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.
The stress hormones, most notably adrenaline and cortisol, erode higher-brain networks, inhibiting you from succeeding fully at life. Chronic stress means the stress response system is turned on nearly full-time, releasing toxic hormones into your system, and shutting down the ‘creative and executive’ parts of your brain. Stress hormones, when continuously in your system can even shrink your higher brain networks responsible for creativity and decision-making. Stress hormones can impair the immune system, ruin the cardiovascular system, and damage chromosomes producing cancer cells and cause premature aging. At work, stress dampens performance, thwarts teamwork, leads people to make bad decisions, and accounts for nearly half of turnover.
Because of the widespread damage stress can cause, it’s important to know your own limit. But just how much stress is “too much” differs from person to person. We’re all different. Some people are able to roll with the punches, while others seem to crumble in the face of far smaller obstacles or frustrations. Some people even seem to thrive on the excitement and challenge of a high-stress lifestyle and/or work environment.
Your ability to tolerate stress depends on many factors, including the quality of your relationships, your general outlook on life, your emotional intelligence, and genetics. Having the necessary knowledge and awareness, and then mitigating the stress using techniques appropriate for you personally, is essential in today’s workplace.
In today’s organizations, when a company hires an employee, they are essentially hiring that person’s brain and hoping it’s a smart brain that will grow even smarter with experience. But place that person in a high pressure work environment without the tools to transcend stress, and the likelihood is that he or she will lose brain capacity. In reality, stress can drain organizational brain power.
The most important aptitude you can bring to any work-place is your awareness of how stress affects your brain (and your physical and emotional wellness) and how to personally mitigate your stress. Learning the skill of Positive Presence provides you with the tools, exercises and techniques that will allow you to overcome the inevitable harm from the stress of today’s chaotic, fast-paced, and ever-changing work environments.
Catherine is the President and CEO of CORPORATE HARMONY, providing virtual solutions for leadership development and organizational culture change. Her leadership and coaching experience as a Project Manager in an ever-changing, fast moving technological organization with unrelenting demands drove her to the realization that a positive mindset and strength-building behaviors are essential for today’s complex and chaotic organizational systems. CORPORATE HARMONY’s virtual platform of programs, coaching and performance measurement, is an innovative online technology of tested proprietary content. The world-class content of CORPORATE HARMONY’s Positive Presence Program develops the skill of ‘Positive Presence’ and the necessary ‘Positive Presence Behaviour Competencies’ for maintaining a positive and energized mindset and increased performance in today’s complex work environment, and leading to a culture of collaboration and connection. Catherine’s vision for Corporate Harmony is to bring the skill of “Positive Presence” to the corporate world as it becomes more complex, ambiguous and chaotic. Catherine is uniquely positioned to impact organizations’ productivity and long term success, with her powerful vision of eliminating bad stress from every workplace around the globe, bringing purpose into the people equation to promote healthy, productive and meaningful work cultures and turn the tide on the neglect of mental health on a global scale. Catherine is author of the book: “CORPORATE HARMONY – The Performance Link for Today’s Modern Organization” Catherine can be reached at: Catherine.Osborne@corporateharmony.ca or go to ‘contact us’ on our website www.corporateharmony.ca. Catherine is available for consultation, and can be reached by 519-695-3407.