that life isn’t fair beaten into our brains since we were young.
This is a voice of despair, anxiety, and passive inaction.
While it’s true that we sometimes have limited ability to stop negative events from occurring, we are always free to choose our response.
On your list of possible changes jot down all of the positive ways in which you can take action and respond to each change.
You’ll surprise yourself with how much control you can wield.
Re-write Your Script
This is going to be the hardest because it requires you to change the mode of thinking that you’ve grown accustomed to.
Over time, we all develop mental scripts that run through our heads and influence how we feel about our circumstances and what we do in response to them.
In order to be empowered, you’ll need to rewrite your script.
To do this, recall a tough time you went through recently.
What was it you believed about your circumstances that prevented you from making the most of your situation or responding more effectively?
Write this script down, and label it your hard-luck script.
Since hindsight is 20-20, go ahead and write a more effective and empowered mental script that you wish you had followed next to it.
This is the empowered script you will use to replace your hard-luck script.
File these away so that you can pull them out and study them whenever you are facing stress or strong anxiety.
These periodic reminders will eventually rewrite your scripts completely, enabling you to operate from an empowered script at all times.
Spot and Stop Negative Self-Talk
The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them.
When you find yourself believing the negative and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it’s time to stop and write them down.
Once you’ve taken a moment to slow the negative momentum of your thoughts, you will be more rational and clear-headed in evaluating their veracity.
Count Your Blessings
Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the right thing to do; it also lessens anxiety because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23 per cent.
Overwhelming anxiety and empowerment are mutually exclusive.
Any time you are overcome with enough stress/anxiety to limit your performance, just follow the five steps above to empower yourself and regain control.
*Travis Bradberry is the award-winning co-author of the bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the co-founder of TalentSmart. He can be contacted at TalentSmart.com.
This article first appeared on the TalentSmart website.
