A Positive Spin On Stress

Just consider this! Have you ever caught yourself with clenched toes or calf muscles held taut and tight? Or do you suddenly take a deep breath and let it out, only then realizing you have been breathing very shallowly? Or do you find your hands clammy, when everybody else seems to be doing fine? If you have answered 'Yes' to a couple of those, the chances are you are under a fair amount of stress. The worst thing you can hear when under stress is: "Don't be stressed," and I'm not going to say that.

Forbes.com has a ppt presentation on the 10 most stressful jobs of 2016. Starting from #10: taxi drivers, newspaper reporters, broadcasters, senior corporate executives, public relations executives, event coordinators, police officers, airline pilots, firefighters and finally #1 was military personnel.

The ABC of De-Stressing

In this past month, I've had the experience of being around hospitals and cath labs. And while I've sat and waited for the doctor or cardiologist to come, I would look around at the other people waiting and found that they too go through interesting situations as they wait. What interested me as I looked around was to see how young a lot of them were. Many of them were in their 30s and 40s, and as they were waiting to meet the doctor, they were taking calls, conducting office and personal business. I could overhear an assortment of conversations – some were talking about their investments, giving instructions to their office staff, and so on. The stress level in the waiting room was so high – every one was looking towards the door to see when the doctor would come and it would be their turn so that they could be done with it. All this brought to the fore the amount of stress that we live with and under, even when we are waiting to meet somebody who is going to help us to handle the consequences of that stress.

I was reminded of a study that was done by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations where they found that there's a 57% rise in work-related stress in India. It all comes from the fact that we are in situations that we are unable to take control of or handle, and that begins to work itself out in our bodies. People who understand this, and I'm being very general here given our time constraints, say that it has to do with the mindset that we have. There could be other factors here but one of the things is that we look at life negatively. We allow things that are negative to piggyback on us and take away some of the quality of our life.

‘Slow Down, You Move Too Fast’

On the recent trip that our family had taken for our son’s wedding, I realized how frenetic the pace had become for everybody. There used to be a time when one travelled by train. The train gave you a good 24 hours as a buffer time between 2 things that you had to do. But slowly, as air travel increased, that time decreased and all you had really was maybe time to the airport and then the flight. But more and more, that time is getting squeezed. Now with data cards, you can continue to work on your laptop right up to the time you reach the airport, the check-in counters, on your Blackberry’s. Then you get on the flight and again there was a time when you could work as long as your battery held up. But today, most airlines have power sockets where you can plug in your laptop. So you can work on these long haul flights (10-15 hours) uninterrupted. And even that has been enhanced with wireless that is available on flight, so you don’t need to stop any work; you just keep going from one time zone to another without a break.

Stress Management

Friends,

I was reflecting on our talks and thought back to a time in January when I did the talk from my home because I was on my back and I shared a promise that my wife Sheila had made that I was probably stressed out over something and that’s why I was on my back. Stressful situations can sometimes land you with back problems. But stressful situations are something that we can’t get out of. Stress is par for the course, sometimes we can see it coming and sometimes we cannot. We need to respond to it in a good way or else we’ll find ourselves in different situations that we ought not to be in.

Dealing with Stress

This is an unusual morning for me as for the first time, I’m doing this call from my home and not from my office. The reason is that for the past week, I’ve had a problem with my back. On Thursday, I pulled a muscle in my back and spent Friday at home. They say the only thing for a back problem is to reflect on what is on your ceiling. So there I was prone, lying down flat, letting it recover. Friday, I thought I was better, went to office towards the evening. Then Sunday morning the pain was back and walking was excruciating. Managed to get through what I do on a Sunday, but spent yesterday again on my back. Unable to go to office this morning, I said I would do the call from home. But what’s interesting is that, as I was dealing with the back pain, my wife Sheila who is a clinical psychologist asked me what was stressing me out. I replied in the negative. But she said that when you have these chronic back problems, it could be stress-related. Typical response from somebody who’s being told they can’t handle a situation is to say there’s no problem, I’m fine.