Recently I’ve been asking people if their job is stressful and almost everyone says YES. Taxi drivers, hotel or airline staff, sales people, shop workers, professionals, managers, business owners. People from all walks of life, the rich and the poor, the happy and the sad, the old and the young. It doesn’t seem to matter what they do for a living, where they live or what their personality is, most of them tell me that they are significantly more stressed today than they were 5 years ago.
One self employed chap’s answer really stands out in my mind. He said:
‘It’s much tougher to get ahead than it used to be. Everyone seems to be focused on delivering more for less and to survive in business I have to do the same. We’re all undercutting each other. It’s like I’m on one of those travellators but I’m facing the wrong way and I’m having to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place.’
It appears that we are all suffering from stress and when I ask people if their situation will improve in the future they usually say ‘no – it will get worse’.
So let me ask you a few questions:
- How many emails do you receive everyday? How many do you delete without reading because you just don’t have time?
- What about texts? Is it the same situation with texts?
- How many calls do you miss each day? How many voice mail messages do you get and do you manage to answer them all?
- Is the traffic on your daily commute getting better or worse? How many of your fellow travellers seem to be frustrated, annoyed or stressed before they even get to work.
- Does it seem that there is more work to be done than there used to be? Do you ever feel that you are falling behind or getting snowed under? Do you ever stay late or get into work early so you can catch up with the backlog?
- Do people seem to want answers to their problems instantly and at all times of the day or night? The smart phone has given us some fantastic advantages but do you ever feel it’s more of a problem than a solution?
- Do you feel like these problems are increasing or decreasing? What will your already busy life be like in 5 years from now?
I don’t know about you but I see more anger, more frustration and more aggression out there. I see more impatience and more selfishness, less caring, less helpfulness. Most people don’t seem to have enough time to handle their own stuff let alone look out for other people. We are all extremely busy and there seems to be little or no time left to help others or just ‘smell the roses’.
When I ask people what is causing stress at work, I’ve noticed that almost everyone tells me that the cause of their stress is outside of themselves and therefore outside of their control. It’s my company’s fault, it’s my boss’s fault, it’s the customers fault, its the governments fault! And if it’s somebody else that’s causing the problem then it must be somebody else’s job to fix it.
In truth we make our own stress or we choose to allow things to stress us. Obviously it’s an internal problem not an external one because we are not all stressed by the same things. For example one person may love presenting to or training their colleagues whereas another would panic or lose sleep thinking that they may be asked to give a 5 minute speech.
If you Google the internal causes of stress you’ll find a list like this:
- Chronic worry
- Pessimism
- Negative self talk
- Highly competitive nature
- Perfectionism
- Controlling approach
- All-or nothing attitude
- Goal obsession
When I first saw this I realised that numbers 4 to 8 described me almost perfectly and what’s more I’d never considered those things were a problem for me. I’d always considered them to be my strengths, my winning formula.
I’m not alone in this approach, many highly successful people admit to being competitive perfectionists and control freaks! Most of them would say that their all-or nothing approach and goal obsession has actually created their success.
When I first saw this list I realised that my approach to creating success was causing high levels of stress in my life. I also realised this approach makes me much more susceptible to anxiety and depression than someone with less drive and less passion!
Some people say that perform better under stress but it’s been proven time after time that stress makes you forget to do things, make poor decisions, get grumpy with people and its also bad for your health. Some people suggest that stretching themselves is always a good thing but sometimes when you stress an elastic band it doesn’t stretch anymore – it breaks!
If you look at the anxiety and depression statistics in this country you’ll understand what I mean. One in nine adults (one in six women) in New Zealand are currently on anti-depressants! Eleven Kiwis successfully commit suicide each week and it’s now the number one cause of death for people aged 11-19. Anxiety attacks are becoming common amongst our teenage population. Drug and alcohol dependency (used to help cope with our stress) are on the rise. As a society we are becoming more and more stressed and like the elastic band some people are beginning to break.
If we are making our own stress (with our controlling perfectionism and our competitive, all-or-nothing approach to achieving our goals) then surely we can do something about it. This is where mindfulness meditation comes in. Mindfulness teaches us to become less focused on the past and the future and more focused in the NOW. It allows us to strive for and achieve our goals but with a detached, non-judgemental approach and this results in a reduction in the amount of stress we create for ourselves.
For more information on my Mindfulness meditation seminar on February 28th 2017 please visit www.johnshack.com/m-s