There was a point in my life when I prided myself on how much stress I could take. No matter what I was dealing with, I would take on more. It destroyed me.
I have never been able to tolerate the same stress level since. I’m extremely thankful for that.
Feedback is as gift that most people undervalue. No matter what you are doing, there is always a way to assess what is happening.
Focusing on those cues, and developing my self-awareness has been vital to dealing everything in front of me.
Cues
These are personal. The patterns that I fall into are mine. We may share some, maybe even all of them, the point however is to identify the behaviours that are your response.
These are some of my reactions to overload:
- Binge Eating
This might seem obvious for you, it is for me as well. It is perhaps “more serious” for me. I used to be a lot bigger. Six years ago I lost a lot of weight and have been able to maintain my form.
I was successful because it came with a lot of understanding, a shift in perception and a much higher degree of accountability. I was and continue to be proud of what I achieved.
The challenge that I have is that I can still eat the type of volume that caused me to be overweight in the first place. Daily life requires a lot of discipline — and I am normally happy to hold the line.
When my stress levels exceed my threshold, I go overboard, in a hurry. - Sleep
Some people sleep more when stressed. Not me. I sleep less. A lot less. This creates a host of other problems both psychologically and physiologically. Sleep is probably the most impactful biological process for our physical and mental health.
If you haven’t read the book “Why We Sleep”, I highly encourage you to do do so. You will learn something you never knew about your own body — in every chapter. - Listening
I consider myself an open-minded person. I have built my career on having strong views while holding them loosly. Challenge and change is built into my core.
The higher the degree of stress, the less receptive I become. I get irritated being questioned or challenged. My patience to explain falls off - Distraction & Procrastination
I get easily distracted. I will rationalize to myself that I am simply “working on something else” or that “I will get back to that after a break”. The truth is though that I struggle to muster the focus.
I read recently that procrastination is another way that our brain seeks to implement control when we feel we don’t have it. Since we are “choosing” to do something else over another, we are the ones deciding what is happening to us — this is an idea I am looking more into as I found it interesting. - Everything Feels Like a Chore
Reading, working out, writing … doesn’t matter. My perception turns to feeling like all I am doing is what I “should” be doing. - Thinking in Extremes
I’m not much a fan of binary thinking. I find it limiting. Most things in life are grey, not only black or white.
When my thinking sways from one end of the pendulum to the other, I know I’m peaking.
How Does Awareness Help You Adapt
In the same way that journaling your thoughts to a page lessens what you are juggling in your head, self-awareness allows you to change your frame around your behaviour.
Rather than getting more stressed by behaviours you are exibiting, you get to look at them like an experiment. That you are getting feedback in real time.
This opens up the possibility then to make changes, to adjust and adapt.
I start working in one of the big buckets that I listed above.
The awareness allows me to detach from how I am feeling and take a position from the outside. I know what my “normal” state is, so I start looking for SMALL changes that I can start to put into action.
Here are some examples of small changes I’m making:
- Eat smaller more nutrient dense meals more often
- Get more time outside. Walking or running is a great way to help your body and mind at the same time
- NSDR to transition from work life to personal life (I could have also said meditation. It’s trendy and I know turns some people off). The need here is to take a few minutes to drop into a new phase of the day
- Read things that are lighter and I know are for enjoyment only
- Writing more of what’s on my mind vs articles I planned for
The key here is to think smaller. When we are feeling overwhelmed, we usually will jump to big things. It makes sense, we want to feel differently and finding the fastest path to success is appealing. What is missed though is that your stress level built up slowly. Trying to make a big change will at more stress most of the time. By focusing on smaller steps and tweaks, the work in front of you is much easier to manage and achieve. This gives you momentum and a positive frame to keep making more.
Never underestimate the power of aggregating small gains.
Final Thoughts
Stress isn’t the problem itself.
Too much stress and for too long, that’s the problem.
Stress is an agitator, it’s feedback that you are experiencing from your enviroment indicating a change is needed.
One of my favourite Stoic quotes to leave you with,
Focus on the effort, not the result
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