Is It Happening To You?

Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash

An uptick in responsibility is the natural accompaniment of career advancement. This can come in many forms - managing more people, greater accountability for specific results, etc. 

And the natural accompaniment to that increased responsibility is increased stress (at least if you take your role seriously).

Which isn’t, of course, a bad thing. Stress helps in many situations - it charges us up, puts us on alert, so to speak. A little stress - at least in my mind - focuses us on the value of the task at hand and ensures we put in the work needed to do it right.

But when the stress crosses over from “manageable” to “overwhelming”, then we have a problem. We then become “stressed” in the way we usually tend to use that word - focused mainly on the pitfalls, unable to move forward, paralyzed. And so our work becomes harder, all consuming. We’re less positive, more concerned. None of which is good for us, not to that extent.

There’s different ways to handle this and I don’t profess to be an expert on stress management. I’ve dealt with this plenty myself, so I won’t suggest I have the perfect solution(s). But I do think there’s a specific mindset that - at least to me - serves as the starting point to be able to better handle stress, and certainly overwhelming stress. 

And I think it starts with how we view the situations in our lives. Specifically, is this happening to me? Or do I have control over the situation, at least how it can turn out?

That sounds simple enough - possibly even overly simplistic. But that’s where the groundwork is laid. If we don’t believe we have control over events, over the things that happen in our lives, then where can we go from there? 

Of course, things will happen. We are dealt plenty of cards which are entirely out of our control. But our reactions to those situations define whether that stress remains manageable or something worse. We have to believe we can do something about it. That we can chart some sort of path forward. 

Now, that path may not be exactly what we might hope it could or should be - we don’t always get what we want. But it should still be a path forward that we can manage and work towards. One where we can make material inputs and put in place solutions that change things in ways that benefit the situation, and therefore, us.

In other words, if we believe we maintain some control, that we can set better expectations, and that we aren’t entirely at the mercy of outside forces, then we can work with our stress and fend off ‘overwhelm’.