Modern life is full of hassles, deadlines, frustrations, and demands. For many people, stress is so commonplace that it has become a way of life. Stress isn’t always bad. In small doses, it can help you perform under pressure and motivate you to do your best. But when you’re constantly running in emergency mode, your mind and body pay the price.
Stress is a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened or that upset your balance in some way (whether you know it or not). In the workplace, for many people, any amount of change at all can trigger stress, especially if it’s perceived to be unwanted change. When you sense danger—whether it’s real or imagined—your body’s defenses kick into high gear in a rapid, automatic process known as the “fight-or-flight-or-freeze” reaction, or the ‘stress response.’
In today’s fast paced and ever changing business climate, the most dangerous thing about stress is how easily it can creep up on you. You get used to it. It starts to feel familiar, even normal. You don’t notice how much it’s affecting you, even as it takes a heavy toll.
The signs and symptoms of stress overload can be almost anything. Stress affects the mind, body, and behavior in many ways, and everyone experiences stress differently. Not only can overwhelming stress lead to serious mental and physical health problems, it can also take a toll on your relationships at home and at work.
So how do you protect yourself from stress? Well first, you have to be aware that it’s happening — so self-awareness is critical. Being aware that you’re stressed isn’t always easy. It does require a huge amount of self-awareness, and self-awareness is very difficult for most people. Self-awareness is in fact a learned skill. It takes time to create the necessary thought-habits that will lead to your personal awareness.
Learning the skill of Positive Presence provides you with the tools, exercises and techniques to create those thought-habits that will lead to self-awareness. At the heart of the skill of Positive Presence is your innate ability to adjust for and create a positive and energized mindset through conscience thought processes – you are in essence ‘re-wiring’ your brain to protect yourself from the ill-affects of stress.
The findings coming from the neurosciences is proving that the ‘brain-power’ needed for productivity and efficiency in today’s work environment can only be attained when you are in a state of positive emotional electro-magnetic neuro-chemical energy. This state requires (and/or depends on) your ability to create a flow of positive thoughts and feelings amid the chaos, the change, and the ambiguity of today’s work environment.
Successful companies and their leaders don’t stand around waiting for direction in moments of potential crisis. With a highly developed sense of purpose, they take the initiative and problem solve with collective intelligence and effectiveness in a systems based approach to averting crisis and obtain optimal levels of sustained outcomes. This collective and collaborative approach to performance arises from a focus on upper brain response for achievement, rather than a lower brain response to self-preservation.
Do you ever go to work and ask yourself, “How can I perform my very best today?” If you are asking that question, have you ever asked, “What do I need to do to perform to my full potential?” As a leader you not only need to be self-aware but you need to be self-evaluating constantly for individual and organizational performance improvement. The day you stop continuing to learn, to grow, and to develop is the day you start dying an inevitable slow death. Rest assured your competitors will not stop improving if you become comfortable with your status quo.
In the knowledge-based economy it is the first time in human history that a ‘hard day’s work’ is not ‘hard’ in the physical sense, but instead it is the employee’s brain that’s being worked — it is their ‘mind,’ that is employed. That being said, for today’s organizations to succeed and thrive will depend on the ability of the collective working brain-power of their workforce to create and produce.
The findings coming from the neurosciences is proving that the ‘brain-power’ needed for productivity and efficiency in today’s demanding work environment can only be attained when we are in a state of positive emotional electro-magnetic neuro-chemical energy. Unfortunately, the very nature of today’s organizations – the complexity, the chaos, and the constant change – runs counter to creating an environment that is positive and energized.
Research and personal experiences are telling us that the phenomenon of ‘re-wiring’ through the neuro-plasticity of your brain is easier than it may sound. In fact anyone with a keen self-awareness and some really good coaching can, through their conscious thought processes, change behaviour habits in three to four weeks, or even in as little of eight days.
No workplace is without a ’Negative Nellie’. You all either work with, or have worked with, that guy (or girl) that’s always complaining or trying to sabotage a good days work – or just plain toxic both in speech and/or behaviour!
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You can actually ‘re-wire’ your brain for a higher skill level . You ‘re-wire’ by continuous reading, writing and reciting of information for creating new thought and behavior habits. This re-wiring occurs via the neuroplasticity of your brain.