“80% of workers feel stress on the job, nearly half say they need help in learning how to manage stress, and 42% say their coworkers need such help."
- The American Institute of Stress
***
Odds are good that work creates some degree of stress in your life.
It may feel that your life could be “better” if your overall work experience were “different”: if you had more flexibility, more freedom, more room to rejuvenate; if your boss, your colleagues, or your company at large provided more support; if it fit more harmoniously into your day, your week, and the rest of your life in general.
Conflicts in these areas are creators of stress.
If not processed properly, that stress can compound over time, and result in persistent tension that limits mobility.
The body, mind, and emotions can start to lose their liveliness and flow.
“Boosts” and/or “relief” may be sought through movies, tv shows, gaming, food, alcohol, drugs, sex, etc., but the payoff gradually diminishes over time, and often comes with unhealthy side effects.
Any seeds of general dissatisfaction that arise in relation to living life, and any underlying blame that gets directed at parts of life that are “other” (other people, other systems, other ideologies, etc.), adds to the stress.
Ultimately, if a different experience of life is desired, actions have to be taken to transform the way in which the happenings of life are experienced.
Life, in its grace, grants the ability to respond.
You can adapt - or transform - the internal mechanisms through which you respond to stress. One way to do so is by training to regulate your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems more effectively.
***
From The American Psychological Association:
The autonomic nervous system has a direct role in physical response to stress and is divided into the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). When the body is stressed, the SNS contributes to what is known as the “fight or flight” response. The body shifts its energy resources toward fighting off a life threat, or fleeing from an enemy.
The SNS signals the adrenal glands to release hormones called adrenalin (epinephrine) and cortisol. These hormones, together with direct actions of autonomic nerves, cause the heart to beat faster, respiration rate to increase, blood vessels in the arms and legs to dilate, digestive process to change and glucose levels (sugar energy) in the bloodstream to increase to deal with the emergency.
The SNS response is fairly sudden in order to prepare the body to respond to an emergency situation or acute stress—short term stressors. Once the crisis is over, the body usually returns to the pre-emergency, unstressed state. This recovery is facilitated by the PNS, which generally has opposing effects to the SNS. But PNS over-activity can also contribute to stress reactions, for example, by promoting bronchoconstriction (e.g., in asthma) or exaggerated vasodilation and compromised blood circulation.
Both the SNS and the PNS have powerful interactions with the immune system, which can also modulate stress reactions. The central nervous system is particularly important in triggering stress responses, as it regulates the autonomic nervous system and plays a central role in interpreting contexts as potentially threatening.
Chronic stress, experiencing stressors over a prolonged period of time, can result in a long-term drain on the body. As the autonomic nervous system continues to trigger physical reactions, it causes a wear-and-tear on the body. It’s not so much what chronic stress does to the nervous system, but what continuous activation of the nervous system does to other bodily systems that become problematic.
***
The functionality of the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system can be trained. Athletes, special forces, paramedics, surgeons, trial lawyers, firefighters and others do so any time they practice responding under pressure … analyze their performance to identify areas of improvement … and then practice some more.
Physically and mentally-emotionally, you can train to respond to the stress you experience - at work, or in any other situation - in ways that generate higher-quality internal vibrations.
Aim & Conquer offers trainings in these areas using several traditional tools (e.g., breath work, meditations, physical exercises, self-reflections, structured group interactions) and with a focus on gaming, especially first-person shooter video games.
In these games, players work as a team, each with unique abilities, in a world with different types of weapons and countless locations for battle, to conquer an opponent and achieve an aim. This makes for an excellent training ground to diagnose and improve nervous system response.
By repeatedly engaging stressful circumstances with different lenses of awareness and integrating oneself with the insights generated, a sensitivity to physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual deviations from one’s center can be cultivated, empowering purposeful response with a level of inner authority.
***
At work, the better employees respond to stress, the happier, more collaborative, and more productive they are, both individually and as a team. This applies to all teams, regardless of the discipline or the level of responsibility.
When teams face pressure, the collective structural integrity is tested. If there is a lack of clarity around the objectives being pursued, or a lack of acceptance of each member’s role and responsibilities, or a lack of effort to complete deliverables, or a lack of accountability and a willingness to blame others, then teams will not be able to accomplish as much as they would otherwise.
If, on the other hand, teams train individually and as a unit to improve their stress response - to build resilience, to trust each other, to communicate more openly, to appreciate others’ contributions, to manage bad habits more purposefully, and so on - then those teams will show up with greater consolidation and force.
Naturally, when that is the case, employees will be more satisfied, collaboration will be more effective, and performance will be at a higher level.
***
What can teams do to improve their stress response? First, a high degree of honesty must be applied to diagnose sources of weakness from an objective point of view. This is true for both individuals in relation to themselves and the team, as a whole, in relation to itself. What about the current team dynamics is working? What isn’t working? How much care is taken to ensure functionality is as high as it can be?
Aim & Conquer serves as an unbiased facilitator that offers practical, effective guidance so that team members can upgrade the quality of interactions they have with each other, and so that the team collectively can upgrade the quality of interactions it has with other teams.
If you’d like to learn more about Aim & Conquer, sign up for the newsletter, or initiate a discussion about designing a customized program for your team at work.
Thank you. Have a wonderful day!
Are you interested in learning more about ways to manage the stress you and your team experience at work? Click below to sign up for Aim & Conquer's newsletter and to receive a free reflection on "healing in-tensions" that can support efforts to reduce stress.
