Key Takeaways
- Stress is a normal response to high-pressure situations. Understanding how your body reacts to stress can help you manage it more effectively.
- The first rule of stress management is becoming aware of your daily stressors. By highlighting the issue, you can find ways to alleviate its impact.
- Talking to yourself in third-person pronouns, submerging your face in icy water, and changing your facial expressions are some of the evidence-based methods to help you manage stress.
- Adopt a healthy lifestyle by prioritizing breaks and planning to elevate productivity and reduce stress accumulation.
It’s undeniable that stress is an unavoidable part of our lives.
But it could also be managed.
We’re all familiar with experiencing stress throughout our lives, whether it is minor inconveniences like misplacing our keys or more serious concerns, like witnessing a loved one’s illness.
Your body goes through the same beats under stress: your heart starts pounding, your breathing becomes heavy, and your muscles tense – a typical stress response.
It’s a natural response to perceived threats, shaped by our pre-history to outlive threatening situations like natural disasters or animal attacks.
Today, our meaning of stress has evolved.
We may not experience life-threatening situations but we’re under tremendous pressure to perform and deliver results.
And it can be overwhelming when you’re constantly stimulated.
So, let’s explore stress in high-pressure situations and learn how you can implement certain strategies to thrive in such situations.
What Is Stress Management?
Stress management are techniques that help you control your stress levels.
It starts with identifying daily stressors and then finding ways to reduce their impact on your mental and physical health.
By managing stress effectively, you regulate your emotions and improve overall productivity.
The aim is to tackle common life challenges without disturbing our neural responses.
Exploring The Impact Of Stress In High-Pressure Industries
While stress is a normal part of life for an average working individual, certain industries are more susceptible to high-pressure environments, causing elevated stress levels, employee burnout, and other mental health problems.
Take finance, for example – considered amongst the most high-pressure industries.
Employees are constantly fighting deadlines, debilitating under continuous workload. Workers are finding ways to automate operations to bring work-life balance.
Healthcare is another profession where mass exodus is common.
Managing stress levels should be prioritized no matter which industry you work in. Implementation of certain interventions at the workplace can promise better stress management.
Primary Causes Of Stress
Stress management is quite subjective since every individual has a different tolerance level.
However, certain experiences within high-pressure industries are common.
- Long Hours: Studies have shown that employees who work overtime are more likely to develop health conditions as opposed to those who don’t. Working over 40 hours a week or 10 hours daily can lead to chronic psychological distress.
- High-Performance Expectations: Employees may develop bitter feelings or adopt an insecure attitude after failing to meet expectations. It’s common for companies to prioritize performance over an employee’s mental well-being.
- Long-Term Commitments: When you assign long-term projects to employees, they may start to procrastinate. This accumulation of ongoing stress can cause chronic fatigue, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.
6 Research-Backed Strategies For Stress Management In High-Pressure Environments
Stress is perceived differently by every person. While some handle it well, others struggle and succumb to it.
However, certain evidence-based strategies have given positive results. You can implement them in your daily life to effectively manage stress.
1. Submerge Your Face In Ice-Cold Water
One of the most effective techniques for managing stress is activating your diving reflex.
Activation of your diving reflexes proves meritorious as it slows down your heart rate, redirecting blood to all the major organs of the body.
So how do you activate your diving reflexes?
You hold your breath and submerge your face in ice-cold water.
All you have to do is take a bucket full of icy water. Now close your eyes, hold your breath, and dip your face. Feel the ice against your eyes, temples, and cheeks.
Although it is recommended to do this for only 15 to 30 seconds, you can do it for as long as you can.
Such physiological changes also help in reducing your anxiety.
Now this activity may not be possible to do at work, but you can make it a practice.
Do this every morning before you leave or after you come back from work.
2. Talk To Yourself In Third Person
Whenever something bad happens, we’re prone to catastrophizing that situation, becoming too critical, and often hopeless.
We start speaking the language of others – negative. Soon, we start feeling how we think. And it becomes almost impossible to come out of this bleak quicksand.
So, how about you snap out of it and change the way you think or talk to yourself?
When you speak to yourself, start by referring to yourself with your name. Talk to yourself in third-person pronouns.
It will essentially help you distance yourself from the situation. And when you find space, you develop the ability to see things differently, more optimistically.
Your inner narrative shifts from “I can’t” to “Maybe I can.”
You can think of yourself as your coach.
Look at it however you find pleasing. The idea is to not slip into a negative array of self-criticism.
3. Change Your Facial Expression
Every emotion is linked with certain facial expressions, body posture, and behavioral reactions. For example, anger is often associated with a frown and a loud voice.
One way to handle stress caused by anger is to do the opposite of what you feel. And how do you do that?
You consciously change your facial expression. Curve your lips into a smile and start speaking softly.
This is a technique that helps manage the intensity of your actual emotion.
Don’t think you’re going into denial. You’re simply reducing the magnitude of your emotion.
4. Yawn!
Research indicates that yawning induces a brain-cooling effect in our brains.
When someone is stressed, their physiological temperature may arise, so yawning, by default, can induce feelings of relaxation and improve cognitive function.
This may surprise many as people often associate yawning with boredom, but studies claim otherwise. Yawning helps you relax. So yawn away your worries.
5. Prioritize Breaks
The CDC guide for mental health and burnout support emphasizes the importance of taking breaks during shifts. Now the number of breaks you take and for how long depends on the nature of your job, but prioritize them.
Make sure you exercise or add physical activity to your routine to introduce healthy hormones in your body. The idea is to give yourself a break from this overly-stimulating world.
6. Plan in Advance
It goes without saying but planning your day can help reduce stress by eliminating last-minute interruptions.
Things will fall into place when you know at what time you have to wake up, how much time a certain report will take to complete, or when you have to visit your dentist next.
You will have answers and solutions. You wouldn’t have to worry about minor inconveniences that transform into accumulated stress.
My Concluding Thoughts on Stress Management
Effective management of stress fosters both mental and physical well-being in high-stress situations.
While avoiding stress altogether may not be possible, you can adopt positive strategies to manage it.
Most times, general stress also leads to chronic stress which is more detrimental to your overall performance.
At Ascension, we have the means and methods to help you navigate through the general and chronic stress in your life.
The Ascension Method is our unique process created to help you consciously lead & master your whole life so you can sustain the energy and mindset that will amplify your performance, fast-track your career, and create sustainable next-level success and abundance in your life (while learning to effectively overcome chronic stress).
Expand your mind, body & soul with sustainable lifestyle upgrades that improve your performance to peak levels in the most vital areas of your life. We call this the 10 Pillars Of Life Mastery.
It includes nutrition management, relationship optimization, movement, finances, spiritual growth, career growth, your recovery, the environmental impact on you, your personal development, and fun & play.
And one of these modalities is our 9D Breathwork Experience.
By participating, you’ll get on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth.
You’ll also gain valuable insights into your limiting beliefs and learn how to reprogram them.
So, if you’re ready to experience profound transformation and unlock your full potential, I invite you to join me in my next session.
